NEW RELEASES (10.11.23)
A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:
Bird Life by Anna Smaill $38
In Ueno Park, Toyko, as workers and tourists gather for lunch, the pollen blows, a fountain erupts, pigeons scatter, and two women meet, changing the course of one another’s lives. Dinah has come to Japan from New Zealand to teach English and grieve the death of her brother, Michael, a troubled genius who was able to channel his problems into music as a classical pianist — until he wasn’t. In the seemingly empty, eerie apartment block where Dinah has been housed, she sees Michael everywhere, even as she feels his absence sharply.Yasuko is polished, precise, and keenly observant — of her students and colleagues at the language school, and of the natural world. When she was thirteen, animals began to speak to her, to tell her things she did not always want to hear. She has suppressed these powers for many years, but sometimes she allows them to resurface, to the dismay of her adult son, Jun. One day, she returns home, and Jun has gone. Even her special gifts cannot bring him back. As these two women deal with their individual traumas, they form an unlikely friendship in which each will help the other to see a different possible world, as Smaill teases out the tension between our internal and external lives and asks what we lose by having to choose between them.
”Bird Life is an astonishing book about grief, beauty and survival. The writing enters your bloodstream like a strange and wonderful drug.” —Emily Perkins
”Bird Life examines the forces that allow us to slip from one world to another, the relationship between the internal and external, and the tentative membrane that exists between genius and madness. As with Anna Smaill’s acclaimed previous novel, The Chimes, the writing is taut and evocative with subtle symbolism and a rhythmic beauty.” —Stella
Knowledge is a Blessing on Your Mind: Selected writings, 1980—2020 by Anne Salmond $65
For fifty years, Anne Salmond has navigated 'te ao hurihuri' — travelling to hui in her little blue VW Beetle with Eruera and Amiria Stirling in the 1970s, working for a university marae alongside Merimeri Penfold, Patu Hohepa and Wharetoroa Kerr in the 1980s, giving evidence to the Waitangi Tribunal on the meaning of Te Tiriti in the 2000s. From Hui to The Trial of the Cannibal Dog to today's debates about the future of Aotearoa, Anne Salmond has explored who we are to each other. This book traces Anne Salmond's journey as an anthropologist, as a writer and activist, as a Pakeha New Zealander, as a friend, wife and mother. The book brings together her key writing on the Maori world, cultural contact, Te Tiriti and the wider Pacific — much of it appearing in book form for the first time — and embeds these writings in her life and relationships, her travels and friends. This is the story of Aotearoa and the story of one woman's pathway through our changing society.
Ki Mua, Ki Muri edited by Cassandra Barnett and Kura Te Waru-Rewiri $70
Packed with superb art works, this richly illustrated publication examines the last 25 years of the influential Toioho ki Āpiti programme at Massey University, its global indigenous pedagogical reach, and its ongoing impacts on national and international contemporary art and cultural sectors. Toioho ki Āpiti 's transformative and kaupapa Maori-led programme and its pedagogical model is structured around Maori notions of Mana Whakapapa (inheritance rights), Mana Tiriti (treaty rights), Mana Whenua (land rights) and Mana Tangata (human rights) and is unique in Aotearoa. Its staff and graduates, who include Bob Jahnke, Shane Cotton, Brett Graham, Rachael Rakena, Kura Te Waru-Rewiri, Israel Birch and Ngatai Taepa, are some of the most exciting, powerful and influential figures in contemporary art in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through a series of intimate conversations, Ki Mua, Ki Muri describes the unique environment that has helped form them.
Swanfolk by Kristín Ómarsdóttir (translated from Icelandic by Vala Thorodds) $26
In the not-too-distant future, a young spy named Elísabet Eva is about to discover something that will upend her life. Elísabet likes to take long solitary walks near the lake. One day, she sees two creatures emerging from the water, half-human, half-swan. She follows them through tangles of thickets into a strange new reality. Pulled into the monomaniacal, and often violent, quest of the swanfolk, Elísabet finds her own mind increasingly untrustworthy. Soon, she is forced to reckon with the consequences of her involvement with these unusual beings, and a past life she has been trying to evade. Now in paperback.
”Magical and disturbing.” —Adam Thirlwell
The Iliad by Homer (translated from Ancient Greek by Emily Wilson) $76
"Wilson's translation runs as swift as a bloody river, teems with the clattering sounds of war, bursts with the warriors' hunger for battle." —Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian
"Wilson's Iliad is clear and brisk, its iambic pentameter a zone of enchantment.” —Ange Mlinko, London Review of Books
"Seduces with its crystalline clarity, elegance, sensuality, sometimes breathless pace and above all emotional clout." —Edith Hall, The Guardian
"A triumphant new translation of the Iliad. It's a poem you read with your heart in your throat. " —A. E. Stallings, The Spectator
"Wilson has forged a poetic style in English that captures the essence of Homeric Greek. Readable, relevant and from the heart, this is the Iliad we have all been waiting for, whether we knew it or not." —Naoise Mac Sweeny, The Washington Post
Checkerboard Hill by Jade Kake $35
When a family member dies in Australia, Ria flies from New Zealand and returns to the family and home in Australia she suddenly left decades before as a teenager. Waiting for her return are her husband and son in New Zealand. Neither family has met the other, and Ria has always kept her Maori, Australian, New Zealand identities and lives separate. But the family tensions, unfinished arguments, connections to places and meeting of former friends, lead Ria to revisit her memories and reflect on the social and cultural tensions and racism she experienced, and the decisions she made. The novel confronts the complexities of families, secrets and trauma and the way these play out across generations. It also explores the ways in which Maori cultural traditions and tikanga are transmuted and transformed across the Tasman, across time and space.
