NEW RELEASES (15.3.24)
Out of the carton and into your hands!
Choose from this selection of books that have just arrived at VOLUME:
It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken $35
It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over asks how much of yourself can you lose before you are lost…and then what happens? The heroine of this haunting, spare novel is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, our undead narrator notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. She has forgotten even her name, but she remembers with unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known — where she loved and was loved. She heads west and into mind-boggling adventures, carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest. A bracing writer of great nerve and verve, Anne de Marcken bends reality (and the reader’s mind) with throwaway assurance. It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over plumbs mortality and how it changes everything, except possibly love. Delivering a near-Beckettian whopping to the reader’s imagination, this is one of the sharpest and funniest novels of recent years, a tale for our dispossessed times. Joint winner of The Novel Prize.
”Astounding, inventive, and utterly original, Anne de Marcken has written a freakish classic with wisdom to spare about life, death, and the eerily vast space between. I was absolute putty in this book’s hands.” — Alexandra Kleeman
”Anne de Marcken must write in a charmed ink that first erases the line between the living and the dead, and then — with prose as elegant as it is spooked — tells the story of what lies underneath. I have never read anything like this brilliant debut.” —Sabrina Orah Mark
The Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener (translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches) $37
A provocative autobiographical novel that reckons with the legacy of colonialism through one woman's family ties to both colonised and coloniser. Alone in an ethnographic museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener is confronted with her unusual inheritance. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artefacts, the spoils of European colonial plunder, many of them from her home country of Peru. Peering through the glass, she sees sculptures of Indigenous faces that resemble her own - but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener. In the wake of her father's death, Gabriela begins delving into all she has inherited from her paternal line. From the brutal trail of racism and theft Charles was responsible for, to revelations of her father's infidelity, she traces a legacy of abandonment, jealousy and colonial violence, and questions its impact on her own struggles with desire, love and race in a polyamorous relationship. Blending personal, historical and fictional modes, Undiscovered tells of a search for identity beyond the old stories of patriarchs and plunder. Incisive and fiercely irreverent, it builds to a powerful call for decolonisation.
”Wiener has rescued an intimate story from the family archive, a story that is also the infamous history of our continent, with her trademark intelligence and irreverent humor. Her prose, sober and forward, is fresh air; her view allows us to be testimonies of Latin America's cycles of plundering and looting.” —Valeria Luiselli
”Reading Undiscovered, I wondered what so captivated me about this novel. Was it Gabriela's innate ability to plunder all sorts of convention? Her persistent exploration of our deepest despairs-the weight and falsehoods of the stories and imperatives we inherit? All this, but Undiscovered is also spurred on by a yet more profound and radical strength: the spirit of fury. Powerful and searing, this novel snaps, bucks, heals, and snaps again.” —Samanta Schweblin
”Undiscovered's beautiful blend of fiction and personal feeling on everything from sex, to death, to Peru's traumatic history to France's heritage-colonial industry could not be more contemporary, vital and important, or expressed in more dynamic and immersive prose.” —Preti Taneja
Tell by Jonathan Buckley $38
“I can talk for as long as you like, no problem. You'll just have to tell me when to stop. How far back do you want to take it?” Tell is a probing, exuberant and complex examination of the ways in which we make stories of our lives and of other people's. Structured as a series of interview transcripts with a woman who worked as a gardener for a wealthy businessman and art collector who has disappeared, and may or may not have committed suicide, it is a novel of strange, intoxicating immediacy, and the co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize.
”Always well crafted, this novel is engaging in parts and digressive in others, which adds to its realism, capturing how people chatter their way down alleys, rarely hewing to the main road of a tale…. The buildup in Tell is perpetual, a sense that an explanation must be coming. But the author diverges from expectations and converges on reality, where remembering is not the same as understanding. Abruptly, someone may just disappear, and all that remains is the sight of a figure wandering across a bridge — no splash heard, just the fading ripples of ‘why’.” — Tom Rachman, New York Times
”Buckley's fiction is subtle and fastidiously low-key...every apparently loose thread, when tugged, reveals itself to be woven into the themes [and] gets better the more you allow it to settle in your mind.” —Michel Faber, The Guardian
”Exactly why Buckley is not already revered and renowned as a novelist in the great European tradition remains a mystery that will perhaps only be addressed at that final godly hour when all the overlooked authors working in odd and antique modes will receive their just rewards.” —Ian Sansom, Times Literary Supplement
The Unsettled: Small stories of colonisation by Richard Shaw $40
After Richard Shaw published his acclaimed memoir The Forgotten Coast in 2021, he made contact with Pakeha with long settler histories who were coming to grips with the truth of their respective families' 'pioneer stories'. They were questioning the foundation of aggressive acts of colonisation and land confiscation on which those stories had been constructed. The Unsettled weaves those stories with Shaw's own and features New Zealanders who are trying to figure out how to live well with their own pasts, their presents and their possible futures. They may be unsettled, but they are doing something about it. It is an indispensable companion for the journey towards understanding the complex and difficult history of the New Zealand Wars and their ongoing aftermath.
