NEW RELEASES (19.5.23)
NEW RELEASES (19.5.23)
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August Blue by Deborah Levy $40
”If she was my double and I was hers, was it true that she was knowing, I was unknowing, she was sane, I was crazy, she was wise, I was foolish? That summer, the air was electric between us as we transmitted our feelings to each other across three countries.”
Elsa M. Anderson is a classical piano virtuoso. In a flea market in Athens, she watches an enigmatic woman buy two mechanical dancing horses. Is it possible that the woman who is so enchanted with the horses is her living double? Is she also looking for reasons to live? Chasing their doubles across Europe, the two women grapple with their conceptions of the world and each other, culminating in a final encounter in a fateful summer rainstorm.
”August Blue is an enigmatic novel. It’s sparsely written, with evocative sentences, yet crisp ideas. Readers of Levy’s other novels will recognise the themes of mothers and daughters (Hot Milk), of heat as an oppressor as well as an escape (Swimming Home), and enigmatic actions (The Man Who Saw Everything), but will see a change in the telling. Levy seems to draw her memoir style (from her 'Living Autobiography' trilogy) into this novel, creating a fiction that has few boundaries” —Stella
>>Read Stella’s entire review.
>>How Deborah Levy can change your life.
Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan $23
Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick the Latch vividly captures the arc of one woman’s life at the racetrack—the flat land and ramshackle backstretch; the bad feelings and friction; the winner’s circle and the racetrack bar; the fancy suits and fancy boots; and the “particular language” of “grooms, jockeys, trainers, racing secretaries, stewards, pony people, hotwalkers, everybody”—with economy and integrity. Based on transcribed interviews with Sonia, a horse trainer, the novel investigates form and authenticity in a remarkable feat of synthesis. As Scanlan puts it, “I wanted to preserve—amplify, exaggerate—Sonia’s idiosyncratic speech, her bluntness, her flair as a storyteller. I arrived at what you could call a composite portrait of a self.” Whittled down with a fiercely singular artistry, Kick the Latch bangs out of the starting gate and carries the reader on a careening joyride around the inside track.
“Magical.” —Lydia Davis
“Scanlan’s inventive debut novel documents a woman’s hardscrabble yet jubilant life and her dedication to working with racehorses. Shaped from interview transcripts with a real-life trainer named Sonia (no last name given), Scanlan’s vignettes carry readers across the arc of Sonia’s life...but the most beautiful moments are quiet ones, in which Sonia processes the choices she and others have made, and of the consequences she faces in a field dominated by men. With this sharp and lovely tribute to a singular woman, Scanlan continues to impress.” —Publishers Weekly
>>Read Thomas’s review of The Dominant Animal.
Ink on Paper: Printmakers of the Modern era edited by Peter Vangioni $55
Revolutionised by the introduction of the linocut, early to mid twentieth-century printmaking is one of the most progressive and dynamic periods in Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history. This exquisitely illustrated book features ambitious and delightful etchings, lithographs, wood-engravings and linocuts by some of the country’s finest artists.
– Engaging introduction to the establishment of printmaking in Aotearoa by Peter Vangioni
– Short biographical texts on each artist.
– Full page colour illustrations of more than 100 artworks.
– Etchings, lithographs, wood-engravings and linocuts drawn from collections around the country.
– Beautifully designed hardcover book with dust jacket and marker ribbon.
>>Look inside!
Katherine Mansfield’s Europe: Station to station by Redmer Yska $50
Guided by Mansfield's journals and letters, Redmer Yska traces her restless journey in Europe, seeking out the places where she lived, worked and died. Along the way, he meets a cast of present-day Mansfield devotees who help shape his understanding of the impressions Mansfield left on their territories and how she is formally (and informally) commemorated in Europe. In Katherine Mansfield’s Europe, Yska takes us to the villas, pensions, hotels, spas, railway stations, churches, towns, beaches and cities where Mansfield wrote some of her finest stories. Hauntingly, these are also places where she suffered from piercing loneliness and homesickness, rooms in which she endured illness and extreme physical hardship, windows from which she gazed as she grappled with her mortality. With maps and stunning photography, this engaging and well-researched book richly illuminates Katherine Mansfield’s time in Europe and reveals her enduring presence in the places she frequented.
”Redmer Yska, once again, brings his sharp eye, his wry personal take, to the facts and legends of Katherine Mansfield. In A Strange Beautiful Excitement, he showed how we can no longer truly understand her apart from the city that was first hers, and then his own. Now, with her stories and legends in hand, he traces how in Europe she survives in places that were deeply important to her, and where still she trails devotees and alternative facts. This book is a delight — never solemn, always alert to even the faintest whispers, among buildings and memories and her swathes of slightly evangelical 'true believers.'“ —Vincent O’Sullivan
Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman $38
Melodrama, biography, cold war thriller, drug memoir, essay in fragments, mystery – Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is cult critic Ian Penman’s long awaited first original book, a kaleidoscopic study of the late West German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982). Written quickly under a self-imposed deadline in the spirit of Fassbinder himself, who would often get films made in a matter of weeks or months, Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors presents the filmmaker as a pivotal figure in the late 1970s moment between late modernism and the advent of postmodernism and the digital revolution. Compelling, beautifully written and genuinely moving, echoing the fragmentary and reflective works of writers like Barthes and Cioran, this is a story that has everything: sex, drugs, art, the city, cinema and revolution.
”Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors is not a sorrowful kill-your-heroes recanting. It’s much more interesting than that – a freewheeling, hopscotching study of the Fassbinder allure and an investigation of Penman’s younger self…It’s a book about a film-maker but also, hauntingly, about the way our tastes and passions change over time.” —Anthony Quinn, Observer
>>I don’t just want you to love me.
>>It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track.
A Mountain to the North, A Lake to The South, Paths to the West, A River to the East by László Krasznahorkai (translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet) $38
The grandson of Prince Genji lives outside of space and time and wanders the grounds of an old monastery in Kyoto. The monastery, too, is timeless, with barely a trace of any human presence. The wanderer is searching for a garden that has long captivated him. This novel by International Booker Prize winner Laszlo Krasznahorkai — perhaps his most serene and poetic work — describes a search for the unobtainable and the riches to be discovered along the way. Despite difficulties in finding the garden, the reader is closely introduced to the construction processes of the monastery as well as the geological and biological processes of the surrounding area, making this an unforgettable meditation on nature, life, history, and being.
”Krasznahorkai throws down a challenge: raise your game or get your coat ... the intensity of his commitment to the art of fiction is indisputable ... exhilarating, even euphoric.” —Hari Kunzru
”Laszlo Krasznahorkai writes prose of breathtaking energy and beauty. He has elevated the novel form and is to be ranked among the great European novelists.” —Colm Toibin
”The universality of Krasznahorkai's vision rivals that of Gogol's Dead Souls and far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing.” —W.G. Sebald
”This is a book preoccupied with infinity. Krasznahorkai’s project, it seems, is to thwart the passing of time through a program of looking. It takes millions of years of chance occurrences to make a bird in its perfect machinery and just a moment for it to be destroyed, impossible to be remade.” —Laura Preston, The Believer
>>A garden in this wretched world.
>>The infinite mistake.
>>Other books by Krasznahorkai.
Nocturnal Apparitions: Essential stories by Bruno Schulz (translated by Bill Stanley) $28
The stories in this collection are rich, tangled, and suffused with mystery and wonder. In the narrowing, winding city streets, strange figures roam. Great flocks of birds soar over rooftops, obscuring the sun. Cockroaches appear through cracks and scuttle across floorboards. Individuals careen from university buildings to dimly lit parlour rooms, through strange shops and endless storms. Crowded with moments of stunning beauty, the 15 stories in his collection showcases Schulz's darkly modern sensibility, and his essential status as one of the great transformers of the ordinary into the fantastical: August, A Visitation, Birds, Pan, Cinnamon Shops, The Street of Crocodiles, Cockroaches, The Gale, The Night of the Great Season (from Cinnamon Shops); The Book, The Age of Genius, A July Night, My Father Joins the Firefighters, Father's Final Escape (from Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass); Undula— Schulz's recently discovered first published story. Excellent new translations.
”One of the most original imaginations in modern Europe.” —Cynthia Ozick
Ducks: Two years in the oil sands by Kate Beaton $70
Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, a tight-knit seaside community. After university, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta's oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coast Canadians who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Katie will be far more than she anticipates. Arriving in Fort McMurray, Katie finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world's largest oil companies. As one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. For young Katie, her wounds may never heal. Beaton's natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.
>>Look inside!
>>How to pay off your student loans.
>>Humour and humanity in the oilfields.
>>”I need to tell you this.”
Elixir: In the valley at the end of time by Kapka Kassabova $50
In the valley of the Mesta, one of the oldest inhabited river valleys in Europe, where the surrounding forests and mountains are a nexus for wild plant gatherers, Kapka Kassabova finds a story with vast resonance for us all. Elixir is an unforgettable exploration of the deep connections between people, plants and place. Over several seasons, Kassabova spends time with the people of this magical region. She meets women and men who work in a long lineage of foragers, healers and mystics. She learns about wild plants and the ancient practice of herbalism, and experiences a symbiotic system where nature and culture have blended for thousands of years. Through her captivating encounters we come to feel the devastating weight of the ecological and cultural disinheritance that the people of this valley have suffered. Yet, in her search for elixir, she also finds reasons for hope. The people of the valley are keepers of a rare knowledge, not only of mountain plants and their properties, but also of how to transform collective suffering into healing.Immersive and enthralling, at its heart Elixir is a search for a cure to what ails us in the Anthropocene. It is an urgent call to rethink how we live - in relation to one another, to the Earth and to the cosmos.
