NEW RELEASES (21.7.23)
New books — just out of the carton! Click through for your copies now.
Art Monsters: Unruly bodies in feminist art by Laren Elkin $65
For decades, feminist artists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth about their experiences as bodies. Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies, female bodies, what is their language, what are the materials we need to transcribe it? Exploring the ways in which feminist artists have taken up this challenge, Art Monsters is a landmark intervention in how we think about art and the body, calling attention to a radical heritage of feminist work that not only reacts against patriarchy but redefines its own aesthetic aims. Elkin demonstrates her power as a cultural critic, weaving links between disparate artists and writers — from Julia Margaret Cameron's photography to Kara Walker's silhouettes, Vanessa Bell's portraits to Eva Hesse's rope sculptures, Carolee Schneemann's body art to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's trilingual masterpiece DICTEE — and shows that their work offers a potent celebration of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political.
”Destined to become a new classic.” —Chris Kraus
”Juxtaposes ideas, images, language, in a vivid collage that invites us to look more deeply.” —Jeanette Winterson
”Soaring and vivid. It left me giddy with possibility.” —Doireann Ni Ghriofa
”A fascinating re-visioning and re-imagining of women artists who have used their bodies in all sorts of creative, subversive ways.” —Juliet Jacques
”You won't find anything like this history, told in this way, anywhere else.” —Lubaina Himid
>>Delving into the history.
Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo (translated from Italian by Leah Janeczko) $35
Vero has grown up in Rome with her eccentric family: an omnipresent mother who is devoted to her own anxiety, a father ruled by hygienic and architectural obsessions, and a precocious genius brother at the centre of their attention. As she becomes an adult, Vero's need to strike out on her own leads her into bizarre and comical situations: she tries (and fails) to run away to Paris at the age of fifteen; she moves into an unwitting older boyfriend's house after they have been together for less than a week; and she sets up a fraudulent (and wildly successful) street clothing stall to raise funds to go to Mexico. Most of all, she falls in love — repeatedly, dramatically, and often with the most unlikely and inappropriate of candidates. As she continues to plot escapades and her mother's relentless tracking methods and guilt-tripping mastery thwart her at every turn, it is no wonder that Vero becomes a writer — and a liar — inventing stories in a bid for her own sanity. Narrated in a voice as wryly ironic as it is warm and affectionate, Lost on Me seductively explores the slippery relationship between deceitfulness and creativity (beginning with Vero's first artistic achievement: a painting she steals from a school classmate and successfully claims as her own).
”I fell head over heels in love with Lost on Me. What a thrillingly original voice! Raimo writes with a tender brutality that is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking.” —Monica Ali
”Many of the pages are jellyfish stings: they burn on and on.” —Claudia Durastanti
”Lost on Me is the naughty grandson of Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon. Raimo has tapped the novelistic potential of her affections and has transformed them into comedy.” —Il Corriere della Sera
>>Read an extract.
Look! Said the Little Girl by Tania Norfolk, illustrated by Aleksandra Szmidt $22
A man and a little girl share their unique way of seeing and hearing the world around them. "Look," said the little girl, "a ladybird!" "A ladybird!" said the old man. "What does she look like?" "Like a tiny turtle in fancy dress — a red polka-dot coat that's hiding a secret." "Wings?" whispered the old man. "Yes, wings," whispered the little girl. "That is a very good secret." As they walk, a young girl describes the things she sees to an elderly, visually impaired man, who turns the tables when he describes to the child what it is that he hears. A delightful book (reminiscent of Mr Rabbit and the Lovely Present) from a Nelson author.
>>Meet the author!
I Will Write to Avenge My People by Annie Ernaux (translated from French by Alison L. Strayer) $26
'I will write to avenge my people.' It was as a young woman that Annie Ernaux first wrote these words in her diary, giving a name to her purpose in life as a writer. She returns to them in her stirring defence of literature and of political writing in her Nobel Lecture, delivered in Stockholm on 7 December 2022. To write of her own life, she asserts, is to 'shatter the loneliness of experiences endured and repressed'; to mine individual experience is to find collective emancipation. Ernaux's speech is a bold assertion of the capacity of writing to give people a sense of their own worth, and of one writer's commitment to bearing witness to life, its joys and its injustices.
>>Books by Annie Ernaux.
>>Ernaux delivers the Nobel lecture.
Ringakōreko / Dazzlehands by Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan; te reo Māori version by Kawata Teepa $22
The pig won’t say, “Oink”.
