NEW RELEASES (14.8.25)

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Mr. Distinctive by Olga Tokarczuk (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones), illustrated by Joanna Concejo $50
A gorgeously illustrated picture book for adults — with two double-gatefold openings inside. Mr. Distinctive has a memorable, attractive face. He only has to walk down the street, and everyone turns to smile at him. Once he starred in a TV commercial and was praised and congratulated for having a face that sold the product well. Mr. Distinctive is very pleased with himself and loves to take selfies with his cellphone. He posts countless images of himself that are shared all over the internet. One day Mr. Distinctive looks in the mirror and sees that his features have begun to fade, his face has changed into a blur. With every new photo he posts, his distinctiveness dwindles. Determined to regain his flawlessly beautiful face and the adoration it brought him, Mr. Distinctive seeks out an extreme solution. But are the lengths he goes in order to restore his sense of being unique and exceptional worth it? In their new story, Nobel prize in literature winner Olga Tokarczuk and esteemed illustrator Joanna Concejo show us a world of obsession with personal appearance and self-promotion, where ‘happiness’ is an imperative, and the cult of youth rules. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!

Flower by Ed Atkins $30
”I like eating cold, clammy wraps from big pharmacies that are open late and sell just a few foods like protein bars and powders.” Flower is a book of realistic admissions, likes, dislikes, memories and no-brainer observations, treating personal truth as unavailable — something that must be made up and convincing. Taking cues from confessional literature, his daughter's improvised games, poor internet writing, and shitty A.I., Ed Atkins equivocates between inanity and divinity, ease and pain, sentimentality and sterility. An anti-memoir, a list, a listless blur — Flower is a highly original, moving and absurd book by one of the most influential artists of his generation, formally inventive and disturbingly of our time. [Paperback with French flaps]
”I feel like a permanent conduit has been built between my brain and this book. Atkins is relentless, beautiful, hideously and angelically honest. Sometimes it brought me to tears and I’m not even sure why. It’s the stuff most of us leave out, or wouldn’t even know how to articulate. By which I mean this book has made so much other writing feel like propaganda. It’s heroic. I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from it.” —Luke Kennard
”Every sentence in this delightfully bizarre techno-memoir could stand alone on a page and command allure. Like splicing the miniature divulgences of Édouard Levé with the ominous bombast of Jenny Holzer, Flower makes automatic non-fiction feel like sci-fi, and it’s instantly unforgettable.” —Blake Butler
”Flower is propulsive and it doesn’t let up. It’s about vulnerability, sort of, and invincibility: it swings between these poles. It’s about mortality, too, and in that sense humanity. To speak the book back at itself, I confess it did get to me.” —Isabel Waidner
”Ed Atkins is a radical humanist who rediscovers the human in the most inhuman of states, when the usual supports – ego, language, people, technology, media, food – all fail. In Flower Atkins turns that abjection towards us, in a spleeny anti-autofiction that is his own version of Les Fleurs du Mal.” —Hal Foster

in the cracks of light by Apirana Taylor $28
The seventy-three short poems here challenge our conceptions of poetic form. They are minimalist in construction but ambitious in emotional impact. They burst out of their small spaces like gas expanding in a cylinder and pushing a piston. They expertly inhabit both the natural and the political worlds, sometimes simultaneously, because Taylor is wise enough to know that they can't be separated, especially in a colonised land. [Paperback]
”in the cracks of light presents heart-centred poems that are deeply rooted in te taiao. Reading this book will give you the strength both to fight your battles and observe the world around you with fresh insight. These short verses are profound soul nourishment.” —Kiri Piahana-Wong
”Another book by Apirana Taylor, whether poetry or prose, is always good news. He is an originator and accomplished practitioner of what might now usefully be termed a Māori poetics in English, deeply sourced in whaikōrero. It’s no surprise, then, that the poems comprising in the cracks of light nimbly explore and exploit the border line between spoken and written text.” —Tony Beyer
>>Read Tony Beyer’s full review.

Proto: How one ancient language went global by Laura Spinney $40
As the planet emerged from the last ice age, a language was born between Europe and Asia. This ancient tongue, which we call Proto-Indo-European, soon exploded out of its cradle, changing and fragmenting as it went, until its offspring were spoken from Scotland to China. Today those descendants constitute the world’s largest language family, the thread that connects disparate cultures: Dante’s Inferno to the Rig Veda, The Lord of the Rings to the love poetry of Rumi. Indo-European languages are spoken by nearly half of humanity. How did this happen? Laura Spinney set out to answer that question, retracing the Indo-European odyssey across continents and millennia. With her we travel the length of the steppe, navigating the Caucasus, the silk roads and the Hindu Kush. We follow in the footsteps of nomads and monks, Amazon warriors and lion kings — the ancient peoples who spread these languages far and wide. In the present, Spinney meets the scientists on a thrilling mission to retrieve those lost languages: the linguists, archaeologists and geneticists who have reconstructed this ancient diaspora. From the author of Pale Rider. [Paperback]
”Thought-provoking. A lively and fascinating account of how these languages split from their root, developed in different ways, mingled with each other, crossed tracks, flourished and died. I loved it!” —David Bellos
>>Cultural exchange builds a language.

