NEW RELEASES (29.9.23)

A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:

Backwaters by Emma Ling Sidnam $38
Laura is tired of being asked where she's really from. Her family has lived in Aotearoa New Zealand for four generations, and she's ambivalent at best about her Chinese heritage. But when she's asked to write about the Chinese New Zealander experience for a work project, Laura finds herself drawn to the diary of her great-great-grandfather Ken, a market gardener in the early years of the British colony. With the help of her beloved grandpa, Laura begins to write a version of Ken's story. She imagines his youth in Guangzhou and his journey to a new land-unaware that soon, spurred on by a family secret that comes to light, she will go on her own journey of self-discovery, sexuality and reckoning with the past. A tender, nuanced novel about the bittersweet search for belonging.
Winner of the 2022 Michael Gifkins Prize.
”The past and present carry out intimate conversations in this compelling and beautiful work. The rhythms of modern city life speak with the deep histories of Chinese lives in Aotearoa in ways that give a sense of walking backwards into the future. Sidnam's magnificent novel shows us that the past is living, evolving and all around us. It is an absolute joy to read.'“ —Pip Adam
>>The story of my body, which refuses to co-operate.

Encounters Across Time by Judith Binney $18
”Story telling is an art deep within human nature.” A timely collection of writings on history, from one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most distinguished scholars. These essays bring forth important questions for New Zealand history about autonomy, restoration and power that continue to reverberate today. They also serve as a pathway into the rigorous and imaginative scholarship that characterised Judith Binney's acclaimed historical writing.
Contents: ‘Māori Oral Narratives, Pākeha Written Texts’; Songlines from Aotearoa’; ‘Encounters Across Time’: Hostory and Memory’; ‘Stories Without End’.
The 101st BWB Text! To celebrate, buy the texts at a special price!

Macunaíma by Mário de Andrade (translated from Portuguese by Katrina Dodson) $37
An exciting new translation of the modernist Brazilian epic Macunaíma. This landmark novel from 1928 has been hugely influential. It follows the adventures of the shapeshifting Macunaíma and his brothers as they leave their home in the northern Amazon for a whirlwind tour of Brazil, cramming four centuries and a continental expanse into a single mythic plane. Having lost a magic amulet, the hero and his brothers journey to São Paulo to retrieve the talisman that has fallen into the hands of an Italo-Peruvian captain of industry (who is also a cannibal giant). Written over six delirious days — but the fruit of years of study — Macunaíma magically synthesizes dialect, folklore, anthropology, mythology, flora, fauna, and pop culture to examine Brazilian identity. This translation by has been many years in the making, and includes an extensive section of notes providing essential background information for this remarkable work.
”Katrina Dobson’s translation, employing a colloquial American diction with palpable African American and Deep South overtones, gives Macunaíma a consistent, credible voice in English. She inhabits and breathes life into the novel as though she were a revenant from the Brazilian jungle of a century ago…It is not only Brazil’s complexity that Mário de Andrade captures, but that of the Americas as a whole, and to some extent that of the entire modern world.” — Times Literary Supplement
”Over the course of seventeen chapters and an epilogue, violent parables and raunchy parodies nestle within one another to create a dazzling and chaotic Luso-tropical Holy Grail epic… Perhaps through Dodson’s masterful work, Andrade will finally be widely read alongside Joyce, Woolf, and Kafka, and Brazilian modernism will be cemented in a canon that has largely excluded authors from Latin America. —Meg Weeks, The Baffler
>>The hero with no character.

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery $33
In 1979, as political violence consumes their native Kingston, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami. But they soon learn that the welcome in America will be far from warm.  Trelawny, their youngest son, comes of age in a society that regards him with suspicion and confusion. Their eldest son Delano’s longing for a better future for his own children is equalled only by his recklessness in trying to secure it.  As both brothers navigate the obstacles littered in their path – an unreliable father, racism, a financial crisis and Hurricane Andrew — they find themselves pitted against one another. Will their rivalry be the thing that finally tears their family apart? 
>>Short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.
”In Jonathan Escoffery’s vital, captivating debut novel, each chapter takes us deeper into a family album of stories, revealing the life and survival of a family, fleeing the violence of early Seventies’ Jamaica for the uncertain sanctuary of a new beginning in America. From the heartbreaking to the hilarious, Escoffery effortlessly conducts the various voices, contradictory in their perspectives, their dreams and desires, while wrestling with the age-old immigrant dilemma — who are my people and where do I belong? As with the best fiction, all of life is here in unflinching detail: the vagaries of capitalism, our yearning for a safety net, international migration, the American Dream, the fragility of existence, climate change, catastrophic misunderstandings and the road not taken." —Booker judges’ citation
>>”Humour is a coping mechanism used by people aware of their powerlessness.”