”A book bursting with riotous colour and energy. From the authors of the award-winning The Bomb, another excellent and highly enjoyable story about diversity and individuality. Playful language and the best pig ever.” —Stella
A Cage in Search of a Bird by Florence Noiville (translated from French by Teresa Lavender Fagan) $30
— Laura Wilmote is a television journalist living in Paris. Her life couldn't be better-a stimulating job, a loving boyfriend, interesting friends — until her phone rings in the middle of one night. It is C., an old school friend whom Laura recently helped find a job at the same television station: "My phone rang. I knew right away it was you." Thus begins the story of C.'s unrelenting, obsessive, incurable love/hatred of Laura. She is convinced that Laura shares her love, but cannot — or will not — admit it. C. begins to dress as Laura, to make her friends and family her own, and even succeeds in working alongside Laura on the unique program that is Laura's signature achievement. The obsession escalates, yet is artfully hidden. It is Laura who is perceived as the aggressor at work, Laura who appears unwell, Laura who is losing it. Even Laura's adoring boyfriend begins to question her. Laura seeks the counsel of a psychiatrist who diagnoses C. with De Clérambault syndrome — she is convinced that Laura is in love with her. And worse, the syndrome can only end in one of two ways: the death of the patient, or that of the object of the obsession. A Cage in Search of a Bird is the gripping story of two women caught in the vice of a terrible delusion. Florence Noiville brilliantly narrates this story of obsession and one woman's attempts to escape the irrational love of another — an inescapable, never-ending love, a love that can only end badly.
”Look into the mirror, you might not recognise what you see. Watch someone else gaze into the exact same mirror, you might just see yourself. Noiville tackles issues of identity and belonging like few other novelists. A Cage in Search of a Bird is smart, suspenseful, and powerful.” —Colum McCann
You, Bleeding Childhood by Michele Mari (translated from Italian by Brian Robert Moore) $38
Raised on comic books and science fiction, the young Mari constructed an alternate universe for himself untouched by uncomprehending grownups or sadistic peers. Compared to the horrors of real life, Long John Silver and Cthulhu made for positively cuddly company; but little boys raised by beasts may well grow up beastly — or never grow up at all. Waking or sleeping, the obsessions of Mari's youth seem to colour his every adult thought. You, Bleeding Childhood stands as his first attempt to catalog this cabinet of wonders. Cult classics since their first publication in Italy but appearing in English for the first time, these loosely connected stories stand as the ideal introduction to an encyclopedic fantasist often compared with Kafka, Poe, and Borges.
”Emotion, anger, nostalgia: but also affectionate humour, indulgent sympathy in a work that masterfully combines elegance and irony, psychological acumen and an understanding of form, eclectic culture and emotional vulnerability. The work of a child who developed an unstoppable passion for adventure books, for comics, who cultivated a fetishistic relationship with thought, with the imagination; but also with a stubborn self, wounded by the intensity of his perceptions.” —Alida Airaghi
The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole $50
In 2020, writer and campaigner Guy Shrubsole moved from London to Devon. As he explored the wooded valleys, rivers and tors of Dartmoor, he discovered a spectacular habitat that he had never encountered before: temperate rainforest. Entranced, he would spend the coming months investigating the history, ecology and distribution of rainforests across England, Wales and Scotland. Britain, Shrubsole discovered, was once a rainforest nation. This is the story of a unique habitat that has been so ravaged, most people today don't realise it exists. Temperate rainforest may once have covered up to one-fifth of Britain and played host to a dazzling variety of luminous life-forms, inspiring Celtic druids, Welsh wizards, Romantic poets, and Arthur Conan Doyle's most loved creations. Though only fragments now remain, they form a rare and internationally important habitat, home to lush ferns and beardy lichens, pine martens and pied flycatchers. But why are even environmentalists unaware of their existence? And why have they been so comprehensively excise them from cultural memory?
”A magnificent and crucial book that opens our eyes to untold wonders.” —George Monbiot
Cousins by Aurora Venturini (translated by Kit Maude) $33
Widely regarded as Venturini's masterpiece, Cousins is the story of four women from an impoverished, dysfunctional family in La Plata, Argentina, who are forced to suffer a series of ordeals including disfigurement, illegal abortions, miscarriages, sexual abuse and murder, narrated by a daughter whose success as a painter offers her a chance to achieve economic independence and help her family as best she can. Neighborhood mythologies, family, female sexuality, vengeance, and social mobility through art are explored and scrutinized in the unmistakable voice of an unforgettable protagonist, Yuna, who stares wildly at the world in which she is compelled to live; a voice unique in its candidness, sharp edge and breathtaking power.
>>Cruelty and survival.
Ways of Being: Animals, plants, machines; The search for a planetary intelligence by James Bridle $32
What does it mean to be intelligent? Is it something unique to humans or shared with other beings — beings of flesh, wood, stone, and silicon? The last few years have seen rapid advances in ‘artificial’ intelligence. But rather than a friend or companion, AI increasingly appears to be something stranger than we ever imagined, an alien invention that threatens to decenter and supplant us. At the same time, we're only just becoming aware of the other intelligences that have been with us all along, even if we've failed to recognize or acknowledge them. These others — the animals, plants, and natural systems that surround us — are slowly revealing their complexity, agency, and knowledge, just as the technologies we've built to sustain ourselves are threatening to cause their extinction and ours. What can we learn from them, and how can we change ourselves, our technologies, our societies, and our politics to live better and more equitably with one another and the nonhuman world?
