NEW RELEASES (30.6.23)
New books — just out of the carton! Click through for your copies now.
Bibliolepsy by Gina Apostol $37
It is the mid-eighties, two decades into the kleptocratic, brutal rule of Ferdinand Marcos. The Philippine economy is in deep recession, and civil unrest is growing by the day. But Primi Peregrino has her own priorities: tracking down books and pursuing romantic connections with their authors. For Primi, the nascent revolution means that writers are gathering more often, and with greater urgency, so that every poetry reading she attends presents a veritable ‘Justice League’ of authors for her to choose among. As the Marcos dictatorship stands poised to topple, Primi remains true to her fantasy: that she, "a vagabond from history, a runaway from time," can be saved by sex, love, and books.
"Bibliolepsy, despite all the couplings and uncouplings, is not a love story, or at least not a typical love story involving a man or a woman. It is, as the title implies, about an obsessive, overpowering love of books. For those of us who have gotten down on our hands and knees to thoroughly search bargain book bins, we will find our fervor echoed in the character of pale, biblioleptic Primi, and find Bibliolepsy dizzyingly eloquent, slightly disturbing, but ultimately strangely comforting." —Luis Katigbak, The Philippine Star
>>We never see ourselves as others see us.
Home Reading Service by Fabio Morábito (translated by Curtis Bauer) $26
After a traffic accident, Eduardo is sentenced to a year of community service reading to the elderly and disabled. Stripped of his driver's licence and feeling impotent as he nears thirty-five, he leads a dull, lonely life, chatting occasionally with the waitresses of a local restaurant or walking the streets of Cuernavaca. Once a quiet town known for its lush gardens and swimming pools, the ‘City of Eternal Spring’ is now plagued by robberies, kidnappings, and the other myriad forms of violence bred by drug trafficking. At first, Eduardo seems unable to connect. He movingly reads the words of Dostoyevsky, Henry James, Daphne du Maurier, and more, but doesn't truly understand them. His eccentric listeners — including two brothers, one mute, who moves his lips while the other acts as ventriloquist; deaf parents raising children they don't know are hearing; and a beautiful, wheelchair-bound mezzo soprano — sense his detachment. Then Eduardo comes across a poem his father had copied by the Mexican poet Isabel Fraire, and it affects him as no literature has before. Through these fascinating characters, like the practical, quick-witted Celeste, who intuitively grasps poetry even though she never learned to read, Morabito shows how art can help us rediscover meaning in a corrupt, unequal society.
"First, the tempting promise of an almost existential discovery, then bewilderment, subtle humor, and then everything in this story that seemed small and simple strikes back with extraordinary resonance. What a pleasure it always is to read Morabito." —Samanta Schweblin
>>Poetry can be dangerous.
Granta 162: Definitive narratives of escape $33
Raymond Antrobus on performer Johnnie Ray, Marina Benjamin on playing professional blackjack, Chanelle Benz on searching for a homeland, Annie Ernaux (tr. Alison L. Strayer) on what affairs can help us bear, Richard Eyre on his grandfathers, Des Fitzgerald on losing his brother, Caspar Henderson on the sounds in space, Amitava Kumar on India today, Emily LaBarge on PTSD, Michael Moritz on antisemitism in Wales, TaraShea Nesbit on coping with a miscarriage, Roger Reeves on visiting a former site of slavery, Xiao Yue Shan on Iceland. Fiction by Carlos Fonseca (tr. Megan McDowell), Maylis de Kerangal (tr. Jessica Moore) and Catherine Lacey; photography by Kalpesh Lathigra; in conversation with Granta, Cian Oba-Smith, introduced by Gary Younge, and Aaron Schuman, introduced by Sigrid Rausing. Plus a poem by Peter Gizzi.
Hit Parade of Tears by Izumi Suzuki $25
Izumi Suzuki had ideas of how things might be done differently, ideas that paid little heed to the laws of physics, or the laws of the courts. In this new collection her skewed imagination is applied to some classic science fiction and fantasy tropes. A philandering husbands receives a bestial punishment from a wife who'd kept her own secrets; time-travelling pop music aficionados stir up temporal bother when their nostalgia carries them away; idle high school students find themselves dropped into a adventure in another dimension, but aren't all that impressed; a misfit band of space pirates discover a mysterious baby among the stars; Emma, the Bovary-like character from Terminal Boredom's 'Forgotten', lands herself in another bizarre romantic pickle. From the author of Terminal Boredom.
