NEW RELEASES (8.11.24)
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The Royal Free by Carl Shuker $38
Equal parts workplace comedy, home invasion thriller and literary conundrum, The Royal Free is an exuberant, dark, wildly entertaining novel about death and copy editing — by the author of the acclaimed A Mistake (now a film by Christine Jeffs). James Ballard is a recently bereaved single father to a baby daughter, and a medical editor tasked with saving the 'third oldest medical journal in the world', the Royal London Journal of Medicine, from the mistakes no one else notices — the misplaced apostrophes, the Freudian misspelling, the wrong subtype of an influenza strain (H2N1 or H5N1?). His job is utterly boring, but — or so he tells himself — totally crucial: the Royal London is a stronghold of care for the human body, a bastion of humanism in a disintegrating world. In the London outside of the office, the prognosis for the body politic is bad: civic unrest is poised on the brink of riots. Attempting to grieve for his lost young wife, while haunted by a group of violent North London teenagers in a collapsing city, James is brought to crisis. [Paperback]
”His understanding of how texts are formed and how they can be abused, his awareness of a decaying city and a decaying health system, and his ability to produce terror all add up to a kind of genius. Shuker in top form.” —NZ Listener
Toi te Mana: An indigenous history of Māori art by Deidre Brown, Ngarino Ellis, and Jonathan Mane-Wheoki $100
A landmark account in words and pictures of Māori art, by Māori art historians, covering everything from Polynesian voyaging waka to contemporary Māori artists. In 600 pages and over 500 images, this very impressive volume invites readers to climb on to the waka for a remarkable voyage — from ancestral weavers to contemporary artists at the Venice Biennale, from whare whakairo to film, and from Te Puea Herangi to Michael Parekowhai. The authors explore a wide field of art practice: raranga (plaiting), whatu (weaving), moko (tattoo), whakairo (carving),rakai (jewellery), kakahu (textiles), whare (architecture), toi whenua (rock art), painting, photography, sculpture, ceramics, installation art, digital media and film. And they do so over a long time period — from the arrival of Pacific voyagers 800 years ago to contemporary artists in Aotearoa and around the world today. Through wide-ranging chapters alongside focused breakout boxes on individual artists, movements and events, Toi te Mana is a waka eke noa — an essential book for anyone interested in te ao Māori. [Hardback]
Slender Volumes by Richard von Sturmer $38
Slender Volumes locates the cypress trees of Buddhist folklore in Onehunga and the teachings of the Zen tradition along its foreshore. Elaborating on kōans collected by poet-philosopher Eihei Dōgen, each poem fastens centuries and distances together to find insight in everyday things: seagulls on a handrail, insects drinking from a pan of water, sump oil glistening in a white bucket. Clear-sighted and compassionate, Slender Volumes recovers what it means to be intimate with our surroundings and to meet the particulars of our world with perfect curiosity. Very nicely written and produced. [Paperback with French flaps]
/slanted by Alison Glenny $30
A field guide to the spirit and endeavours of Edwardian mountaineer Freda Du Faur (1882–1935), the first woman to summit Aoraki Mount Cook, the highest peak in the Southern Alps of Aotearoa New Zealand. Through flights of verse, pages of concrete visual poetry, and fragments of archival materials, this new collection is glistening with newness on every page.
