NEW RELEASES (3.11.26)
All your choices are good! Click through to our website (or just email us) to secure your copies. We will dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
On the Calculation of Volume: V by Solvej Balle (translated from Danish by Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith) $33
Tara Selter has become someone new. It becomes clear just how ridiculous it is: life in progressive time. Or was. Before we came to a halt. How foolishly one can spend a life in a time that moves forward. The nonsense of the ceaseless grind. Tara has returned to Thomas, but she is no longer the person he remembers. She has now spent twelve years in the eighteenth of November, while Thomas has endlessly repeated his identical day. He struggles to reconcile Tara as she is now with the Tara he loves. And so she rejoins her new friends, with whom she finds companionship and understanding. They set off for Val Benoît, where other time-stranded people have created a community built on curiosity, conversation and even optimism. As the eighteenth of November continues to expand, Tara's connection with those around her deepens, and a life beyond Thomas comes unexpectedly into view. [Paperback]
'The greatest literary work of the 21st century so far. These books will be seen by future scholars as the work which best captured the soul of our times.' —The Herald
"The time-stuck protagonist of Solvej Balle's miraculous septology has been trapped in the same day with no end in sight. On the Calculation of Volume is a literary phenomenon nearly 40 years in the making. It's a speculative masterwork" —Cat Zhang, New York Magazine
"The novel's propulsive imaginative brilliance lies in Tara's metaphoric search for a language with which to communicate the sheer incomprehensibility of her condition." —Morten Hoi Jensen, The Washington Post
"What the best novels can do is open up spaces. And she has opened a space in time, and it is absolutely, absolutely incredible. I think it's a fantastic book." —Karl Ove Knausgaard
"Solvej Balle is a prodigious writer who, miraculously, finds the subtlest, most fascinating differences in repetition. You have never read anything like On the Calculation of Volume. This unforgettable novel is a profound meditation on the lonely, untranslatable ways in which each one of us inhabits time-and the tenuous yet indelible traces we leave in the world. Day after day." —Hernan Diaz
”Each volume of this remarkable book provides a space for our thoughts, and equipment to stimulate its exercise.” —Thomas
>>The New Directions edition will be here soon, if you prefer that.
>>Catch up on any volumes you have missed, or start if you haven’t started.
Opening Night by Sara Baume $38
'I met Mollie's paintings before I met Mollie.' Shortly after the imposed isolation of the pandemic, Sara Baume came across a painting at a pop-up exhibition in a renovated shed in rural West Cork. It so intrigued her that she was inspired to make contact with the artist. Mollie Douthit, a North Dakotan exile, was living and working alone in a log cabin down a ravaged laneway surrounded by rugged coastline. Sara and Mollie discovered they had much in common — a dysfunctional attitude towards companionship, a devotion to the daily rituals of their respective art practices, an affinity with nature. They started to meet every month for soup and punishing swims in the Atlantic. Sara fell under the spell of Mollie's paintings, pictures that welded memory and reality, and gradually started to write about them, curious as to whether any particular insight might be provided by the intimacy of friendship with the artist, and whether it might be possible to craft a book in the style of the paintings. But what she had not anticipated was that a settled period in her own life would coincide with a period of tumultuous change for Mollie, and soon she found herself squabbling with more complex ideas, about community and nationality, about neurosis and mysticism, about love and pain and the power of art. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Sara Baume is a writer's writer, able to clothe her insights on life, art and human connection in beautifully evocative language. There are few living writers who can artistically convey compassion in a single sentence. Sara has given us all the gift of friendship with this book, but most importantly, has allowed us the privilege of getting to know Mollie through the creative lens of an unreliable memory.” —Derek Owusu
”Opening Night is such a beautifully and carefully observed book. I felt like I was in conversation with Baume's thoughts the entire time I was reading it. This book made me think deeply about my own friendships, my creative practice and the place I've come to call home and, for this, I am profoundly grateful. No one knows their way round a quietly profound sentence quite like Sara Baume does.” —Jan Carson
”Sara Baume's Opening Night is a unique and moving portrait of a friendship between an artist and a writer. It's so intimate and honest I felt bereft when I finished it. In her compelling, concise prose, Baume evokes what it means to devote your daily life to conjuring something new and true — and how complex and demanding an activity that is. I've never read anything like it.” —Jennifer Higgie
”In this beautifully written and resonating book, Sara Baume has created an archive via the frame of friendship. Opening Night captures the mystery, infatuation, fantasy, and doubling that occurs in artmaking and between new friends. It is an impressive and generous work, chronicling the pandemic years with fine detail, questions, observations. I had the feeling, while reading, that I was encountering something completely of our time, something that will be read in the future.” —Lauren Aimee Curtis
>>A Fierce friendship.