Native Shells of Aotearoa by Bruce Marshall and Kerry Walton $27
Native Insects of Aotearoa by Julia Kasper and Phil Sirvid $27
Packed with good information and appealing line drawings, these two volumes combine a retro 1950s aesthetic with the latest research.
Companion volumes: Native Plants of Aotearoa by Carlos Lehnebach and Heidi Meudt $27
Native Birds of Aotearoa by Michael Szabo $27
Days of Darkness: Taranaki, 1878—1884 by Hazel Riseborough $50
The narrative of the Parihaka community sheds light on a critical period in Aotearoa’s colonial past. As the government seized their land, Māori communities across the region engaged in non-violent resistance, with Parihaka emerging as a powerful symbol of defiance under the leadership of Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi. Rather than a history of Parihaka itself, Hazel Riseborough’s compelling account delves into the government’s systematic efforts to dismantle Māori rights and self-determination. First published in 1989, Days of Darkness is published now in a new edition which includes opening words contributed by the Parihaka community.
‘Hazel Riseborough’s account is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand critical aspects of New Zealand’s past. Riseborough has presented a study in quintessential colonialism, or the assertion of European supremacy. It is a part of New Zealand’s history which has to be recognized and not buried.” —Judith Binney
An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific essays by Damon Salesa $50
From the far-reaching indigenous civilisations that flourished in Oceania, to the colonial encounters that shaped Samoa's history, and the complex relationship between New Zealand and the Pacific, Salesa's work offers a nuanced and insightful perspective on the vast region's past, present and future. Spanning a wide range of topics, from race and inequality to Pacific studies and empire, these essays demonstrate Salesa's scholarship and his ability to bridge the gaps between academic disciplines and cultural traditions. With a deep appreciation for the complexities of Te Moana-nuia-Kiwa, and a commitment to uncovering the hidden histories that shape our understanding of the region, An Indigenous Ocean is an essential contribution to the field of Pacific studies and a fascinating read for anyone interested in the history and culture of Oceania.
Big Fat Brown Bitch by Tusiata Avia $30
Admire my big fat brown body, bitches! Admire it! The Big Fat Brown Bitch runs, sleeps, cries, laughs, splits open. She is sitting in a garage in South Auckland with her two brothers and discussing the majestic architecture of atoms. She is playing an audio book of The Power of Positive Thinking at herself. She is jumping over the lazy dog. She is lying face down in the mud and doing an apology on behalf of us all. She is receiving an election-year visit and a death threat. She is strapped to the cross. She is turning into a werewolf. The Big Fat Brown Bitch is coming for you.
Tusiata Avia, author of Wild Dogs Under My Skirt and The Savage Coloniser Book, returns with another eviscerating work. These are poems of defiance, confrontation, consolation, satire, sorrow and fury. No white people were harmed in the making of this book.
>>How not to read poetry.
In the Shadow of the Wolf Queen by Kiran Millwood Hargrave $20
In the lakes, the wolf queen sharpens her spear. In the mountains, an ancient girl opens an eye. In the forest, an orphan is summoned by the trees. Our story has begun. Ysolda has lived her life in the shadow of the wolf queen's tyrannical rule but, safe in her forest haven, she has never truly felt its threat. Until one day when a mysterious earthquake shakes the land and her older sister Hari vanishes in its wake. Accompanied by her loyal sea hawk, Nara, Ysolda embarks on a desperate rescue mission. But when she is forced to strike a bargain with the wolf queen herself, she soon finds herself embroiled in a quest for a magic more powerful — and more dangerous — than she could ever have imagined.
”The kind of fantasy adventure I have always loved: evocative and imaginative and destined to be a classic.” —Garth Nix
”The Wolf Queen herself is majestically ambiguous, sometimes magnetic and inspiring, sometimes chilling. And every adventure is better with giant sea wolves.” —Frances Hardinge
Wot Knot You Got: Mophead’s guide to life by Selina Tusitala Marsh $30
‘What do you do if nothing is right – not at home, at school, anywhere?’
‘What if people don’t like me?’
‘What if your own ideas stink?’
‘How do I hug my dad?’
One morning, Selina wakes up with a twisting, tangling, knotty problem. It takes over everyone and everything – work, kids, life, the lot. How can she get out of a knot this tight? Then she remembers: kids write to her all the time – they ask some of life’s toughest questions. Can she help them through their knots? And through helping them, can she find a way out of her own? In this self-help give-it-a-go moppy-mayhem-filled workbook-that’s-all-about-play, join Selina as she scribbles and draws and writes her way out of the darkness – and invites you to take out a pen.