”/slanted is to me three things: one; a finely-made poetry of the eye, which becomes simultaneously and intensely a poetry of the ear and the echo, two; an historical poetry interested in the language of prior texts, and three; a deeply civilisational poetics, because it approachesEnglish through a non-Western and anti-imperialistic lens. Combining these three things, Glenny is a marvellous and challenging Antipodean experimentalist.” —A.J. Carruthers
”Glenny is as devoted to the ridges and valleys of the line and letter as her collection’s real-life muse and subject, climber Freda Du Faur, is to scaling the peaks. /slanted brings together paraphrase, erasure, shape and LANGUAGE poetry in an elliptical, challenging book. This is poetry that knows the power of form—of ordering, arrangement, selection—a collection that knows the power of placing one foot after another.” —Jake Arthur
”/slanted feels created by hand and by foot. The hardened heels, the ice-cut steps and the glacier-wear (in this case, skirts!) are palpable, while the snow and stalactites and steep-angled slopes sprawl like obstacles across the page. Through it all, Freda Du Faur treads slowly over two-faced mountains, a “sporting female” battered by altitude and her time in history, straining to see but never knowing what she means to us now. Climbing becomes poetry, and poetry a way of climbing up and out of the past.” —Laura Williamson
Paper Boat: New and selected poems, 1962—2023 by Margaret Atwood $60
Tracing the legacy of a writer who has fundamentally shaped our contemporary literary landscapes, Paper Boat assembles Atwood's most vital poems in one volume. In pieces that are at once brilliant, beautiful and hyper-imagined, Atwood gives voices to remarkably drawn characters — mythological figures, animals and everyday people — all of whom have something to say about what it means to live in a world as strange as our own. 'How can one live with such a heart?' Atwood asks, casting her spell upon the reader, and ferrying us through life, death and whatever comes next. Walking the tightrope between reality and fantasy as only she can, Atwood's journey through poetry illuminates our most innate joys and sorrows, desires and fears. Spanning six decades of work — from her earliest beginnings to brand new poems — this volume charts the evolution of one of our most iconic and necessary authors. [Hardback]
”What a book of magic Paper Boat is a bright and cornucopic life force of a book. It resounds with the acuteness of Atwood's wisdom, the warmth of her cold eye, her uniquely lit courage.” —Ali Smith, Guardian
Future Jaw-Clap: The Primitive Art Group and Braille Collective story by Daniel Beban $50
Future Jaw-Clap tells the story of a highly influential movement in New Zealand music: the self-made musicians of pioneering free jazz ensemble Primitive Art Group, who carved out their own radical musical language in the cold, hard reality of 1980s Wellington, and have gone on to richly diverse careers in music. From their beginnings as ‘the punks of jazz’ in small clubs and the anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid protests of the early 1980s, through the heyday of the Braille Collective's many colourful groups, self-released records and intersections with dance, theatre and visual arts, to the Six Volts providing music for the iconic album Songs From the Front Lawn, and beyond, these musicians and the many others they have drawn into their orbit have done much to shape the music of Aotearoa. Based on a deep oral history project and extensive archival research, and illustrated with photographs and other items, Future Jaw-Clap is a portal into an extraordinary musical world of free music in Aotearoa. [Flexibound]
”Astounding and illuminating.” —Thurston Moore
”Wonderful.” —Nick Bollinger
”A must-read.” —Mike Nock
”Everyone who wants to start a band in Aotearoa should read this book.” —Don McGlashan
Last month, Primitive Art Group released a new double LP, 1981–1986, from Amish Records, available from Flying Out. This gatefold, 2XLP combines the group’s only two albums, consisting of one LP of Five Tread Drop Down cuts plus 'Cecil Likes to Dance', a never-before-released live recording from Thistle Hall (1984) and the full 1985 LP Future Jaw-Clap.
Petroglyphs by Craig Foltz $30
US Ex-pat Craig Foltz’s latest collection continues his interrogation of language, space and time. More than simple time stamps, these Petroglpyhs chart the inner workings of consciousness via the examination of mythical creatures, strip malls and various bodies of water. The form of these works morph and dissolve over time. A book becomes paper. Becomes fire. Becomes ashes. Sometimes it is only through the prism of an unimagined other that we can fully locate ourselves. [Paperback]
”In the poems of Petroglyphs, Craig Foltz is like a burlesque artist who begins the act wearing dozens of layers and strips down until he is covered by only the most strategically-placed phrases. The book’s three sections—by turns expansive, lapidary, and fragmentary—show how a great deal of what we ‘know’ can be summoned up by mere suggestion, and that attempts at explanations don’t necessarily make things clearer.By the end you’ll feel naive for having believed in stable concepts in a world where there are curious semantic slippages, where ‘practical experience is no substitute for practical experience’.” —Erik Kennedy