>>A book in the style of a painting.
The Treaty of Waitagi Companion by Vincent O’Malley and Bruce Stirling $60
Weaving together voices, documents and images from centuries of co-operation, conflict and change, this important book ranges from first contact between Maori and Europeans to today's debates over the place of te Tiriti o Waitangi in our constitutional arrangements. Rather than offering a single narrative, Vincent O'Malley and Bruce Stirling bring readers close to the historical record itself. They draw on the words of key figures, from William Hobson and Hone Heke to Dame Whina Cooper, Sir Edward Taihakurei Durie and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke. These voices trace the story from te Tiriti's signing in 1840 through war and land loss, Maori renaissance and Waitangi Tribunal inquiries, and on to the debates that continue to shape Aotearoa today. Ever more relevant, this browsable edition is beautifully presented and fully illustrated. [Wrappered flexibound]
>>Look inside.
Consciousness: A book of thinking by Roger Horrocks $38
What is consciousness, and why has itbecome such a controversial subject? Consciousness has been described as “simultaneously the most familiar and the most mysterious thing inthe universe.” It is something we experience in all our waking moments, yet science still struggles to agree about what it is or how it has arisen. Among the many controversies covered by the book is the current debate over artificial intelligence. Can non-biological creatures such as robots share thepower that we call consciousness? This ‘Book of Thinking’ takes an exceptionally broad approach by exploring what science, philosophy, and the arts have to say about consciousness. Sometimes these traditions clash and collide in their views, but each yields rich insights. The book presents a range of innovative ways to understand the nature of subjective experience. [Paperback]
Stations by Louise Kennedy $37
In 1982, Róisín and Red meet as teenagers in their hometown in Ireland. Red's reputation for trouble might precede him, but Róisín finds in him an intelligent and funny — if unlikely — friend. When a brush with the law pushes Red into a corner, he escapes their town and his family for good to start a new life in England. As the years pass, they grow up and apart. Despite Red's particular gift for disappearing, they remain tethered to one another, a fragile thread holding their once fierce friendship together. When Róisín arrives in London to spend Christmas with her estranged father, she finds herself swept up once more into Red's storm. Róisín longs for the closeness they once had, but Red continues to travel away from her — and as the past weighs on the present, Róisín wonders if she'll ever reach Red where he is. Stations is a devastating story of love and friendship, and the choices we blithely make when we are young, unaware that the consequences will reverberate throughout our lives. [Paperback]
”Louise Kennedy's brilliant Stations is a moving and immersive novel about first love, addiction, and regret. Smart, propulsive, and emotionally powerful, this narrative is a transcendent exploration of yearning, transformation and rescue.” —Min Jin Lee
”You can love Stations for the grit and nuance of Roisin's voice and for the 'heart-scalding' story she has to tell, but I loved it for the way it holds a national sorrow. Barry, Red, Muiris are some of Ireland's many lost boys, and this book is a lovely work of mourning and reclamation.” —Anne Enright
”Full of startling insight and rich in social detail, this exceptionally strong second novel emphatically confirms Kennedy's place in the front rank of Irish fiction.” —Times Literary Supplement
>>Thanks to Barry’s Tea.
