NEW RELEASES (5.3.26)

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The Black Monk by Charlotte Grimshaw $38
The eagerly anticipated new novel — Grimshaw’s first since The Mirror Book. While Alice Lidell's brother Cedric spirals into addiction, she finds herself confronted not only by his decline, but by memories of past experiences. From their chaotic Auckland childhood to her present day life, Alice is haunted by a mysterious figure she calls the Black Monk. As Alice tries to hold her family together, the Black Monk appears in various guises — a stranger met in a cemetery, a face on television, a character surfacing in her own writing. Part psychological thriller, part family saga, this is a daring, superbly written novel that examines the themes of the moment — shame, addiction, truth and the stories we tell to survive. [Paperback]
"Charlotte is one of New Zealand's most accomplished and acclaimed writers with a significant publishing record. She has few peers as a fiction writer and essayist, and as a reviewer and public intellectual. Her work for newspapers and magazines reveals her curiosity about the world, her immersion in contemporary politics and social issues; it demonstrates her clear-sighted thinking, willingness to interrogate and expose, and desire to engage with difficult topics. Her writing can be searing and fearless. Her work as a fiction writer wins literary awards and is adapted for television, a rare combination anywhere, especially for an author who is not writing commercial or historical fiction." —Paula Morris
>>A resource and a defence.

Scorpions by Yumiko Kurahashi (translated from Japanese by Michael Day) $39
Yumiko Kurahashi's 1963 novella Scorpions takes the form of a transcript of a one-sided interview with L following the arrest and institutionalisation of her twin brother K. The two have played a role in a series of horrifying deaths culminating in the murder of their mother. Through a first-person narrative that varies in tone from scientifically clinical to darkly humorous, mingling together references to the Bible and Greek mythology, odd bits of dialogue and obtuse descriptions, we learn of K and L's shocking crimes as well as the professional and personal entanglement of L and an older man they call the Red Pig, their mother's former lover. Scorpions remains, after more than half a century, a shockingly transgressive text. It bears allegiance to the most radical French fiction of its time, particularly the work of Jean Genet, an author Kurahashi admired, whose own novels explored the sanctification of criminal behavior. [Paperback with French flaps]
>>Engaging both Japanese and European literatures.

The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn (translated from Danish by Martin Aitken) $28
On the Six-Thousand Ship, things have started to feel changed. Since bringing aboard a number of strange objects from a newly discovered planet, the crew — both human and humanoid — have begun to feel a yearning. They want to be near the objects, to feel them pressed against their skin, but they also all now feel a curious new hunger for home — Earth, that place many cannot even remember. The Board of Directors are eager to understand more, and so instruct a commission to interview each of the employees. Those who are born dream of soil, the smell of warm asphalt, the sound of animals and birds. Those who are made know only what is programmed, and yet feel it deeply, truly. As their testimonies accumulate, a tapestry of longing and quiet rebellion emerges, blurring the lines between work and life, between human and machine. The Employees was the breakout novel from one of the most celebrated authors in world literature, and is now seen as a masterpiece of twenty-first century literary science fiction. In stark, pristine prose, Olga Ravn forms a timeless meditation on productivity, pleasure and what the far-flung future might miss. New edition. [Paperback]
”Everything I'm looking for in a novel. I was obsessed from the first page to the last. A strange, beautiful, deeply intelligent and provocative investigation into humanity. The Employees is an alarmingly brilliant work of art.” —Max Porter
”What might result if Ursula K. Le Guin and Nell Zink had a baby. —Tank Magazine
”The Employees is not only a disconcertingly quotidian space opera; it’s also an audacious satire of corporate language and the late-capitalist workplace, and a winningly abstracted investigation into what it means to be human.” —Justine Jordan, The Guardian
”The most striking aspect of this weird, beautiful, and occasionally disgusting novel is not, as its subtitle implies, its portrayal of working life on the spaceship. What The Employees captures best is humanity’s ambivalence about life itself, its sticky messes and unappealing functions, the goo that connects us to everything that crawls and mindlessly self-propagates, not to mention that obliterating payoff at the end of it all.” —Laura Miller, New York Review of Books
>>Read Thomas’s review.
>>Read Stella’s review.
>>Join our April online discussion.
>>The Wax Child.
>>My Work.

