NEW RELEASES
A young woman struggles to finish her PhD on stars and galaxies. Instead, she obsessively tracks the experience of her own body, listening to its functions and rhythms, finally locating in its patterns the beginning of illness and instability. As she discovers the precarity of her self, she begins to turn her attention to the distant orbits of her family members, each moving away from the familial system and each so different in their experiences, but somehow made similar in their shared history of illness and trauma, both political and personal.
"Meruane is one of the one or two greats in the new generation of Chilean writers who promise to have it all." —Roberto Bolaño
"Nervous System is fast, uncompromising and shimmering with intelligence." —Sarah Moss
"Meruane is an immensely gifted writer... Nervous System burns in the mind long after one has read it." —The New York Times
All the qualities of the paintings for which Fini is famed can be found in this novella (first published in 1979 but here in its first English translation): an undermining of patriarchy, the ambiguities of gender and the slipperiness of desire, along with darker hints of cruelty and the voluptuousness of fear. This novella's ambiguous narrator sets off for the isolated locale of Rogomelec—where a crumbling monastery serves as a sanatorium and offers a cure involving a diet of plants and flowers—and moves through a waking dream of strangely scented monks, vibratory concerts in a cavernous ossuary and ritualist pomp with costumes of octopi and shining beetles. As the days unfold, the narrator discovers that the "the celebration of the king" is approaching, the events of which will lead to a shocking discovery in Rogomelec's Gothic ruins. Includes 14 drawings by Fini that accompanied the novella's original publication.
>>A gallery of paintings.
>>A gallery of paintings.
Hattie wants a horse more than anything. Her friend Ellen has three ponies. When Hattie’s father finally comes home with a horse float, Hattie is ecstatic. But instead of a horse, out stomps Olaf—a donkey. Now Hattie not only has horse fever, she suddenly catches lying sickness as well... The audacious and captivating Hattie and her best friend Linda navigate the social politics of their first school years in this funny illustrated chapter book.
Of all the many things humans rely on plants for, surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness—to stimulate, calm, or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. In This Is Your Mind On Plants, Michael Pollan explores three very different drugs - opium, caffeine, and mescaline - and throws the fundamental strangeness of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming (or in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos. Why are some drugs encouraged by governments and others restricted?
>>Ego, death, and the healing power of plants.
>>Ego, death, and the healing power of plants.
The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter-skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a 'national treasure' (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen. Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant.
"Shall we just walk along, Dad, or shall we make some of it up?" Join Michael and his over-worked father as they journey home one fun-filled afternoon. Nelson illustrator won the Margaret Mahy Illustration Award for this book.
"Voila: an actual Mahy, republished with wildly beautiful artwork by Nelson illustrator Lily Emo. The press release about this one called Emo’s work 'breathtaking' and usually that’s hyperbole but in this case my breath actually did catch, more than a few times, as I turned to a fresh page. The seascapes are dreamy, they’re what you notice first, but after many re-reads my very favourite thing about the art here is Emo’s gentle skewering of adults’ terrible awful screen-induced posture." —Catherine Woulfe, The Spinoff
A superbly drawn graphic novel recalibrating the history of the entwined Australian and New Zealand involvement in the Vietnam War. Led by an unconscientiously objecting wombat registered for military service during Australia's war in Vietnam, Underground digs tunnels through a chapter of Australian history that many have attempted to bury. Why would a wombat be registered for war? It's 1965, and an old Tattersalls barrel starts rolling marbles to randomly conscript young Australian men to fight in the war in Vietnam. Melbourne housewife Jean McLean is outraged, as are her artist friends Clif and Marlene Pugh, who live in the country with their wombat, Hooper. Determined to wreck the system, Jean forms the Save Our Sons movement's Victorian branch, and she and her supporters take to the streets to protest. Meanwhile, in the small country town of Katunga, Bill Cantwell joins the Australian Army, and in Saigon, young Mai Ho is writing letters to South Vietnamese soldiers from her school desk. And when Hooper's call-up papers arrive, he mysteriously goes underground... As these stories intersect in unexpected ways and destinies entwine, a new world gradually emerges - a world in which bridges of understanding make more sense than war.
>>Born to dig.
The Subversive Simone Weil: A life in five ideas by Robert Zearetsky $38
>>Born to dig.
Known as the 'patron saint of all outsiders', Simone Weil (1909-43) was one of the twentieth century's most remarkable thinkers, a philosopher who truly lived by her political and ethical ideals. In a short life framed by the two world wars, Weil taught philosophy to lycée students and organized union workers, fought alongside anarchists during the Spanish Civil War and labored alongside workers on assembly lines, joined the Free French movement in London and died in despair because she was not sent to France to help the Resistance.