The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club: Surviving Iran’s most notorious prisons in 16 recipes by Sepideh Gholian $27
How do you cheer up a woman who has spent hours cleaning prison toilets with a broken mop? The secret is in a tres leches cake. In Iran’s prisons, women endure horrors — they are beaten, interrogated, and humiliated in a thousand ways. Even a whisper to a fellow inmate can be punished. Yet — in spite of anything and everything — they resist: they bake, they console each other, cry together, dance together. Sepideh Gholian, in prison since 2018, bakes scones for Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe’s daughter'; a pumpkin pie for Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi; and madeleines for Marzieh Amiri, serving time for a May Day demonstration in 2019. [Paperback]
”Sepideh Gholian's account of life on the women's wards in Bushehr and Evin prisons is a blindsiding blend of horrifying concrete detail, dizzying surrealism and wild optimism.” —Guardian
”My heart broke while reading this book, but it also gave me hope. I read this book filled with outrage against the system that has put Sepideh Gholian and so many like her in jail, torturing them, killing them. But I was filled with hope, amazed by and thankful for those like her, telling the story. They are our beloved guardians of truth.” —Azar Nafisi
>>Like no other recipe book you’ve ever read.

Days of Light by Megan Hunter $50
Easter Sunday, 1938. Ivy is nineteen and ready for her life to finally begin. Her sprawling, bohemian family and their friends gather in the idyllic English countryside for lunch, arranging themselves around well-worn roles. They trade political views and artistic arguments as they impatiently await the arrival and first sight of Frances, the new beau of Ivy's beloved older brother, Joseph. In this auspicious atmosphere of springtime, Ivy's world feels on the cusp of something grand-but neither she nor those closest to her predicts how a single, enchanted evening and an unexpected tragedy will alter the rest of their lives. A philosophical and intimate journey through time, Days of Light chronicles six pivotal days across six decades to tell the story of Ivy's pursuit of answers — to the events of this fateful Easter Sunday and to the shifting desires of her own heart. [Hardback]
”Think One Day written by (and starring) Virginia Woolf… This is a lyrical and captivating book, dropping decade by decade into a single day in the life of the brilliant, headstrong Ivy.” —The Observer
”Days of Light is sublime. Wielding tremendous emotional power, it is a novel that is both raw and reverent, attuned to the intricacies of loss, desire, hope and how to be in the world.” —Hannah Kent
”Megan Hunter writes with such delicacy about how a single moment can shape and echo through a life. Her sentences are sensory events, open to every texture and shadow. A beautiful book.” —Sophie Elmhirst
”What Megan Hunter does in time and space within the confines of this book is amazing. Days of Light has that quality that all Megan's books have, restrained but with so much momentum, an exacting turn of phrase and the ability to make the hair on your arms stand up through beauty and also something much darker.” —Evie Wyld
”It channels Woolf and Mansfield and yet feels completely fresh.” —Mark Haddon

Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, policewomen and girlbosses against liberation by Sophie Lewis $45
Enemy feminisms exist. Feminism is not an inherent political good. We know that leaning in won't make our jobs any more tolerable and that white women have proven to be, at best, unreliable allies. But in a time of rising fascism, ceaseless attacks on reproductive justice, and violent transphobia, we need to reckon with what Western feminism has wrought if we have any hope of building the feminist world we need.Sophie Lewis offers an unflinching tour of enemy feminisms, from 19th century imperial feminists and police officers to 20th century KKK feminists and pornophobes to today's anti-abortion and TERF feminists. Only when we acknowledge that can we finally reckon with the ways these feminisms have pushed us toward counterproductive and even violent ends. And only then can we finally engage in feminist strategising that is truly antifascist. At once a left transfeminist battlecry against cisness, a decolonial takedown of nationalist womanhoods, and a sex-radical retort to femmephobia in all its guises, Enemy Feminisms is above all a fierce, brilliant love letter to feminism. [Paperback]
"A field guide to reactionary archetypes from fascists to TERFs, Enemy Feminisms surfaces a hidden vein of feminist conservatism. A welcome alternative to political history as an accumulation of social media screenshots." —Malcolm Harris
"Where would we be without Sophie Lewis? In a more impoverished political world. This book is mandatory reading for anyone interested in a rough and compelling vision of the feminist past, present, and future. Honest, brutal, historically comprehensive, and brilliant." —Judith Butler
"Enemy Feminisms is a compelling, provocative, ferocious book that shreds one received wisdom after another in a poised balance of incisive argument and elegant writing. Sophie Lewis has become an indispensable thinker for our era." —Torrey Peters