Animal Stories by Kate Zambreno $35
From “a writer who has invented a new form" (Annie Ernaux), an exploration of mortality, alienation, boredom, surveillance, and how we regard ourselves among the animals. Animal Stories begins with Zambreno's visit to the monkey house at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where one stark tree "seems to be the stage design for a simian production of Waiting for Godot". But who are the players and who is the audience, and can they recognize each other? What follows is a series of reports from the deep strangeness of the zoo, a space that is "more often than not deeply sad, an odd choice for regular pilgrimages of fun”. Amid excursions with their young children, Zambreno turns to Garry Winogrand's photographs and John Berger's writings on animals, reshaping the spectator as the subject to decode our complex "zoo feelings" — what we project, and what we refuse to see. Then, in the "Kafka system" that dovetails with these zoo studies, Zambreno thinks through the notebooks and animal stories of a writer known for playing at the threshold between species, continuing their investigation into the false divide between human and animal. Drawing on forms including reports, essays, journals, and stories, Zambreno renders visible the enclosures we construct and the ones we occupy ourselves. [Paperback]
"I loved the precision of Kate Zambreno's Animal Stories-a literal attention so heightened that it becomes distinct and peculiar...Few human animals have Zambreno's baleful honesty, insight, or relish for comedy, when they look at themselves." —Daisy Hildyard
"A personal, historical, and philosophical reflection on the gap between human and animal perceptions of each other. Animal Stories considers the tragicomic implications of our own animal being.” —Brian Dillon
"A view on the world using a deep field of focus that renders details near and far with equal clarity. Ostensibly unrelated figures are thus united within the writer's rich conceptual frame. Blazingly erudite, Animal Stories reflects Zambreno's vital unboundedness." —The Brooklyn Rail
>>Death at the zoo.

Aug 9—Fog by Kathryn Scanlan $40
Fifteen years ago, Kathryn Scanlan found a stranger's five-year diary at an estate auction in a small town in Illinois. The owner of the diary was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her life in the small book, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. The diary was falling apart — water-stained and illegible in places — but magnetic to Scanlan nonetheless. After reading and rereading the diary, studying and dissecting it, for the next fifteen years she played with the sentences that caught her attention, cutting, editing, arranging, and rearranging them into the composition that became Aug 9—Fog (she chose the title from a note that was tucked into the diary). "Sure grand out," the diarist writes. "That puzzle a humdinger," she says, followed by, "A letter from Lloyd saying John died the 16th." An entire state of mourning reveals itself in "2 canned hams." The result of Scanlan's collaging is an utterly compelling, deeply moving meditation on life and death. In Aug 9—Fog, Scanlan's spare, minimalist approach has a maximal emotional effect, remaining with the reader long after the book ends. It is an unclassifiable work from a visionary young writer and artist--a singular portrait of a life revealed by revision and restraint. [Now in paperback]
>>Read Thomas’s review.
>>What is buried in what is written?
>>Read our reviews of Kick the Latch.
>>Read Thomas’s review of The Dominant Animal.

Lithium by Malén Denis (translated from Spanish by Laura Hatry and John Wronoski $42
Malén Denis's Lithium is a novel about what cannot be fully named or pinned down. "Language in this book," the author notes, "acts as a pharmakon- — both poison and remedy — inviting the reader to navigate its ambivalence. I wrote it by following the golden thread of poetry and the echoes of psychoanalysis, letting the images lead rather than the plot." Lithium employs an especially potent, poetic language to convey love found and love lost. It is a book blazing with bruised perceptions of the precarity of a life lived between jobs and between homes; it's a feverish work swinging from hope to despair, about trying drugs both prescribed and not, about migration, about cat-sitting, and about isolation, about the search for meaning and for happiness when both prove so elusive, and it is about summoning the strength to wrench oneself from indecision to action. [Paperback]
"Malén Denis hypnotises like the bright flames of burning lithium." —Babelio
"Lithium grapples with the unsayable." —Pagina 12
”Lithium is a meditation on the things that last and those that never can; on female pain and the ways it is accommodated or simply ignored. It offers no easy answers but feels truer to life for this. It is a book about the bravery that being young so often requires.” —Declan Fry, ABC
>>We need to at least attempt.
>>It is necessary to speak from the uncomfortable place of subjectivity (use your right-click menu to translate.)
>>Helen Levitt x Malén Denis.

The Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius (translated by Tom Holland) $65
The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To rule as a Caesar was to stand as an actor upon the great stage of the world. No biographies invite us into the lives of the Caesars more vividly or intimately than those by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, written from the centre of Rome and power, in the early 2nd century AD. By placing each Caesar in the context of the generations that had gone before, and connecting personality with policy, Suetonius succeeded in painting Rome's ultimate portraits of power. The shortfalls, foreign policy crises and sex scandals of the emperors are laid bare; we are shown their tastes, their foibles, their eccentricities; we sit at their tables and enter their bedrooms. The result is perhaps the most influential series of biographies ever written. That Rome lives more vividly in people's imagination than any other ancient empire owes an inordinate amount to Suetonius. Now Tom Holland brings us even closer in a new translation. Giving a deeper understanding of the personal lives of Rome's first emperors, and of how they swayed the fates of millions, The Lives of the Caesars is an astonishing, immersive experience of a time and culture at once familiar and utterly alien to our own. [Hardback]
”Tom Holland is a master populariser of the ancients. His new translation of Suetonius is a peerlessly enjoyable introduction to the earlier imperial Romans. It reminds us that the monsters who, astoundingly, achieve power in 21st-century democracies had forebears in the ancient world who matched them folly for folly, whim for whim, vanity for vanity.” —Max Hastings