Anni and Josef Albers: Equal and unequal by Nicholas Fox Weber $210
A beautifully presented and unprecedented visual biography of the leading pioneers and protagonists of modern art and design. Josef Albers - painter, designer, and teacher - and Anni Albers - textile artist and printmaker - are among the twentieth century's most important abstract artists, and this is the first monograph to celebrate the rich creative output and beguiling relationship of these two masters in one elegant volume. It presents their life and work as never before, from their formative years at the Bauhaus in Germany to their remarkable influence at Black Mountain College in the United States through their intensely productive period in Connecticut.
The Shut-Ins by Katherine Brabon $33
Nonstop by Tomi Ungerer $30
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris $33
Polynesian Panthers: Pacific protest and affirmative action in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1971—1981 by Melani Anae $40
She is Haunted by Paige Clark $33
James Courage Diaries edited by Chris Brickell $45
Middle Eastern Sweets: Desserts, pastries, creams and treats by Salma Hage $60
Granta 155: The best of young Spanish language novelists edited by Valerie Miles $28
"Not only is The Shut Ins a compelling story about hikikomori, those who seek absolute isolation from society, and those who orbit them in their reclusion, it is also a profound exploration of loneliness, solitude, and that peculiar, ineffable yearning for inner or unconscious worlds; the chimeric 'other side'. Katherine Brabon is a precise and contemplative writer, her prose capable of intense, almost-heady evocation. I will read everything she writes." —Hannah Kent
The legendary children's book author's last picture book sends a powerful message in trying times. Earth is devastated and empty. Everyone has escaped to the moon—except Vasco. Luckily, Vasco has his shadow to guide him, and he finds little green Poco—someone to care for and bring to safety. Nonstop dangers await Vasco and baby Poco at every corner, but Vasco's shadow rescues and guides them through destroyed cities and apocalyptic landscapes to safety.
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and the micro-aggressions, she's thrilled when Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. However, when a string of uncomfortable events cause Nella to become Public Enemy Number One and Hazel, the Office Darling.
"Part office satire, part thriller with a twist, this is a fresh and original take on race and class in the publishing industry." —Guardian
Forming in 1971, the Polynesian Panthers sought to raise consciousness and took action in response to the racism and discrimination Pacific peoples faced in New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s. The Panthers organised prison visit programmes and sporting and debating teams for inmates; provided a halfway-house service for young men released from prison; ran homework centres, and offered `people's loans', legal aid and food banks that catered for 600 families at their height. Drawing on interviews, memoirs, poetry, newspaper articles and critical analysis, Polynesian Panthers is a thought-provoking account of this period in New Zealand. Particularly interesting in light of the government's formal apology for the 'dawn raids' of the 1970s.
"I know lots of things now that I'm dead. Peter from Apartment Two has a spastic bladder. My former boss Morgan keeps her toenails in a gold jewellery box. My brother and his wife are trying for a baby. I always excuse myself before things get too heated. I don't know much about my mother yet. I am waiting for grief to catch her, but she mostly seems ashamed-of her body, of what it made." A mother cuts her daughter's hair because her own starts falling out. A woman leaves her boyfriend because he reminds her of a corpse; another undergoes brain surgery to try to live more comfortably in higher temperatures. A widow physically transforms into her husband so that she does not have to grieve. In She Is Haunted, these renditions of the author search for recognition and connection, and, more than anything else, small moments of empathy. But in what world will she move beyond her haunted past and find compassion for herself?
New Zealand author James Courage was born in Christchurch in 1903, and he became aware of his homosexuality during his adolescent years. He moved to London in 1927 and began writing novels, plays, poems and short stories. He was much more sexually open than most of his homosexual writer contemporaries Frank Sargeson, Eric McCormick, Charles Brasch and Bill Pearson. A Way of Love, published in 1959, was the first gay novel written by a New Zealander, and some of his other seven novels (including Fires in the Distance and The Call Home) contain queer characters. The NZSA's Courage Day, to recognise the plight of imprisoned and oppressed writers, is named after James Courage.
"What a wealth of contemporary detail is here about the shadow world (to many readers) of covert sexual engagement, and the sharp and engaging portrait of a middle-class privileged life, with its travel and its civilian experience of war. I also found of great interest his gradual change from an almost copy-book privileged aesthete, to a late in the day socialist." —Vincent O’Sullivan
Whether you start your day with something sweet, finish it with something sweet, or make sure sweets are within reach all day long, you'll find serious inspiration in the pages of Salma Hage's latest cookbook for home cooks. The Middle East's wide range of cultures, ingredients, and influences informs the array of dishes she includes.
A selection of the brightest rising stars now writing in Spanish, here translated into English.
>>Contents.
Things Remembered and Things Forgotten by Kyoko Nakajima $23
Radical Architecture of the Future by Beatrice Galilee $90
Architecture and Ugliness: Anti-aesthetics and the ugly in Postmodern architecture edited by Wouter van Acker and Thomas Mical $55
How Old Am I? Faces from around the world, 1—100 by J.R. $35
"If we want to understand what has been lost to time, there is no way other than through the exercise of imagination—imagination applied with delicate rather than broad strokes." Nakajima portrays men and women beset by cultural amnesia and unaware of how haunted they are—by fragmented memories of war and occupation, by fading traditions, by buildings lost to firestorms and bulldozers, by the spirits of their recent past.
