NEW RELEASES
The crew of the Six-Thousand Ship consists of those who were born, and those who were made; those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike start aching for the same things: warmth and intimacy, loved ones who have dies, shopping and child-rearing; our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory. Gradually, the crew members come to see their work in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether they can carry on as before — and what it means to be truly living. Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn's crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity.
>>Reading with the mouth.
>>Am I human?
>>Short-listed for the 2021 International Booker Prize.
>>Reading with the mouth.
>>Am I human?
>>Short-listed for the 2021 International Booker Prize.
A wonderful graphic memoir of Bechdel's lifelong love affair with exercise— set against a hilarious chronicle of fitness fads in our times.
>>Climbing Desolation Peak.
>>"These books all feel impossible at the outset—which is why I want to do them."
>>Climbing Desolation Peak.
>>"These books all feel impossible at the outset—which is why I want to do them."
In this collection of non-fiction White asks uncomfortable questions about the lived reality of womanhood in the 21st century, and the fear that must be internalised in order to find a path through it. White balances vivid storytelling with sharp-witted observations about the horrors of grief, mental illness, and the casual and sometimes hilarious cruelty of life.
"Provocative and profound, full of brutal truths and unexpected humour. —Sarah Baume
Three poems from one of Aotearoa's finest poets. 'Island time' is a meditation on impermanence and identity ("we who so loved the world / are its destroyers"); while the title poem in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque killings considers complicity; 'Crusade', an account of a rugby match between the Chiefs and the Crusaders.
"Tony Beyer has never followed signposts; he has always attended to the road, rewarding us with a considered prosody that honours the moment yet goes beyond it. His language is disciplined, almost ascetic, but there is a generosity in even the most clipped line, a kind of 'elated patience' that is rare, and all the more welcome for its rarity, in New Zealand poetry." —David Howard
>>'Sage'.
>>Anchor Stone.
"Writing with radical tenderness, with beauty and pain and precision, Hana Pera Aoake envisions an anticapitalist, de-colonial, Indigenous way of living and being, transcending the borders of poetry and prose in a style similar to that of Claudia Rankine and Layli Long Soldier. A bath full of kawakawa and hot water is an essential poetic text in the literature of Aotearoa, and a call to action at the end of the world." —Nina Mingya Powles
"Part memoir, part myth, part rant, part dream, part chant. This is an exciting and poignant book from one of my favourite NZ writers." —Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle
"Hybrid in form and theme, what cyborg melts hierarchies, what cyborg turns the gender binary to dust, what cyborg fights for our mana motuhake? This one! Read this book and then do something about it." —essa may ranapiri
Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, she attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her two-year relationship with a married man where every word, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference. With courage and exactitude, Ernaux seeks the truth behind an existence lived, for a time, entirely for someone else.
"The triumph of Ernaux’s approach is to cherish commonplace emotions while elevating the banal expression of them. A monument to passions that defy simple explanations." —New York Times
"Annie Ernaux is one of my favorite contemporary writers, original and true. Always after reading one of her books, I walk around in her world for months." —Sheila Heti
>>Other books by Ernaux.
>>Other books by Ernaux.
How can we make sense of our lives when we do not know where we come from? This was a pressing question for the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, whose prewar memories were vague or nonexistent. Clifford follows the lives of one hundred Jewish children out of the ruins of conflict through their adulthood and into old age. Drawing on archives and interviews, she charts the experiences of these child survivors and those who cared for them—as well as those who studied them, such as Anna Freud. Survivors explores the aftermath of the Holocaust in the long term, and reveals how these children—often branded "the lucky ones"—had to struggle to be able to call themselves "survivors" at all. Challenging our assumptions about trauma, Clifford's narrative helps us understand what it was like living after, and living with, childhoods marked by rupture and loss.