>>Twisted precision.
>>A writer from the future.
>>Punk rock sci-fi.
They Call It Love: The politics of emotional life by Alva Gotby $40
Comforting a family member or friend, soothing children, providing company for the elderly, ensuring that people feel well enough to work; this is all essential labour. Without it, capitalism would cease to function. They Call It Love investigates the work that makes a haven in a heartless world, examining who performs this labour, how it is organised, and how it might change. Gotby calls this work ‘emotional reproduction’, unveiling its inherently political nature. It not only ensures people's well-being but creates sentimental attachments to social hierarchy and the status quo. Drawing on the thought of the feminist movement Wages for Housework, Gotby demonstrates that emotion is a key element of capitalist reproduction. To improve the way we relate to one another will require a radical restructuring of society.
>>How do you know you are loved?
Scream (‘Object Lessons’ series) by Michael J. Seidlinger $23
When you are born, the first thing you do is scream. Be it a response to fear, anger, sadness, or happiness, the scream is a declaration of being alive. The metal vocalist cupping the microphone blares out a deafeningly harsh scream. The drill instructor screams out commands to their soldiers. And then there's the bloodcurdling screams we know from horror films. A scream has many meanings, but it is an instinctive and reflexive action that, at its core, reveals raw emotion.Investigating popular and alternative cultures, art, and science, Michael J. Seidlinger tracks the resonance of the scream across media and literature and in his own voice.
>>Other ‘Object Lessons’.
The Gospel of Orla by Eoghan Walls $37
The Gospel of Orla is the coming-of-age story of a young girl, Orla, and the man she meets who has an astonishing and unique ability. It is also a road novel that takes us across the north of England after the two flee Orla's village together. Here the mysteries of faith charge full bore into the vagaries of contemporary mores. A humorous, wise, deeply human and sometimes breathtaking work of lyrical fiction.
"The Gospel of Orla is written with immense control and precision so that the voice of the protagonist emerges as alive, individual and memorable. Eoghan Walls manages to make every single emotion Orla feels — every thought, response and action — utterly convincing and fresh and original." —Colm Toibin
Jena, 1800: The Republic of Free Spirits by Peter Neumann (translated by Shelley Frisch) $40
At the turn of the nineteenth century, a steady stream of young German poets and thinkers coursed to the town of Jena to make history. In the wake of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, confidence in traditional social, political, and religious norms had been replaced by a profound uncertainty that was as terrifying for some as it was exhilarating for others. Nowhere was the excitement more palpable than among the extraordinary group of poets, philosophers, translators, and socialites who gathered in Jena. This village of just four thousand residents soon became the place to be for the young and intellectually curious in search of philosophical disruption. Influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, then an elder statesman and artistic eminence, the leading figures among the disruptors — the translator August Wilhelm Schlegel; the philosophers Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich Schelling; the dazzling, controversial intellectual Caroline Schlegel, married to August; the poet and translator Dorothea Schlegel, married to Friedrich; and the poets Ludwig Tieck and Novalis — resolved to rethink the world, to establish a republic of free spirits. They didn't just question inherited societal traditions; with their provocative views of the individual and of nature, they revolutionised our understanding of freedom and reality.
The Jaguar by Sarah Holland-Batt $30
Sarah Holland-Batt confronts what it means to be mortal in an astonishing and humane portrait of a father's Parkinson's Disease, and a daughter forged by grief. Opening and closing with elegies set in the charged moments before and after a death, and compulsively probing the body's animal endurance and appetites, along with the metamorphoses of long illness, The Jaguar is marked by Holland-Batt's distinctive lyric intensity and linguistic mastery, along with a stark new clarity of voice. In this collection Holland-Batt is at her most exacting and uncompromising — these ferociously intelligent, insistent poems refuse to look away, and challenge us to view ruthless witness as a form of love.
Winner of the 2023 Stella Prize.
