NEW RELEASES (26.4.24)
Out of the carton and into your hands!
Click through to our website to order these newly released books:
The End of Ends by Tadeusz Bradecki (translated from Polish by Tadeusz Bradecki and Kate Sinclair) $40
“In the great tradition of Sterne, Calvino, Kundera and Cervantes — the tradition of dancing playfully on the edge of the abyss of all knowledge — this book by the late great Polish theatre director Tadeusz Bradecki is about nothing less than everything. God, death, theatre, teleology, post-modernism, Marxism, ghosts on stage and off, two millennia of storytelling: it’s all here. In honour of the device of the play-within-a-play, it contains vivid verbal restagings. In honour of the tale-within-a-tale, it contains a whole small novel. Because of course it does. Anyone miserable at being marooned on this island of cynical banter and self-protective irony should read The End of Ends to be reminded of what it sounds like when art is taken seriously.” —Francis Spufford
”The author of this book is a consummate actor, director and theatre manager. He is also a dramatic writer, exceptional in his field and we can see this in his book both an original form and a ground-breaking freshness of thought. This is supported by an impressive erudition and original humour which makes it both wise and hugely enjoyable.” —Krzysztof Zanussi
”A delightful book on aesthetics generally as on Bradecki’s own area of expertise, the theatre … It combines the heights of critical theory with the ageless and incoherent impulse that sends us ordinary folk to theatres for solace, affirmation and enlightenment. The End of Ends is the playbook, the guide, the user’s manual on how the pilgrim soul should relate to the arts.” —Thomas Keneally
”Tadeusz Bradecki entertains, elucidates, and surprises at every turn. What begins as a series of witty and fiendishly astute essays exploring the roots and interconnectedness of story segues into an extraordinary example of “practice what you preach”. He brilliantly and playfully weaves into this non-fictional narrative a time-bending love story, which reflects and perfectly complements what has come before. Bravo.” —Sarah Lotz
”Bradecki’s whistle-stop tour through two thousand years of dramatic literature is breathtaking. But even more moving is the infectious relish with which he shares his love of his subject. The sheer joy he takes in these texts not only arouses our curiosity, it also quickens the pulse.” —Declan Donellan
”The End of Ends is a dazzling tour through the craft, philosophy and history of telling stories. It’s a Russian doll of wit, insight, charm, erudition and storytelling itself — and is exactly the kind of thing every creative writing student should be compelled to read.” —Danny O’Connor
Lioness by Emily Perkins $25
“You know how we say we devoured a story, and also that we were consumed by it? Eating and being eaten. It was like that with Claire, for me.” From humble beginnings, Therese has let herself grow used to a life of luxury after marrying into an empire-building family. But when rumours of corruption gather around her husband's latest development, the social opprobrium is shocking, the fallout swift, and Therese begins to look at her privileged and insular world with new eyes.In the flat below Therese, something else is brewing. Her neighbour Claire believes she's discovered the secret to living with freedom and authenticity, freeing herself from the mundanity of domesticity. Therese finds herself enchanted by the lure of the permissive zone Claire creates in her apartment - a place of ecstatic release. All too quickly, Therese is forced to confront herself and her choices - just how did she become this person? And what exactly should she do about it? New edition.
“It will make you shudder and laugh simultaneously” —Stella
”The most exciting novel I've read in ages. I gulped it down, so readable, so EXCELLENT about people. Read it.” —Marian Keyes
”A coolly ironic look at modern womanhood. This is an excellent novel.” —The Times
The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes $37
The four Flattery sisters — Olwen, Nell, Maeve and Rhona — were left to cobble together their own makeshift adolescence after the death of both their parents. Decades later, all four of them have found success in their respective fields, all of them boasting PhDs and, in Nell's case, a healthy clutch of Instagram followers. Still, none of the sisters have come to terms with their parents' deaths, choosing to focus instead on bigger problems — food insecurity, climate change, post-Brexit capitalism — to avoid confronting this trauma. When Olwen disappears, Nell, Maeve and Rhona attempt to find the sister they no longer know, a woman who wants desperately not to be found. Their search will force the siblings to bridge the isolation that has grown between them, and face the past they thought they could bury. Full of laugh-out-loud wit and clear-eyed observations, The Alternatives is a story of sisterhood and belonging, of loss and connection, written with Caoilinn Hughes' trademark intelligence and razor-sharp prose.