Ferment: Simple ferments and pickles, and how to eat them by Kenji Morimoto $60
Pickles and ferments bring so much flavour and variety to meals and are easy to make, but they can seem daunting. Enter third-culture cook and fermenting expert Kenji Morimoto, who shows just how simple it is to introduce homemade kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, miso, super-quick pickles and more into your everyday cooking with delicious, gut-healthy results. Recent research encourages us to eat thirty plants a week to help our microbiome to thrive. Thanks to Morimoto's inventive and modern recipes, eating fermented foods becomes a pleasure as well as the healthiest choice. Whether it's Kimchi Bhajis served with Miso Coriander Chutney, One Pot Citrus Miso Salmon and Edamame Rice, Kombucha Sorbet or Pickled Rhubarb Pound Cake, this is flavour-forward food that you won't have seen before. Part one shows how to make ferments and pickles, giving you all the trouble-shooting advice and step-by-step guidance you need. Part two introduces more than 70 exciting recipes to make with them, or if you prefer you can prepare them with your favourite shop-bought varieties instead. [Hardback]
”This book is a beautifully crafted and illustrated guide to the subtle arts of preserving food that will make us all feel ready to start fermenting today.” —Tim Spector
”Kenji demystifies fermentation, so now you too can make fermenting as instinctive as reaching for salt. This book is an open-hearted collection of stories, practical tips and excellent recipes.” —Ottolenghi Test Kitchen
>>Look inside!

On the Highway of the Stories of the Gods by Martin Edmond $48
On the Highway of the Stories of the Gods recounts a series of journeys Martin Edmond and Mayu Kanamori took in Japan in 2023. They go first to Kyushu, the southernmost of the four main islands in the archipelago, then to the smaller island of Sado, in the Sea of Japan, whose goldmines underwrote the wealth of the Tokugawa shogunate. After that they journey through Tohoku, in the north of Honshu, following in the footsteps of poets Basho and Sora along the narrow roads of the heartland. Finally Edmond opens the window on their own place of residence in Kurohime. In each of these locations, landscape and the everyday blend into history, mythology, belief, and magic. We learn the stories of the gods of the Shinto pantheon and of their interplay with Christianity and Buddhism. We hear about the development of Japanese Noh theatre, about shrines and monasteries, mountains and rivers. We are told the correct social protocols of bathing in onsen, and experience the richness of Japan's wilderness. The love Edmond feels for his adopted country flows through his prose and he shows us a country that is gentle, communal, welcoming, and always surprising. [Paperback]
>>Edmond introduces the book.
>>Other books by Martin Edmond.

I Will Not Be Scared by Jean-François Sénéchal and Simone Rea $35
Our fears can consume the entirety of our lives -- unless we find ways to free ourselves of them. As a young rabbit tries to fall asleep one night, kept awake by the trauma of his family's past life in a war-torn region, he replays scenes in his head of an entirely new battle: being attacked by bullies the previous day at school. While his mother tries to encourage him to open up about the incident itself, he hesitates, instead questioning whether he possesses enough courage at all. It's only through addressing the root of his fears, a process that is never easy, that he understands how to free himself and move forward. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!

Ghost Nation: The story of Taiwan and its struggle for survival by Chris Horton $40
While it lies at the epicentre of China’s and the USA's tense relationship, Taiwan’s story and people go overlooked and misunderstood. In Ghost Nation, readers will discover why this disputed country has become so critical to the future of the world and its economy. Drawing on over a decade of living and reporting from Taiwan, leading journalist Chris Horton unravels the complexity of this thriving democracy and technological powerhouse. Exploring the ghosts of Taiwan's past, a history haunted by colonisation and political turmoil, Horton interviews influential figures and everyday citizens to provide a panoramic view of this fascinating country. As Taiwan grapples with its identity and dreams of international recognition, this riveting and empathetic account will leave readers with an appreciation for Taiwan's history and people. [Paperback]
”If you think it's an exaggeration to say that Taiwan is the fulcrum on which the world's balance of power rests, then Chris Horton's book should change your mind. Few books qualify as essential reading but Ghost Nation is one of them.” —Clive Hamilton, author of The Hidden Hand