‘A Bloody Difficult Subject’: Ruth Ross, te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the making of history by Bain Attwood $60
Ruth Ross is hardly a household name, yet most New Zealanders today owe the way they understand the Treaty of Waitangi — or te Tiriti o Waitangi as Ross called it — to this remarkable woman’s path-breaking historical research. Taking us on a journey from small university classes and a lively government department in the nation’s war-time capital to an economically poor but culturally rich Māori community in the far north, and from tiny schools and cloistered university offices to parliamentary committees and a legal tribunal, Attwood enables us to grasp how and why the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand law, politics, society and culture has been transformed in the last seven decades. A frank and moving meditation on the making of history and its advantages and disadvantages for life in a democratic society, A Bloody Difficult Subject is a surprising story full of unforeseen circumstances, unexpected twists, unlikely turns and unanticipated outcomes.
Malta: Mediterranean recipes from the islands by Simon Bajada $50
Over 65 recipes from the archipelago between Italy and the North African coast. Exploring his own family heritage, author Simon Bajada captures Maltese food for the home cook, with recipes including ftira, a sourdough bread drenched in tomato, tuna and olives; aljotta soup, a flavour-packed brew of fish and garlic; and pastizzi, a deliciously addictive pastry.
>>Look inside!
Pregnancy Test (‘Object Lessons’ series) by Karen Weingarten $23
In the 1970s, the invention of the home pregnancy test changed what it means to be pregnant. For the first time, women could use a technology in the privacy of their own homes that gave them a yes or no answer. That answer had the power to change the course of their reproductive lives, and it chipped away at a paternalistic culture that gave gynecologists-the majority of whom were men-control over information about women's bodies.However, while science so often promises clear-cut answers, the reality of pregnancy is often much messier. Pregnancy Test explores how the pregnancy test has not always lived up to the fantasy that more information equals more knowledge. Karen Weingarten examines the history and cultural representation of the pregnancy test to show how this object radically changed sex and pregnancy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
>>Other ‘Object Lessons’.
My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New fiction by Afghan women edited by Lyse Doucet and Lucy Hannah $28
"My pen is the wing of a bird; it will tell you those thoughts we are not allowed to think, those dreams we are not allowed to dream." A woman's fortitude saves her village from disaster. A teenager explores their identity in a moment of quiet. A petition writer reflects on his life as a dog lies nursing her puppies. A tormented girl tries to find love through a horrific act. A headmaster makes his way to work, treading the fine line between life and death. My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird is a landmark collection: the first anthology of short fiction by Afghan women. Eighteen writers — from the country’s two main linguistic groups Pashto and Dari — tell stories that are both unique and universal — stories of family, work, childhood, friendship, war, gender identity and cultural traditions.
"This book reminds us that everyone has a story. Stories matter; so too the storytellers. Afghan women writers, informed and inspired by their own personal experiences, are best placed to bring us these powerful insights into the lives of Afghans and, most of all, the lives of women. Women's lives, in their own words — they matter." —Lyse Doucet
Into the Forest: A Holocaust story of survival, triumph, and love by Rebecca Frankel $40
In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing to the forbidding Bialowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods — through brutal winters, Typhus outbreaks, and merciless Nazi raids — until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944. After the war they trekked across the Alps into Italy where they settled as refugees before eventually immigrating to the United States. During the first ghetto massacre, Miriam Rabinowitz rescued a young boy named Philip by pretending he was her son. Nearly a decade later, a chance encounter at a wedding in Brooklyn would lead Philip to find the woman who saved him — and to discover her daughter Ruth was the love of his life.
The Forevers by Cjris Whitaker $20
They knew the end was coming. They saw it ten years back, when it was far enough away in space and time and meaning. The changes were gradual, and then sudden. For Mae and her friends, it means navigating a life where action and consequence are no longer related. Where the popular are both trophies and targets. And where petty grudges turn deadlier with each passing day. So, did Abi Manton jump off the cliff or was she pushed? Her death is just the beginning of the end. With teachers losing control of their students and themselves, and the end rushing toward all of them, it leaves everyone facing the answer to one, simple question... What would you do if you could get away with anything? A gripping YA novel.
The Germ Lab: The grusome story of deadly diseases by Richard Platt and John Kelly $23
A comprehensive history of diseases, infections, plagues, and pandemics for young readers. The Germ Lab features case histories of specific epidemics and pandemics, including Covid-19, ‘eyewitness’ accounts from the rats, flies, ticks and creepy-crawlies who spread the most deadly viruses, plus plenty of fascinating facts and figures on the biggest and worst afflictions. Discover how bacteri, viruses and parasites are beaten through the work of scientists and the development of vaccinations.