”A brilliant, brainy book about the bravery of following one’s own path while also remembering the value of community.” —Guardian
After Nora by Penelope Curtis $38
In early 1920s England, Nora’s life is in a state of flux: leaving one husband for another, she embarks on a new existence on the margins of the cultural and political elite, trying to hold onto her aspirations as a painter, along with her relationships. In late 1960s Glasgow, young biologist Maria de Sousa wrestles with her feelings for an older colleague, Adam Curtis – the author’s father. The unclear connection between the two impels the narrator, fifty years later, to seek out answers in Lisbon: what really happened between Adam and Maria? After Nora bridges three generations, and moves between London, Paris, southern England, Scotland, Jamaica and Portugal, touching on key scientific discoveries, artistic and historical landmarks, the Carnation Revolution and a global pandemic. Penelope Curtis offers sensitive portraits of those whose lives she has had to imagine in order to understand, in an ambitious novel that movingly resurrects a past whose remnants still permeate the present. Poignantly revealing the forces which check personal callings, the novel also explores, among other things, the ways in which love is balanced with creative independence. Penelope Curtis is an art historian and former director of the Tate Gallery, whose novel imagines the life and motivations of Nora, the grandmother she never knew but whose paintings she inherited. Curtis envisions Nora as a woman deeply struggling to identify her sources of self-worth. This account of her grandmother’s doubts as to the importance of her own art is accompanied, too, by that of another woman: the Portuguese scientist Maria de Sousa, who had worked in Glasgow with Curtis’s father, also a scientist, and whom the author eventually met in Lisbon, after her father’s death. After Nora is a three-part novel that talks of the meaning of creative independence through the lives of three generations. It touches on the ways in which morality can check artistic, professional and emotional callings, and exert a binding and compelling power over these. The novel also underscores the limits of knowledge, of others and the self, attempting all the while to recreate the nature of past loves.
How to Win an Information War: The propagandist who outwitted Hitler by Peter Pomerantsev $40
In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat the powerful Nazi propaganda machine, which crowed victory and smeared its enemies. However, inside Germany, there was one notable voice of dissent from the very heart of the military machine — Der Chef, a German whose radio broadcasts skilfully questioned Nazi doctrine. He had access to high-ranking military secrets and spoke of internal rebellion. His listeners included German soldiers and citizens. But what these audiences didn't know was that Der Chef was a fiction, a character created by the British propagandist Sefton Delmer, just one player in his vast counter-propaganda cabaret, a unique weapon in the war. As author Peter Pomerantsev uncovers Delmer's story, he is called into a wartime propaganda effort of his own: the global response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. This book is the story of Delmer and his modern-day investigator, as they each embark on their own quest to seduce and inspire the passions of supporters and enemies, and to turn the tide of information wars.
”Elegant, effortlessly readable. Essential reading for the new dark age of disinformation.” —Jonathan Freedland
”Original. Pomerantsev digs deep into the past history of information warfare, in order to help us understand how to fight charlatans and fear mongers in the present.” —Anne Applebaum
”Excellent, carefully researched and beautifully written. To be read by everyone seeking perspective on all the lies of war and all the wars of lies.” —Timothy Snyder
Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan $25
In her acclaimed second short-story collection, the author of Small Things Like These shows Ireland and the Irish wrestling with the past in various ways. A long-haired woman moves into the priest's house and sets fire to his furniture. That Christmas, the electricity goes out. A forester mortgages his land and goes off to a seaside town looking for a wife — he finds a woman eating alone in the hotel. A farmer wakes half-naked and realises the money is almost gone. And in the title story, a priest waits on the altar for a bride and battles, all that wedding day, with his memories of a love affair.
”Perfect short stories.” —Anne Enright
”Breath-taking.” —Irish Times
”Her stories are as good as Chekhov’s.” —David Mitchell
A Book of Rongo and Te Rangahau by Briar Wood $30
Briar Wood reimagines the lives of Rongo and Te Rangahau, nineteenth-century wahine toa, tupuna of Ngapuhi, in radiant verse. The collection also stretches across time into today's world with poetry about contemporary Northland. Illustrated within, with much historical information, and cover art by Nikau Hindin.