"A wonderful piece of writing, its power and intelligence so delicately crafted, a truly significant contribution to our understanding of the consequences over time of the interplay between trauma, memory and identity." —Philippe Sands
In June 1925, twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, retreated to a small, treeless island in the North Sea called Helgoland. It was there that he came up with one of the most transformative scientific concepts—quantum theory. Almost a century later, quantum physics has given us many startling ideas—ghost waves, distant objects that seem magically connected to each other, cats that are both dead and alive. At the same time, countless experiments have led to practical applications that shape our daily lives. Today our understanding of the world around us is based on this theory. And yet it is still profoundly mysterious. In this book, Carlo Rovelli tells the story of quantum physics and reveals its deep meaning—a world made of substances is replaced by a world made of relations, each particle responding to another in a never ending game of mirrors.
>>Other excellent books by Rovelli.
>>Other excellent books by Rovelli.
Valdin is still in love with his ex-boyfriend Xabi, who used to drive around Auckland in a ute but now drives around Buenos Aires in one. Greta is in love with her fellow English tutor Holly, who doesn’t know how to pronounce Greta’s surname, Vladisavljevic, properly. From their Auckland apartment, brother and sister must navigate the intricate paths of modern romance as well as weather the small storms of their eccentric Māori–Russian–Catalonian family. This novel by Adam Foundation Prize winner Rebecca K Reilly owes as much to Shakespeare as it does to Tinder. Greta and Valdin will speak to anyone who has had their heart broken, or has decided that they don’t want to be a physicist anymore, or has wondered about all of the things they don’t know about their family.
The Dolphin Letters offers an unprecedented portrait of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick during the last seven years of Lowell's life (1970 to 1977), a time of personal crisis and creative innovation for both writers. Centered on the letters they exchanged with each other and with other members of their circle (including Elizabeth Bishop, Caroline Blackwood, Mary McCarthy, and Adrienne Rich), the book tells the story of the painful (at least for Bishop) destruction of of their twenty-one-year marriage and their extraordinary, but late, reconciliation. Lowell's controversial sonnet-sequence The Dolphin (for which he appropriated freely from Hardwick's letters to him) and his last book, Day by Day, were written during this period, as were Hardwick's influential books Seduction and Betrayal: Essays on Women in Literature and the novel Sleepless Nights.
One of the most prominent advocates of second-wave feminism in Aotearoa looks back over five decades of campaigns and social and political change, takes stock of what has been achieved and considers what still needs to be addressed.
Knox's excellent book has been updated and is now fully illustrated in colour.
A beautifully presented look at colonial-era fashionable dress, based on the collections at Te Papa (of which Regnault is curator), and exploring the social context of the garments and of the women who wore or made them. How does clothing give us an insight into Women's historical experiences that might otherwise not be available to us?
Klemperer's remarkable study (first published in 1957) dissects the ways in which the use of the German language was distorted and manipulated by Nazi propaganda in order to control the thoughts of the German people. Klemperer was particularly interested in the use of 'buzz-words' to reduce thought and manipulate emotions. "It isn't only Nazi actions that have to vanish, but also the Nazi cast of mind, the typical Nazi way of thinking, and its breeding ground: the language of Nazism."
All the most fascinating and astonishing facts about animal reproduction, from seduction methods and anatomy to family life and animal babies, in a compendium for the whole family. Bats give birth upside down. Swifts can mate while plummeting through the air. Scorpions attract their partners with a romantic dance. Male humpback whales sing together for days to bring females from many miles away. Dolphin babies come out tail first. Do Animals Fall in Love? is a compendium of all the weird and wonderful ways the animal kingdom reproduces. Wittily illustrated and frankly told, it covers courting rituals both elaborate and devious, extraordinary physiology, cleverly planned pregnancies, the most devoted fathers and the sweetest animal babies on Earth.
"These are my encounters and engagements with the world of books and writers, and of teaching and writing about them," C. K. Stead writes in this third and final volume of his memoirs. Topical.
>>Terrorism and two endings.