William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love by Philip Hoare $28
The legacy of William Blake stretches 200 years to today not only through poetry and art but traditions of social, spiritual, sexual and political noncomformity. Philip Hoare drags himself from the company of whales and follows Derek Jarman to follow Paul Nash to photograph the megaliths at Avebury and towards a shared encounter with the luminous William Blake, electrically alive and inspiring to them all. Weaving between the historical, cultural and personal, Hoare reveals a web of creative minds and artistic iconoclasts fired with the unfettered genius of William Blake. Reaching out of his past and into our future, Blake draws together the natural world and metaphysical realms, merging the human and the animal and the spiritual, firing up 20th century artists, filmmakers, poets, writers and musicians with his radical promise of absolute freedom. As Hoare shows, art and poetry still have the power to make change. [Now in paperback]
'Wild, free, exhilaratingly beautiful, and so alive to the past that everyone and everything seems to be happening right now on the page. I cannot think of a more original writer at work today ... To look at English art through his eyes is to see more than you ever could before.' —Laura Cumming
'A dazzlingly written and wildly eccentric mashup of biography, history and memoir ... Hoare picks up the pieces and rearranges them in a dazzling new pattern, and the result is one of the most original and uncategorisable works I've read for a long time.' —Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Times
'Everything exists at once: horror, stars, trees, art, love, and it's up to us to behold it all. Which is exactly what Philip Hoare does ... He really sets out to behold it all.' —Helena de Groot, Poetry Foundation
>>Slumber on the banks.
>>Swimming or drowning.
>>The ecstasy of art.
>>Why William Blake became a queer icon.
>>William Blake’s radicalism.
>>William Blake vs. the World by John Higgs.
Butterflies and Moths of Aotearoa by Liv Sisson $50
Aotearoa is home to colourful, curious species that are variously conspicuous and covert. We have world-famous monarchs, a gold-flecked moth as old as dinosaurs, butterflies that flash from purple to orange, and a lime-green moth said to bring messages from the spirit realm. But where do they live, how did they get here and what do they do when we aren't looking? Discover how to find, identify and support these remarkable creatures in this practical guide from Liv Sisson, author of the very popular Fungi of Aotearoa. Featuring hundreds of full-colour photographs, diagrams, fun facts and up-to-date descriptions, Butterflies and Moths of Aotearoa will delight any curious mind, and inspire fresh adventures in your own backyard. [Flexibound]
>>Look inside.
Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the birth of History by Moudhy Al-Rashid $30
In ancient times, the vast area that stretches across what is now modern-day Iraq and Syria saw the rise and fall of epic civilizations who built the foundations of our world today. It was in this region, which we call Mesopotamia, that history was written down for the very first time. With startling modernity, the people of Mesopotamia left behind hundreds of thousands of fragments of their everyday lives. Immortalised in clay and stone are intimate details from 4000 years ago. We find accounts of an enslaved person negotiating their freedom, a dog's paw prints as it accidentally stepped into fresh clay, a parent desperately trying to soothe a baby with a lullaby, the imprint of a child's teeth as it sank them into their clay homework, and countless receipts for beer. In Between Two Rivers, Moudhy Al-Rashid examines what these people chose to preserve in their own words about their lives, creating the first historical records and allowing us to brush hands with them thousands of years later. [Paperback]
”Fascinating and magnificent, beautifully written and explained: this book is a masterpiece.” —George Monbiot
”I have never read a book on Mesopotamia that so beautifully brings to life the people themselves. There are beautiful descriptions of what it is to be pregnant, to give birth, to have small children, to love a dog. I love the way in which she's not just writing about priests or kings, but is giving us a clay tablet on which a little child has bitten, so you have the imprint of his teeth. It melts away the sense of time.” —Tom Holland
”A tender, moving and vivid history of ancient Mesopotamia and how it still speaks to us. This is so my jam.” —Robert Macfarlane
>>The stories we tell become the world we inhabit.
>>Cuneiform explained.