Mouthing by Orla Mackey $26
Ballyrowan is a sleepy corner of rural Ireland where nothing ever happens. Where everyone knows everyone else's business, and everyone has an opinion on it. Where family feuds simmer and intensify across the generations. Where young and old delight in dragging each other down like crabs in a barrel. Following the fortunes of this small community from the mid-20th century to the early 21st, Mouthing is a bittersweet love letter to the pleasures (and frustrations) of village life. [Paperback]
”Engrossing, acerbic and brilliant. Everyone here has a tale to tell. There is a pub and there is a priest. There are secrets and lies. It is by turns funny, horrifying, and all too real. Mackey's structure requires the reader to constantly reassess their opinions of the characters. It is a fascinating magic trick, shimmering with fractal richness: again and again we meet a character, form an opinion, and almost immediately have that wittily torpedoed.” —The Irish Times

The Big Myth: How American business taught us to loathe government and love the free market by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway $49
The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a startling history of one of America's most tenacious and destructive false ideas: the myth of the ‘free market’. In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with ‘big government’ and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labour. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman into household names; recount the libertarian roots of the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ books; and tune into the General Electric-sponsored TV show that beamed free-market doctrine to millions and launched Ronald Reagan's political career. By the 1970s, this propaganda was succeeding. Free market ideology would define the next half-century across Republican and Democratic administrations, resulting in a housing crisis, the opioid scourge, climate destruction, and the baleful US response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Only by understanding this history can we imagine a future where markets will serve, not stifle, democracy. This book is particularly pertinent to New Zealand politics right now. [Paperback]
”Literature on neoliberalism tends to focus either on the intellectual genealogy of neoliberal thought or on the political history of neoliberal policies. The Big Myth adds a third dimension to the story. An immense scholarly feat.” —The New Yorker
”The important and frequently infuriating history of how it is that Americans came to equate the broad concept of freedom with an almost religious belief in the free market.” —The Washington Post
”A persuasive examination of how corporate advocates, libertarian academics, and right-wing culture warriors have collaborated to try to convince the American people that economic and political freedom are indivisible, and that regulation leads inexorably to tyranny. Polemical yet scrupulously researched, this wake-up call rings loud and clear.” —Publishers Weekly

If I Must Die: Poetry and prose by Refaat Alareer $45
"If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale." This compilation of work from the Palestinian poet and professor, Refaat Alareer, brings together his poetry and writing about literature, teaching, politics, and family. Refaat Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City alongside his brother, sister, and nephews in December 2023. He was just forty-four years old, but had already established a worldwide reputation that was further enhanced when, in the wake of his death, the poem that gives this book its title became a global sensation. ‘If I Must Die’ is included here, alongside Refaat's other poetry. Refaat wrote extensively about a range of topics: teaching Shakespeare and the way Shylock could be appreciated by young Palestinian students; the horrors of living under repeated brutal assaults in Gaza, one of which, in 2014, killed another of his brothers; and the generosity of Palestinians to each other, fighting to be the one paying at the supermarket checkout. Such pieces, some never before published, have been curated here by Refaat's friend and collaborator Yousef M. Aljamal. [Hardback]
"Compelling. A glimpse into a restless political and literary mind, one that was still rising to the height of its powers." —The Guardian

Mexican Table: 100 recipes, 12 ingredients from the heart of Mexico by Thomasina Miers $65
Mexican cooking centres around 12 staple ingredients: Citrus / Nuts / Tomatoes / Chillies / Beans / Courgettes / Sesame / Herbs / Onions / Eggs / Cinnamon / Chocolate. Chef Thomasina Miers brings vibrant, smart ways to use these ingredients to bring maximum flavour with minimum effort. Taste bold flavours everyday like guajillo prawn burritos with lime slaw, cauliflower and orange salad with turmeric and almond honey dressing, whole roast chicken with Yucatecan almond & garlic mole, waste-less houmous with toasted chillies, sticky dulce de leche & tahini buns, garlic fried courgette tagliatelle, smoky kimchi quesadilla with herb salad, and coconut & tequila sorbet. [Hardback]
>>Look inside.

Salutation Road by Salma Ibrahim $38
23-year-old Sirad Ali is a woman adrift. Abandoned by her father in childhood, she does her best to support her mother and younger brother in their small flat in South London. But she can’t help but wonder if this is the life she really wants. Until one morning, when she boards the bus to work in Greenwich, she finds herself transported to an alternate reality in present-day Mogadishu. There she encounters her double, Ubah — the woman she could have been had her parents never fled to London during the Somali Civil War. And what follows will change both of their lives for ever. [Paperback]
”A bold, intriguing act of imagination. Salutation Road confronts important questions about parallel existences splintered by immigration, the price of survival, and the ways migration and distance reshape blood ties and family.” —Aube Rey Lescure
>>Exploring who we are.