Te Awa o Kupu edited by Vaughan Rapatahana and Kiri Piahana-Wong $37
An important new collection of poetry and stories by over eighty contemporary Māori writers, both established and emerging.
A companion volume to Ngā Kupu Wero.

Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue $38
In 1805, at boarding school in York, England, two fourteen-year-olds meet — an orphan heiress, sent from India to England at six, and a gifted troublemaker. Anne Lister would go on to be a gifted diarist, famous the world over. But in the early nineteenth century she met Eliza Raine, someone who would change her life for ever.
"Donoghue's affection for the savvy, strange Lister is obvious, and the author makes her teenage couple's partnership both deeply serious and wonderfully naive, but the reader knows from the first page that their infatuation won't last, and the novel is ultimately a tender, sad account of first love." —Emma Sarappo, The Atlantic
>>Other books about Anne Lister.
>>Gentleman Jack.

Technofeudalism: What killed Capitalism by Yanid Varoufakis $40
No one noticed when capitalism died. Perhaps we were too distracted by the implosion of global finance, or the rise of populism, or the demise of the planet — or all of those cute cats on Instagram. But gradually, quietly, a yet more exploitative new system has taken hold — techno-feudalism. Written in the form of a letter to his late father, who first taught him about the power of new technologies to shape human history, Yanis Varoufakis explains how Big Tech has effected an invisible but fundamental transformation in all our lives. Drawing on stories from Greek Myth and pop culture, from Mad Men to Karl Marx, he explains how the key ingredients of capitalism — profit and markets — have both been replaced. And he exposes the hidden connection between your personal data and the transformative power of 'cloud capital' which means that without our realising it, we are all working every day for the tech giants, for free.

Harrow by Joy Williams $25
”How do you get geriatric eco-terrorists into a book and make it sound believable, ironic, outrageous, and compelling? When your main protagonist is a ten-year-old with a jaundiced view of the world, but also a surprising innocence, how are we convinced that this could be a future reality? Joy Williams makes us believe because she’s a genius. Harrow, her recent novel, is a sideways dystopia, very strange and difficult to follow — not because it’s pretentious or overly literary but because the end of the world (as we know it) will be confusing, blindingly obvious, and surprisingly full of unexpected consequences. As you read this review, you will notice the inconsistencies — how can it be this, but also that? How can you have a 10-year-old protagonist surviving crossing America alone but somehow be okay —  picked up and harnessed by the goodwill of others — even if this is fleeting? How can, and why, do terminally ill geriatrics who can’t seem to get along (there are plenty of petty squabbles at the abandoned conference centre/resort) have a plan (of destruction — we will get to that later) that forces them to be bound together by a mutual ideology? Well, it works because Joy Williams is a brilliant writer and she’s angry, even as she darkly exploits us humans and uses our foibles to create characters who will stick on you. And that’s how it is — Harrow gets under your skin and just when you’re confused the lightbulb clicks on and it’s so bright, you hope you’ll be in the dark again. Darkness may be preferable to the future.” —Stella
Now in paperback!
>>Read the rest of Stella’s review.

My Art Book of Adventure by Shana Gozansky $35
”The latest in a charming series of board books for pre-schoolers. This series introduces the very young to a range of fine art images alongside relevant childhood experiences. Exploring their world, going on a picnic, being a baby, sleeping and dreaming. The book is designed to appeal and be practical for youngsters with its firm pages, only one or two images per page (there are 35 artworks) and short, sweet texts.” —Stella
>>Look inside!
>>Other books in the series.