'“Heartfelt, poetic; a pleasure to read." —RachelBuchanan, The Spinoff
"A fresh and exciting approach to the history of Aotearoa.” —Paul Diamond
Kin: Family in the 21st century by Kim Kamenev $43
The shape of family has changed in the 21st century. While the nuclear family still exists, many more types of kinship surround us.Kin is an investigation into what influences us to have children and the new ways that have made parenthood possible. It delves into the experiences of couples without children, single parents by choice and rainbow families, and investigates the impacts of adoption, sperm donation, IVF and surrogacy, and the potential for a future of designer babies. Assisted reproductive technology has developed quickly, and the ways in which we think and speak about its implications — both legally and ethically — need to catch up.
The Beautiful Afternoon by Airini Beautrais $38
In The Beautiful Afternoon, award-winning poet and short-story writer Airini Beautrais plumbs history, literature, Star Wars, sea hags, beauty products, tarot, swimwear, environmentalism and pole dancing to deliver a virtuoso inquiry into how we become, and change, who we are. Beautrais surveys the many influences on her life, from Lord Byron and Dante to Dolly magazine and 90s R&B, with intense curiosity and a fierce intelligence. Whether saving the planet in her Quaker childhood and activist youth, surviving the lonely years of early motherhood, or confronting the fears and freedoms of midlife , Beautrais’s lucid examination of experience reveals that the personal is inescapably political. Throughout these wide-ranging essays her vigilant critique of entrenched patriarchal control turns anger to resistance, as a woman finds a way out of its grip, back to herself and the world.
Te Ata o Tū: The Shadow of Tumatauenga edited by Matiu Baker, Katie Cooper, Michael Fitzgerald and Rebecca Rice $70
The wars of 1845–72 were described by James Belich as “bitter and bloody struggles, as important to New Zealand as were the Civil Wars to England and the United States”. The conflict’s themes of land and sovereignty continue to resonate today. This richly illustrated book, developed in partnership with iwi, delves into Te Papa’s Mātauranga Māori, History and Art collections to explore taonga and artefacts intimately connected with the key events and players associated with the New Zealand Wars, sparking conversation and debate and shedding new light on our troubled colonial past. Contributing essays from Basil Keane, Arini Loader, Danny Keenan, Jade Kake, Mike Ross, Paul Meredith, Monty Soutar, Puawai Cairns, and Ria Hall.
Ngātokimatawhaorua: The biography of a waka by Jeff Evans $50
Ngātokimatawhaorua, the longest waka taua to be built in modern times, is a national taonga and resides at the Treaty Grounds at Waitangi. The inspiration for its construction came from Te Puea Harangi's dream to build seven waka for the 1940 centennial commemorations of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. But it was to be many decades before the true power of this mighty waka taua was realised. The story of Ngātokimatawhaorua, and those who carved and crewed it, is a fascinating window into te ao Maori and the revival of carving and voyaging traditions in Aotearoa.
When I Open the Shop by romesh dissanayake $35
In his small noodle shop in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, a young chef obsessively juliennes carrots. Nothing is going according to plan: the bills are piling up, his mother is dead, and there are strangers in his kitchen. The ancestors are watching closely. Told through a series of brilliant interludes and jump cuts, When I open the shop is sometimes blackly funny, sometimes angry and sometimes lyrical, and sometimes — as a car soars off the road on a horror road trip to the Wairarapa — it takes flight into surrealism. A glimpse into immigrant life in Aotearoa, this is a highly entertaining, surprising and poignant debut novel about grief, struggle and community.