Styx: The river by Nikita Gill $40
The firstborn child of Titans, Styx is revered as the first of her kind — until she is eclipsed and forgotten amid her scores of siblings, the Oceanids and the Potamoi. Coming of age in a world simmering with paranoia and unspoken fear of Kronos, the volatile and unchecked god-king, Styx learns to conceal the rage ignited by her growing disillusionment with her parents and her vain and unkind siblings. Instead, she finds solace and sisterhood in her cousin, Asteria. Together, they train in the arts of creation and magic. And as they seek to learn their divine purpose and their place within the Titanomachy, they discover both the joy sparked by true love and the fierce resilience birthed from motherhood. In this verse retelling and adaptation of a Greek myth of sisterhood, identity, love, and war, Styx must carve her own path to womanhood — and ultimately, godhood. [Paperback]
”One of the things I loved best was the unapologetic and comprehensive focus on the female experience hidden in plain view in these ancient stories. We have Styx and Asteria's childhood friendship as a bond that rivals their eventual marriages, we have mothers, sisters, grandmothers and all the complexities, love and rivalry of those relationships. The book is in many ways a love story revolving around a female friendship. It absolutely broke my heart. It also contains a devastating warning — if as a woman you serve the Patriarchy, it will devour you.' —Elodie Harper
>>6000 siblings.
>>Also by Nikita Gill: Hekate.
The Adventure Illusion: Why life is not a journey by Simon Gusman and Arjen Kleinherenbrink $45
The Adventure Illusion dismantles one of contemporary culture's most seductive myths: that life itself should be an epic journey of trials, transformation, and triumph. The call to adventure saturates domains ranging from media to marketing, politics to business, and tourism to therapy. Drawing on existentialist philosophy, narrative theory, and cultural critique, this book reveals how the hero's journey has evolved from ancient mythology and medieval romance to a modern ideology that promises meaning and destiny where none inherently exist. Adventure's hidden costs are exposed through rigorous philosophical argument and detailed analyses of video games, corporate advertisements, social media behavior, and more. Across a variety of domains, adventure consistently fosters unattainable expectations, individualises systemic problems, legitimises violence through redemptive narratives, and forces marginalised lives into supporting roles. Against both rigid life scripts and postmodern chaos, The Adventure Illusion proposes adventurelessness — a liberating acceptance of contingency and plurality beyond the demand for heroic purpose. At once philosophically precise and culturally urgent, this work challenges readers to imagine stories and lives that no longer need quests to matter. [Paperback]
”The Adventure Illusion offers a philosophically serious diagnosis of the nearly ubiquitous fantasy that life itself has the structure of a meaningful story. Gusman and Kleinherenbrink show how the temptation to read existence retrospectively as an adventure distorts our understanding of freedom, responsibility, and failure. What follows is an unsentimental account of contingency that nonetheless takes seriously the role stories play in our self conceptions.” —Jon Cogburn, Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State University
Crack the Case: Mysteries at the Museum by Thea Hay and Facundo Aguirre $40
Solve mysteries and stop dastardly deeds with the help of your trusty Detective Torch. Shine the images on every page to create and crack puzzles, uncovering clues in a race against time. In Mysteries at the Museum, take on the role of renowned detective Inspector Renoir as you chase down a notorious art thief. This book contains three individual mysteries and over 25 puzzles, all part of a single thrilling story. Start the story, slot the Image Disc into your Detective Torch, and get cracking! On each page, you'll find a different puzzle for you and your torch to solve. With the torch switched on, rotate the disc to project the right image. On and off the page, use it to unlock a safe, shine a light on suspicious items, or even examine fingerprints at the scene of the crime. In the hands of an expert detective, there's no end to what your torch can tackle! But the torch isn't the only tool in your crime-fighting toolkit: the sturdy book-box doubles up as a map of the famed art museum where the heist takes place. This will come in handy on select puzzles that require a birds'-eye-view, so you have everything you need to unravel the mystery and catch the thief. Alongside the puzzles and the detective story, you'll find non-fiction entries on real-life art heists, crimefighting techniques, and even infamous blunders by criminal not-quite-masterminds! Crack the Case: Mysteries at the Museum is a one-of-a-kind interactive adventure that is sure to appeal to gamers, codebreakers and detectives-in-the-making, complete with timeless illustrations and memorable characters. The game is afoot — will you take up the chase? Includes: A gift-ready book-box with illustrated puzzle map; A high-quality Detective Torch; Three Image Discs; 64-page illustrated book, containing three mysteries to solve. [Boxed set]
>>Look inside!