”The mark of a good book is that it changes you. I've rarely been so aware of an internal change being wrought, word by word, as I have these past days immersed in Kapka Kassabova's alchemical prose. She had me under her spell from page one.” —Guardian
”Her ability to bring out the best in her subjects is born of a genuine horror at the unsustainability of the ways we live and the toll they are taking on places such as the Mesta valley. But Elixir is not a lecture: like the forests and fells it inhabits, it is by turns dark and mysterious and beautiful. Ecologically minded writing can often tell too much and show too little, but Kassabova sensibly lets the landscape and locals do the talking. —Financial Times
This Is Not Miami by Fernanda Melchor (translated by Sophie Hughes) $38
Set in and around the city of Veracruz in Mexico, This Is Not Miami delivers twelve devastating stories that spiral from real events. These cronicas — a genre unique to Latin American writing, blending reportage and fiction — probe the motivations of murderers and misfits, compelling us to understand or even empathise with them. Melchor is like a ventriloquist, using a range of distinctive voices to evoke the smells, sounds and words of this fascinating world that includes mistreated women, damaged families, refugees, prisoners and even a beauty queen.As in her hugely acclaimed novels Hurricane Season and Paradais, Fernanda Melchor's masterful stories show how the violent and shocking events that make the headlines are only the surface ruptures of a society on the brink of chaos."
”Fernanda Melchor has a powerful voice, and by powerful I mean unsparing, devastating, the voice of someone who writes with rage, and has the skill to pull it off.” —Samanta Schweblin
>>The house on El Estero.
The Russo-Ukranian War by Serhii Plokhy $40
On 24 February 2022, Russia stunned the world by launching an invasion of Ukraine. In the midst of checking on the family and friends who were now on the front lines of Europe's largest conflict since the outbreak of the Second World War, acclaimed Ukrainian-American historian Serhii Plokhy inevitably found himself attempting to understand the deeper causes of the invasion, analysing its course and contemplating the wider outcomes. The Russo-Ukrainian War is the comprehensive history of a conflict that has burned since 2014, and that, with Russia's attempt to seize Kyiv, exploded a geo-political order that had been cemented since the end of the Cold War. With an eye for the gripping detail on the ground, both in the halls of power and down in the trenches, as well as a keen sense of the grander sweep of history, Plokhy traces the origins and the evolution of the conflict, from the collapse of the Russian empire to the rise and fall of the USSR and on to the development in Ukraine of a democratic politics. Based on decades of research and his unique insight into the region, he argues that Ukraine's defiance of Russia, and the West's demonstration of unity and strength, has presented a profound challenge to Putin's Great Power ambition, and further polarized the world along a new axis.
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris $32
Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents — whether Muslim, Croat or Serb — push the makeshift barriers aside. Zora, an artist and teacher, is focused on her family, her students, her studio in the old town. But when violence finally spills over, she sees that she must send her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind. As the city falls under siege and everything they loved is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. Inspired by real-life accounts of the longest siege in modern warfare, only thirty years ago, Black Butterflies is a breathtaking portrait of disintegration, resilience and hope.
”In this compelling and convincing debut novel, Morris brilliantly evokes a world slipping, day by day, under the surface of the opaque waters of war. Dark and yet starkly beautiful, Black Butterflies is a narrative of how violence scars the soul of a city and its inhabitants. It is at once a testament to the victims and survivors of the Siege of Sarajevo, to the power of art and to Morris's skills as a storyteller, all the more keenly felt for the subtlety with which they are deployed.” —Aminatta Forna
>>Short-listed for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Love Me Tender by Constance Debré (translated by Holly James) $28
When Constance told her ex-husband that she was dating women, he made a string of unfounded accusations that separated her from her young son, Paul. Laurent trained Paul to say he no longer wants to see his mother, and the judge believed him. She approaches this new life with passionate intensity and the desire for an unencumbered existence, certain that no love can last. Apart from cigarettes, two regular lovers and women she has brief affairs with, Constance's approach is monastic and military — she swims daily, reads, writes, and returns to small or borrowed rooms for the night. A starkly beautiful account of impossible sacrifices, Love Me Tender is a bold novel of defiance, freedom and self-knowledge.
”'Committed to truth-telling, no matter how rough, but also intriguingly suspended in a cloud of unknowing and pain, Love Me Tender is a wry, original, agonizing book destined to become a classic of its kind.” —Maggie Nelson
”A deadpan, tensile thread of a voice: calm, Camusian, comic, stark, relentless, and totally hypnotic.” —Rachel Kushner
”In cruel, brilliant sentences that tighten around the truth like teeth, a fierce character emerges; a new kind of rebel in a queer masterpiece.” —Holly Pester
>>A conversation about the exit.
100 Things to Know about Architecture by Louise O’Brien, Dalia Adillon and Leanne Daphne $33
Learn all about the world of architecture in only 100 words! This book explores the most iconic buildings from around the world as well as the history of architecture, from basic huts to incredible skyscrapers. From columns to pyramids, each of the carefully chosen 100 words has its own 100-word long description and colourful illustration, providing a fascinating introduction to amazing architecture from throughout history. From the familiar to the jaw-dropping, the medieval to ultra-modern, this is an inspiring look at some of architecture’s greatest developments. With a clean, contemporary design, each word occupies a page of its own. A large striking illustration neatly encapsulates the accompanying 100 words of text. A fascinating introduction to cool buildings in a fun and accessible format, this is the perfect gift for aspiring architects or curious young minds!
>>Look inside!