”Bridle's writing weaves cultural threads that aren't usually seen together, and the resulting tapestry is iridescently original, deeply disorientating and yet somehow radically hopeful. The only futures that are viable will probably feel like that. This is a pretty amazing book, worth reading and rereading.” —Brian Eno
Vietnamese Vegetarian by Uyen Luu $50
From quick dishes such as Sweet Potato Noodles with Roasted Fennel and Sweetheart Cabbage and Grilled Vegetable Banh Mi, to dishes fit for a feast such as Mushroom and Tofu Phở and Rice Paper Pizza, as well as sweet treats like Rainbow Dessert and Lotus and Sweet Potato Rice Pudding, there is a vast array of dishes for any occasion. With tips and tricks on how to adapt the recipes to use alternative ingredients, this is bound to be everyone’s go-to book on vegetarian Vietnamese food.
>>Look inside!
The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel exports the technology of occupation around the world by Antony Loewenstein $40
For more than 50 years, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable experience in controlling an 'enemy' population, the Palestinians. It's here that they have perfected the architecture of control, using the occupied Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world. The Palestine Laboratory shows in depth and for the first time how Israel has become a leader in developing spying technology and defence hardware that fuels some of the globe's most brutal conflicts — from the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos's and Jamal Khashoggi's phones, and the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas, to the drones being used by the European Union to monitor refugees in the Mediterranean who are left to drown. In important investigation.
”This is a must-read on a hidden and shocking aspect of the Israeli colonisation of the Palestinians. This book shows clearly that this kind of export is now Israel's most significant contribution to the global violation of human rights.” —Ilan Pappe
”A triumph of investigative journalism. It exposes the ruthlessness with which Israel exploits the experience gained from the illegal occupation to export all kinds of military hardware as well as the technology of surveillance, espionage, cyber warfare, phone-hacking, and house demolition. It also shines a torch on the dark side of Israel's support for despots around the world. Altogether, a profoundly depressing audit on a country that used to boast of being ‘a light unto the nations’.” —Avi Shlaim
>>A testing ground for war tech.
Wrecked by Heather Henson $21
A gritty YA novel about three teens, caught in the middle of the opioid crisis in rural Appalachia. For as long as Miri can remember it's been her and her dad, Poe, in Paradise — what Poe calls their home — hidden away from prying eyes in rural Kentucky. It's not like Miri doesn't know what her dad does or why people call him ‘the Wizard’. It's not like she doesn't know why Clay, her one friend and Poe's right-hand man, patrols the grounds with a machine gun. It's nothing new, but lately Paradise has started to feel more like a prison. Enter Fen. The new kid in town could prove to be exactly the distraction Miri needs...but nothing is ever simple. Poe doesn't take kindly to strangers. Fen's DEA agent father is a little too interested in Miri's family. And Clay isn't satisfied with being just friends with Miri anymore. But what's past is prologue — it's what will follow that will wreck everything.
The Last Drop: Solving the world’s water crisis by Tim Smedley $40
Water scarcity is the next big climate crisis. Water stress — not just scarcity, but also water-quality issues caused by pollution — is already driving the first waves of climate refugees. Rivers are drying out before they meet the oceans and ancient lakes are disappearing. It's increasingly clear that human mismanagement of water is dangerously unsustainable, for both ecological and human survival. And yet in recent years some key countries have been quietly and very successfully addressing water stress. How are Singapore and Israel, for example — both severely water-stressed countries — not in the same predicament as Chennai or California?
McSweeney’s #70 edited by James Yeh $50
Inludes Patrick Cottrell's story about a surprisingly indelible Denver bar experience; poignant, previously untranslated fiction from beloved Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen; Argentine writer Olivia Gallo's English language debut about rampaging urban clowns; the rise and fall of an unusual family of undocumented workers in rural California by Francisco González; and Indian writer Amit Chaudhuri's sojourn to the childhood home of Brooklyn native Neil Diamond. Readers will be sure to delight in Guggenheim recipient Edward Gauvin's novella-length memoir-of-sorts in the form of contributors' notes, absorbing short stories about a celebrated pianist (Lisa Hsiao Chen) and a reclusive science-fiction novelist (Eugene Lim), flash fiction by Véronique Darwin and Kevin Hyde, and a suite of thirty-six very short stories by the outsider poet Sparrow. Plus letters from Seoul, Buenos Aires, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Lake Zurich, Illinois, by E. Tammy Kim, Drew Millard, and more.
>>Look inside.