NEW RELEASES
Five people are meeting for dinner in a Manhattan apartment, but when all the screens go dark they are forced to face what is left of themselves without the internet.
The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey $34
Billy Apple: Life/work by Christina Barton $75
Metazoa: Animal minds and the birth of consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith $38
"DeLillo is a master stylist, and not a word goes to waste. DeLillo looks for the future as it manifests in the present moment." —Anne Enright, Guardian
"Mysterious and unexpectedly touching. DeLillo offers consolation simply by enacting so well the mystery and awe of the real world." —Joshua Ferris, The New York Times Book Review
"DeLillo has almost Dayglo powers as a writer." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"Brilliant and astonishing...a masterpiece...manages to renew DeLillo's longstanding obsessions while also striking deeply and swiftly at the reader's emotions...The effect is transcendent." --Charles Finch, Chicago Tribune
"The Mermaid of Black Conch is an extraordinary novel in which myth, fairy tale, adventure and history are combined to produce a magical tale that provokes as much as it delights. This timeless story of an ancient mermaid who captures the heart of a local fisherman is a powerful feminist tale which speaks artfully to the nature of love and possession, race and class, creolization and colonialism. Filled with unforgettable characters and scenes, the story moves effortlessly between prose, poetry, and journal entries with playful interweaving of various Englishes including patois and English Creole. This is one of those rare gems of a novel that can be read and enjoyed on many levels—it’s a whimsical love story, a history of the Caribbean and its indigenous peoples, an ode to Mother Earth, and an allegory for our times. The book sings with warm echoes of Jean Rhys, Ernest Hemingway and Zora Neale Hurston." — Judges' citation, shortlisting the book for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize.
The long-awaited monograph on this New Zealand artist of long relevance who burst onto the world stage in the 1960s alongside David Hockney. Well illustrated.
>>Se also Anthony Byrt's The Mirror Steamed Over.
Raised in Captivity: Fictional non-fiction by Chuck Klosterman $37
The New York Times, aware that only fiction could help readers grasp reality in strange times, commissioned these stories. Includes Caitlin Roper, Rivka Galchen, Victor LaValle, Mona Awad, Kamila Shamsie, Colm Tóibín, Liz Moore, Tommy Orange, Leila Slimani, Margaret Atwood, Yiyun Li, Etgar Keret, Andrew O'Hagan, Rachel Kushner, Téa Obreht, Alejandro Zambra, Dinaw Mengestum Karen Russell, David Mitchell, Charles Yu, Paolo Giordano, Mia Cuoto, Uzodinma Iweala, Rivers Solomon, Laila Lalami, Julián Fuks, Dina Nayeli, Matthew Baker, Esi Edugyan, John Wray, Edwidge Danticat.
Stories of what could be called philosophical fiction, undermining any residual certainty we might feel we have about the functioning of 'reality'.
Results and winning essay from the: • Landfall Essay Competition 2020 • Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize 2020 • Frank Sargeson Prize 2020. WRITERS: John Allison, Nick Ascroft, Wanda Baker, Peter Belton, Victor Billot, Ella Borrie, Cindy Botha, Liz Breslin, Brent Cantwell, Marisa Cappetta, Catherine Chidgey, Jennifer Compton, Lynn Davidson, Breton Dukes, Norman Franke, Jasmine Gallagher, Giles Graham, Charlotte Grimshaw, Rebecca Hawkes, Nathaniel Herz-Edinger, Zoe Higgins, Gail Ingram, Ash Davida Jane, Pippi Jean, Stacey Kokaua, A.M. McKinnon, Cilla McQueen, Alice Miller, Jessica Le Bas, Art Nahill, Jilly O’Brien, Chris Parsons, Sarah Paterson, Robyn Maree Pickens, Angela Pope, Sugu Pillay, essa may ranapiri, Vaughan Rapatahana, Alan Roddick, Ruth Russ, Lynda Scott Araya, Tracey Slaughter, Matafanua Tamatoa, Jessica Thompson-Carr, Catherine Trundle, Chris Tse, Iain Twiddy, Oscar Upperton, Tim Upperton, Dunstan Ward, Harris Williamson, Sharni Wilson, Sophia Wilson, Anna Woods. ARTISTS: Scott Eady, Yonel Watene, Fatu Feu`u.
From the human being to the octopus, the shark to the humble sea squirt, all animals are physical beings made up entirely of cells. And yet they can think, to varying degrees. How did this come to be? How did a mind first grow from the matter that is the body? And at what stage did that clump of cells become a 'self'? From the author of Other Minds.
How has sculpture been central to the evolution of our thinking and feeling?
Caste: The lies that divide us by Isabel Wilkerson $40
"The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power — which groups have it and which do not." Beyond race or class, our lives are defined by a powerful, unspoken system of divisions. Linking America, India and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson reveals how our world has been shaped by caste — and how its rigid, arbitrary hierarchies still divide us today. From the author of the acclaimed The Warmth of Other Suns.
A young woman finds herself on the set of Billy Wilder’s 1978 film Fedora, in Coe’s love letter to the spirit of cinema.
"The life and light that flooded Middle England is preserved and multiplied in Mr Wilder & Me. This is a book that looks back to Coe’s brilliant early period, engaging, like What a Carve Up!, with cinema in a formal as well as a thematic way, delivering the reader a satisfyingly sweeping novel that still manages to push the form in new directions. This is as good as anything he’s written – a novel to cherish." —Guardian
Three coloured lenses reveal dinosaurs of all kinds almost leaping from the pages. A large amount of fun.
Hoffman argues that how we see the world is determined by our species's imperative t survive, and that this means not only that our world view may be very different from beings with different survival imperatives, but also may contain a large number of useful errors, or once-useful errors, that may no longer be so useful at all. What we see is determined more by our minds than by actuality: evolution has shaped our perceptions into simplistic illusions to help us navigate the world around us. Interesting.
The first volume of Obama's presidential memoirs. Thoughtful and revealing.
Broad Band: The untold story of the women who made the internet by Claire L. Evans $37
"This is a radically important, timely work." —Miranda July
History of Information Graphics by Sandra Rendgen $180
An utterly astounding lavish large-format volume showcasing the ways in which information has been presented graphically from medieval times to the present. Desirable.
How to Feed a Dictator: Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot through the eyes of their cooks by Witold Szabłowski $37
The Jakarta Method: Washington's international crusade and the mass murder programme that shaped the world by Vincent Bevins $45
Boy on Fire: The young Nick Cave by Mark Mordue $45
Anthony Bourdain meets Ryszard Kapuściński.
In 1965, the US government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful.
From the fast-running dark river and ghost gums of Wangaratta, to the nascent punk scene which hit staid 1970s Melbourne like a bomb, right through to the torn wallpaper, sticky carpet and the manic, wild energy of nights at the Crystal Ballroom.