”It’s an exhilarating read, the general vibe of the novel akin to chancing on a frozen lake and deciding then and there to get your skates on. But there’s unpredictability in the firmness of the ice and fascinating things lurk underneath; those figure-eight loops demand rigorous attention to craft.” —Angelique Kasmara
”When I open the shop is a novel about loss, exile and dislocation, in which time, space, and memory become a beautiful, fluid thing. It is very funny, angry and constantly pleasurable and moving in the way it depicts people opening space for themselves, and finding comfort, in spite of everything.” —Brannavan Gnanalingam
”This is a beautiful and compelling work. The language is magnificent on a sentence-by-sentence level, but I think that the structure is an incredibly adept act of decolonisation.” —Pip Adam
A Memoir of My Former Self: A life in writing by Hilary Mantel $40
'I breathed in stories, as soon as I breathed in air. Sometimes I think I wasn't born, but I just came out of an ink blot.' As well as her celebrated career as a novelist, Hilary Mantel long contributed to newspapers and journals, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. This strand of her writing was an integral part of how she thought of herself. 'Ink is a generative fluid,' she explains. 'If you don't mean your words to breed consequences, don't write at all.' A Memoir of My Former Self collects the finest of this writing over four decades. Mantel's subjects are wide-ranging. She discusses nationalism and her own sense of belonging; our dream life flopping into our conscious life; the mythic legacy of Princess Diana; the many themes that feed into her novels - revolutionary France, psychics, Tudor England - and other novelists, from Jane Austen to V. S. Naipaul. She writes about her father and the man who replaced him; she writes fiercely and heartbreakingly about the battles with her health she endured as a young woman, and the stifling years she found herself living in Saudi Arabia. Here, too, is a selection of her film reviews - from When Harry Met Sally to RoboCop - and, published for the first time, her Reith Lectures, which explore the process of art bringing history and the dead back to life. From her unique childhood to her all-consuming fascination with Thomas Cromwell that grew into the ‘Wolf Hall Trilogy’, A Memoir of My Former Self reveals the shape of Hilary Mantel's life in her own dazzling words, 'messages from people I used to be.'
”A smart, deft, meticulous, thoughtful writer, with such a grasp of the dark and spidery corners of human nature.” —Margaret Atwood
The End of Eden: Wild nature in the age of climate breakdown by Adam Welz $47
The stories we usually tell ourselves about climate change tend to focus on the damage inflicted on human societies by big storms, severe droughts, and rising sea levels. But the most powerful impacts are being and will be felt by the natural world and its myriad species, which are already in the midst of the sixth great extinction. Rising temperatures are fracturing ecosystems that took millions of years to evolve, disrupting the life forms they sustain — and in many cases driving them towards extinction. The natural Eden that humanity inherited is quickly slipping away. Although we can never really know what a creature thinks or feels, The End of Eden invites the reader to meet wild species on their own terms in a range of ecosystems that span the globe. Combining classic natural history, firsthand reportage, and insights from cutting-edge research, Adam Welz brings us close to creatures like moose in northern Maine, parrots in Puerto Rico, cheetahs in Namibia, and rare fish in Australia as they struggle to survive. The stories are intimate yet expansive and always dramatic. An exquisitely written and deeply researched exploration of wild species reacting to climate breakdown, The End of Eden offers a radical new kind of environmental journalism that connects humans to nature in a more empathetic way than ever before and galvanises us to act in defence of the natural world before it's too late.
Our Philosopher by Gert Hofmann (translated from German by Eric Mace-Tessler) $40
“O, it has happened little by little, as many things simply happen little by little, Mother said, and told us everything about Herr Veilchenfeld, as far as it was known to her.” Germany, late 1930s. Walking into town on a hot summer evening, the elderly professor Herr Veilchenfeld encounters a group of local drunks. He is humiliated and assaulted; his hair is shorn. The police ‘don’t interfere in such minor matters’. What happens to Veilchenfeld is recounted by the young son of the doctor who attends the professor. The boy observes, listens in to his parents’ conversations, and asks for ice creams. He cannot know the true import of the events he witnesses. First published in Germany 1986 and now translated into English as Veilchenfeld / Our Philosopher, this mmorable book is a salutary masterpiece about the destructive effects of persecution not only for the victims, but for the community as a whole.
”One of the best holocaust novels in postwar German literature.” —Milena Ganeva
”The past in Gert Hofmann’s books is not dead. Indeed, it is not even past.” —Lutz Hagestad
Sweet France: The 100 best recipes from the greatest French pastry chefs by François Blanc $65
France has a rich history of sweet traditions and talented pâtissiers, and with Sweet France, discover 100 recipes for irresistible cakes and pastries. The very clearly laid-out book includes the essentials, classics revisited, pastries, signature cakes, cookies, and other bite-size treats. Indulge yourself with canelés de Bordeaux, gâteau Basque, traditional fraisier cake, chocolate éclairs, and the legendary Saint-Honoré. Inside, you’ll find recipes for every level of proficiency to try at home, including the favorite creations of Cédric Grolet, Yann Couvreur, Pierre Hermé, Philippe Conticini, and a host of other big names and up-and-coming talents in contemporary French pâtisserie.
Mole Is Not Alone by Maya Tatsukawa $38
Mole is invited to a party, which is very worrisome. What if the party is too rowdy for Mole? What if Mole doesn't know anyone there? What if Mole is just too shy to make friends? Mole worries through the tunnels, around Snake's burrow, under the forest, past Bear's den, and all the way to Rabbit's door. But despite all those worries, maybe Mole can find a quiet way to make friends . . .