"These impressive stories bridge past and present, the familiar and the otherworldly, the lost and the found." —David Mitchell
"A perfect introduction to the quiet, subtle brilliance of Kyoko Nakajima." —David Peace
Architectural practice today goes far beyond the design and construction of buildings — the most exciting, forward-thinking architecture is also found in digital landscapes, art, apps, films, installations, and virtual reality. This remarkable book features projects — surprising, beautiful, outrageous, and sometimes even frightening — that break rules and shatter boundaries. The book includes work of architects, designers, artists, photographers, writers, filmmakers, and researchers — all of whom synthesize and reflect spatial environments.
Whatever 'ugliness' is, it remains a problematic category in architectural aesthetics - alternately vilified and appropriated, either to shock or to invert conventions of architecture. This book presents eighteen new essays which rethink ugliness in architecture - from brutalism to eclectic postmodern architectural productions - and together offer a diverse reappraisal of the history and theory of postmodern architecture and design. The essays address both broad theoretical questions on ugliness and postmodern aesthetics, as well as more specific analyses of significant architectural examples dating from the last decades of the twentieth century, addressing the relation between the aesthetic register of ugliness and aesthetic concepts such as brutalism, kitsch, the formless, ad hoc-ism, the monstrous, or the grotesque.
August by Callan Wink $23
Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues by H.S. Valley $23
A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth by Daniel Mason $25
The Heap by Sean Adams $30
The Keeper of Miracles by Phillip Maisel $38
August is an average twelve year old - he likes dogs and fishing, and doesn't even mind early morning chores on his family's farm. When his parents' marriage falls apart and he has to start over in a new town, he tries hard to be an average teen - playing football and doing his homework - but he struggles to form friendships, and when a shocking act of violence pushes him off course once more, he flees to rural Montana. There, as he throws himself into work on a ranch, he comes to learn that even the smallest of communities have secrets and even the most broken of families have a bond.
"Wink has a precise, clear prose style. The landscape is a character in itself — well-known, but changeable. Wink skilfully imbues his writing with a subtle sense of foreboding that never leaves. In this tightly controlled yet highly unpredictable novel we discover what it is like to come of age in a part of America that is always changing, always the same." —Guardian
Tim Te Maro and Elliott Parker – classmates at Fox Glacier High School for the Magically Adept – have never got along. But when they both get dumped the day before the big egg-baby assignment, they reluctantly decide to ditch their exes and work together. When the two boys start to bond over their magically enchanted egg-baby, they realise that beneath their animosity is something like friendship … or something more. A queer YA romantic comedy and winner of the 2020Ampersand Prize.
On a fated flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son.
Pulitzer Prize fiction finalist, 2021.
Standing nearly five hundred stories tall, Los Vertical s once bustled with life and excitement. Now this marvel of modern architecture and nontraditional urban planning has collapsed into a pile of rubble known as the Heap. In exchange for digging gear, a rehabilitated bicycle, and a small living stipend, a vast community of Dig Hands removes debris, trash, and bodies from the building's mountainous remains, which span twenty acres of unincorporated desert land. Orville Anders burrows into the bowels of the Heap to find his brother Bernard, the beloved radio DJ of Los Vertical s, who is alive and miraculously broadcasting somewhere under the massive rubble. For months, Orville has lived in a sea of campers that surrounds the Heap, working tirelessly to free Bernard—the only known survivor of the imploded city—whom he speaks to every evening, calling into his radio show. The brothers' conversations are a ratings bonanza, and the station's parent company, Sundial Media, wants to boost its profits by having Orville slyly drop brand names into his nightly talks with Bernard. When Orville refuses, his access to Bernard is suddenly cut off, but strangely, he continues to hear his own voice over the airwaves, casually shilling products as "he" converses with Bernard.
Phillip Maisel was born in 1922, in Vilna, Lithuania. When the Germans arrived in Vilna in 1941, Phillip's life changed dramatically. He survived two years in a squalid, overcrowded Jewish ghetto, before enduring multiple Nazi labour and concentration camps. Maisel was liberated in 1945 while on a Death March. He moved to Australia in 1949. For over thirty years, Maisel has worked at Melbourne's Jewish Holocaust Centre, recording over a thousand testimonies of other survivors and their descendants — each story of survival a miracle in its own right — earning Maisel the nickname 'The Keeper of Miracles'. This memoir is published as Maisel turns 99.
For young children, the concept of age is abstract when they don't have a relatable context... until now This book showcases the faces and life stories of 100 people from around the world in numerical order, from a one-year-old to a centenarian, giving children a reference point for each age. Striking close-up black-and-white portraits are paired with read-aloud text that shares personal experiences, wishes, memories, and emotions, leaving readers with an appreciation and understanding of the ageing process. Just as fascinating for adults.