The Handover: How we gave control of our lives to corporations, states and A.I. by David Runciman $40
'The Singularity' is what Silicon Valley calls the idea that, eventually, we will be overrun by machines that are able to take decisions and act for themselves. What no one says is that it happened before. A few hundred years ago, humans started building the robots that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful artificial entities, with capacities that go far beyond what any individual can do, and which, unlike us, need never die. They have made us richer, safer and healthier than would have seemed possible even a few generations ago — and they may yet destroy us. The Handover distils over three hundred years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency. Runciman is incisive, as always.
”Refreshingly free of received and rehearsed wisdoms, Runciman doesn't tiptoe around sacred cows and invites us to take part in that most adult way of thinking: to examine contradictory ideas in tandem and ponder what the dissonance amounts to.” —Australian

The Unbroken Beauty of Rosalind Bone by Alex McCarthy $37
Tucked into the Welsh valleys and encircled by silver birch and pine, the village of Cwmcysgod may appear a quiet, sleepy sort of place. But beneath the surface, tensions simmer, hearts ache, and painful truths threaten to emerge. Sixteen-year-old Catrin Bone knows only what she has been told. Now, she is beginning to question her small world, and a version of the past that seems to entrap and embitter her reclusive mother, Mary. Mary had a sister once, a girl of unparalleled beauty. Why did she disappear from the village in a shroud of shame all those years ago — and where is she now?
Meanwhile the Clements brothers, skint and all out of hope, run rampant across the hills and lanes. And old Dai Bevel, whose frailty masks a dark history, dreams of a girl he used to know. The sins of the past are approaching, for it takes a village: to raise a child, to bring down a woman, to hide something monstrous and to look the other way.
”Small Things Like These meets Under Milk Wood — this slim but devastating novel captures an entire village, an entire world, and the many ways in which a woman can be trapped. A real gem.” —Ruth Gilligan
”A wonderful novella, full of atmosphere and feeling.” —Sara Baume

Around the Ocean in 80 Fish (and other sea life) by Helen Scales, illustrated by Marcel George $60
An inspiring tour of the world's oceans and eighty of its most notable inhabitants. Filled with lively illustrations, the book includes fascinating stories of the fish, shellfish and other sea life that have somehow impacted human life — whether in medicine, culture or folklore — in often surprising and unexpected ways.
>>Look inside!

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney $37
Jamie O'Neill loves the colour red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that comes with wind, the curvature of many objects, books with dust jackets, cats, rivers and Edgar Allan Poe. At age 13 there are two things he especially wants in life: to build a Perpetual Motion Machine, and to connect with his mother Noelle, who died when he was born. In his mind these things are intimately linked. And at his new school, where all else is disorientating and overwhelming, he finds two people who might just be able to help him. How to Build a Boat is the story of how one boy and his mission transforms the lives of his teachers, Tess and Tadhg, and brings together a community in rural Ireland.
>>Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.

Holding the Note: Writing on music by David Remnick $43
The editor of The New Yorker writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years. He portrays a series of musical lives – Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more – and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time.
”This collection of articles by David Remnick can stand as literature. He treats the reader as an informed, intelligent equal.” —The New York Times

Fire Weather: A true story from a hotter world by John Vaillant $40
In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of Canada's oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration, John Vaillant reveals a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world. For hundreds of millennia, fire has been a partner in our evolution, shaping culture and civilization. Yet this volatile energy has always threatened to elude our control, and in our age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in ways never witnessed by human beings. With masterly prose and cinematic style, Vaillant explores the intertwined histories of the oil industry and climate science, the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and the lives forever changed by these disasters. Fire Weather is an urgent book for our new century of fire.

City of Stolen Magic by Nazneen Ahmed Pathak $21
India, 1855. The British rule, and all across the country, Indian magic is being stamped out. More terrifying still, people born with magic are being snatched from their homes. Rumour is that they are being taken across the sea — to England — by the all-powerful, sinister Company. When Chompa's home is attacked and her mother viciously kidnapped, Chompa — born with powerful and dangerous magic that she has always been forbidden from using — must travel to the smoky, bustling streets of East London in search of her. But Chompa will discover far more treachery in London than she had bargained for — and will learn that every act of her rare magic comes with a price.
”Dazzling from start to finish.” —Abi Elphinstone
”A gripping and spellbinding fantasy woven together with threads of magic, secrets and colonial history . An incredible cast of characters and a truly multicultural Victorian London that we don't see often enough.” —Rashmi Sirdeshpande