The Knowledge Machine: How an unreasonable idea created modern science by Michael Strevens $48
Women by Mihail Sebastian $28
Without Ever Reaching the Summit by Paolo Cognetti $30
The Alignment Problem: How can machines learn human values? by Sean Christian $33
Tiger Daughter by Rebecca Lim $19
Boy, Everywhere by A.M. Dassu $22
An Unquiet Heart by Martin Sixsmith $23
Remember: The science of memory and the art of forgetting by Lisa Genova $38
Over the last three centuries, huge leaps in our scientific understanding and, as a result, in our technology have completely transformed our way of life and our vision of the universe. Why is science so powerful? And why did we take so long to invent it - two thousand years after the invention of philosophy, mathematics and other disciplines that are the mark of civilisation? The Knowledge Machine gives a radical answer, exploring how science calls on its practitioners to do something not supremely rational but rather apparently irrational: strip away all previous knowledge — such as theological or metaphysical beliefs — in order to channel unprecedented energy into observation and experiment.
Stefan Valeriu, a young Romanian student, holidays alone in the Alps, where he soon becomes entangled in romantic relationships with three different women who pass through his guesthouse. We follow Stefan after his return to Paris as he reflects on the women in his life, at times playing the lover, and at others observing shrewdly from the periphery. Women's four interlinked stories offer nuanced portraits of romantic relationships in all their complexity, from unrequited love and passionate affairs to tepid marriages of convenience. Mihail Sebastian, often regarded as the greatest Romanian writer of the 20th century, explores longing, otherness, empathy, and regret. Introduction by John Banville.
"His prose is like something Chekov might have written - the same modesty, candour, and subtleness of observation." —Arthur Miller
"I love Sebastian's courage, his lightness, and his wit." —John Banville
Paolo Cognetti marked his 40th birthday with a journey he had always wanted to make: to Dolpo, a remote Himalayan region where Nepal meets Tibet. He took with him two friends, a notebook, mules and guides, and a well-worn copy of The Snow Leopard. Written in 1978, Matthiessen's classic was also turning forty, and Cognetti set out to walk in the footsteps of the great adventurer. Without Ever Reaching the Summit combines travel journal, secular pilgrimage, literary homage and sublime mountain writing. From the author of The Eight Mountains.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly dominating every aspect of our modern lives influencing the news we consume, whether we get a mortgage, and even which friends wish us happy birthday. But as algorithms make ever more decisions on our behalf, how do we ensure they do what we want? And fairly? This conundrum—dubbed 'The Control Problem' by experts - is the subject of this timely and important book. From the AI program which cheats at computer games to the sexist algorithm behind Google Translate, Christian explains how, as AI develops, we rapidly approach a collision between artificial intelligence and ethics.
Wen Zhou is the daughter and only child of Chinese immigrants whose move to the lucky country has proven to be not so lucky. Wen and her friend, Henry Xiao — whose mum and dad are also struggling immigrants — both dream of escape from their unhappy circumstances, and form a plan to sit an entrance exam to a selective high school far from home. But when tragedy strikes, it will take all of Wen's resilience and resourcefulness to get herself and Henry through the storm that follows.
"This gem of a book is packed with moments of unbearable tension and characters so complex and vivid they will stay with you long after it ends. At once heartbreaking and uplifting, Tiger Daughter is a testament to the strength of women and girls — and a terrific read. I couldn't put it down. Beautiful. Brutal. Brilliant." —Ambelin Kwaymullina
What turns citizens into refugees and then immigrants? Sami loves his life in Damascus, Syria. He hangs out with his best friend playing video games; he's trying out for the football team; he adores his family and gets annoyed by them in equal measure. But his comfortable life gets sidetracked abruptly after a bombing in a nearby shopping mall. Knowing that the violence will only get worse, Sami's parents decide they must flee their home for the safety of the UK. They start on a journey with more hazards than they could have imagined.
A novel based on the life of the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin. Soviet schoolchildren learned his verses by heart. Red Army soldiers carried them going into battle. Yuri Gagarin would took them into space. But Yesenin's obsession with fame was dangerous and destructive, for him, and for those near him.
Our brains aren't intended to remember everything, but how is it that we remember some things in some circumstances and not other things in other circumstances?