”A time machine stretching from stories told and reimagined, an invitation to Aotearoa's past running parallel with how history impacts today.” —Anne-Marie Te Whiu
Hackenfeller’s Ape by Brigid Brophy $25
In London Zoo, Professor Darrylhyde is singing to the apes again. Outside their cage, he watches the two animals, longing to observe the mating ritual of this rare species. But Percy, inhibited by confinement and melancholy, is repulsing Edwina's desirous advances. Soon, the Professor's connection increases as he talks, croons, befriends — so when a scientist arrives on a secret governmental mission to launch Percy into space, he vows to secure his freedom. But when met by society's indifference, he takes matters into his own hands. A trailblazing animal rights campaigner, Brigid Brophy's sensational 1953 novel is as provocative and philosophical seventy years on. An electric moral fable, it is as much a blazingly satirical reflection on homo sapiens as the non-human — on our capacity for violence, red in tooth and claw, not only to other species, but our own. New introduction by Sarah Hall.
”Pitch-perfect.” —Ali Smith
”So original.” —Hilary Mantel
”Stunning.” —Isabel Waidner
”Her beastly, risky best.” —Eley Williams
”Flawless.” —Sunday Times
”Ingenious.” —Observer
The Edge of the Plain: How borders make and break our world by James Crawford $37
No matter where you turn, it seems that the taut lines of borders are vibrating to — or even calling — the tune of global events. Today, there are more borders in the world than ever before in human history. Beginning with the earliest known example, Crawford travels to many borders old and new: from a melting glacial landscape to the conflict-torn West Bank and the fault-lines of the US/Mexico border. He follows the story of borders into our fragile and uncertain future — towards the virtual frontiers of the internet and the shifting geography of a world beset by climate change. As nationalism, climate change, globalisation, technology and mass migration all collide with ever-hardening borders, something has to give. And Crawford asks, is it time to let go of the lines that divide us?
”A richly essayistic account of how borders make and break our world, from Hadrian's Wall to China's Great Firewall.” —Guardian
”The borders that mark our world are either ineffective, inhumane, or both. The Edge of the Plain asks us to envision alternatives.” —New York Times
”Erudite and engaging. A fine book.” —The Irish Times
Why We Remember: The science of memory and how it shapes us by Charan Ranganath $40
We talk about memory as a record of the past, but here's a surprising twist: we aren't supposed to remember everything. In fact, we're designed to forget. Over the course of twenty-five years, Charan Ranganath has studied the flawed, incomplete and purposefully inaccurate nature of memory to find that our brains haven't evolved to keep a comprehensive record of events, but to extract the information needed to guide our futures. Using fascinating case studies and testimonies, Why We Remember unveils the principles behind what and why we forget and shines new light on the silent, pervasive influence of memory on how we learn, heal and make decisions. By examining the role that attention, intention, imagination and emotion play in the storing of memories, it provides a vital user's guide to remembering what we hold most dear.
The Nineties: A book by Chuck Klosterman $37
It was long ago, but not as long as it seems — The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, the world changed a lot, more than we realised. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn't know who it was. By the end, exposing someone's address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn't know who it was. The 90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we're still groping to understand. There were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived — the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it.
"In The Nineties, Klosterman examines the social, political and cultural history of the era with his signature wit. It's a fascinating trip down memory lane." —Time
"An engaging, nuanced and literate take on the alternately dynamic and diffident decade." —Washington Post
Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin $23
Welcome to Elsewhere. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are beautiful. It's quiet and peaceful. You can't get sick, and you can't get older. In Elsewhere, death is only the beginning. Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she is killed in a hit-and-run accident. It is a place very like Earth, yet completely different. Here Liz will age backwards from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. She wants to get her driving licence. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. She doesn't want to get to know a grandmother she's never met before and have to make all new friends. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Or is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward?
"Every so often a book comes along with a premise so fresh and arresting it seems to exist in a category all its own. Elsewhere is such a book." —New York Times Book Review
Yukie’s Island by Yukie Kimura, Kōdo Kimura and Steve Sheinkin $38
It's 1945, the final year of World War II. Yukie Kimura is eight years old. She lives on a tiny island with a lighthouse in the north of Japan with her family, and she knows that the fighting that once felt so far away is getting closer. Mornings spent helping her father tend to the lighthouse and adventuring with her brother are replaced by weeks spent inside, waiting. At some point, Yukie knows, they may be bombed. Then, it happens. One Sunday, bombs are dropped. The war ends soon after that. Everyone tells Yukie there's nothing to be scared of anymore, but she's not so sure. So she watches and she waits — until a miraculous sight finally allows her to be a child again. This is the true story of Yukie Kimura told in her own words, co-created with her son, illustrator Kodo Kimura, and co-written with bestselling Newbery Honor author Steve Sheinkin.