”This is poetry that makes me want to write poetry. Causation and correlation tease apart like pulled jackfruit; a phrase could be a ladder ora riptide. Dextrous, inquisitive and rich—swap where are we going? for how are we having this much fun?” —Ya-Wen Ho
”This is a sparkling work, transporting the reader through layers of biology, paleontology and deep time. The only constant is an overarching imagination, transforming itself, sentence by sentence, into something wonderful and strange.” —Richard von Sturmer
”1. Affixes of lithic matter escape morphology. 2. Meaning buckles under the pressure of cellular mysticism. 3. Taxonomy spreads limbic.4. Under a microscope, a diatom may appear as a smooth pebble or an aperture of light. 5. Poets are advised to bring a headtorch, waterproof footwear and to mind the stalactites.” —Toyah Webb
Living Things by Munir Hachemi (translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches) $28
Living Things follows four recent graduates — Munir, G, Ernesto, and Álex — who travel from Madrid to the south of France to work the grape harvest. Except things don't go as planned: they end up working on an industrial chicken farm and living in a campground, where a general sense of menace takes hold. What follows is a compelling and incisive examination of precarious employment, capitalism, immigration, and the mass production of living things, all interwoven with the protagonist's thoughts on literature and the nature of storytelling. [Paperback]
"Startling, compulsive, and vibrant; Living Things reads like an ignition. The most honest thing I've read in a long time about being young and alive in a beautiful, horrible world." —Dizz Tate
"Living Things dips blithely in and out of genres and packs more ideas in its lean frame than seems possible. It's a novel posing as a journal posing as a meditation on the function of the journal that playfully interrogates form and content in art, what it means to write, and what it means to care or not care about anything, or about everything. Munir Hachemi is a magician, and his marvellous book, deftly translated by Julia Sanches, defies adequate description." —James Greer
An Absence of Cousins by Lore Segal $28
Ilka Weisz is in need not just of friends but 'elective cousins'. She has left her home in New York to accept a junior teaching post at the prestigious Concordance Institute, a liberal college in bucolic Connecticut. But how can she, a Jewish refugee from Vienna, find a new set to belong to - a surrogate family? Might the Shakespeares — the institute's director and his wry, acerbic wife — hold the key? In these interlinked New Yorker stories, Lore Segal evokes the comic melancholy of the outsider and the ineffectual ambitions of a progressive, predominantly WASP-ish institution. Tragedy and loss haunt characters as they plan an academic symposium on genocide, while their privileged lives contrast starkly with those on a derelict housing project next door. [Paperback]
Into a Star by Puk Qvortrup (translated from Danish by Hazel Evans) $38
'Three in the bed. One not yet born, another dead, and I'm alive.' Puk is 26 years old, preparing for the birth of her second child, when her husband has a heart attack on his morning run. She leaves their toddler with a friend and dashes to the hospital, where Lasse lies unresponsive in a coma. He dies a few hours later. Into a Star follows Puk and her young family for one year after this tragedy, which has shattered the ordinary life she thought she would live, as she finds her way slowly through the enormous grief and, eventually, out the other side. With remarkable dignity, candour and attention to the domestic details that make us human, Puk Qvortrup invites us into the hardest moments of her life. And she reveals, amid the devastation, a powerful thread of hope. [Paperback]
"Into a Star is a luminous meditation on loss and renewal. Despite the heart-breaking subject matter, it filled me with a sense of life’s beauty, and of the unexpected paths we take to happiness.” —Hermione Thompson
”Into A Star is written with an immediate simplicity that it's impossible to resist. A private tragedy reminiscent of Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights. But Puk Qvortrup writes younger, more exposed, more from the body.” —Svenska Dagbladet
New Stories by Owen Marshall $38
Accidental meetings, unexpected turns in the road, job offers that take you into new territories- our lives seem arbitrary and unpredictable. In Marshall’s latest collection of short stories , people teeter on the brink of experience. From murder to an affair, to a promotion or a breakdown, the array of vivid characters aren't always aware of what they encounter, not sure whether they are being given an opportunity, a challenge, a temptation, a lesson, or just another day to get through. Meanwhile, feelings of fear, lust, curiosity and frustration simmer beneath the surface. Will the people grasp what life throws at them? [Paperback]
The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank $35
We all used to be something else, and we will all be something new again in the worlds to come. Written in an effort to ward off existential dread, and to find new understandings and consolations for those similarly afflicted, The Chthonic Cycle is an eccentric and brilliantly curated tour through time, in which fascinating objects glint and spark and the transience of humanity flickers. At the heart of Una Cruickshank’s debut are Earth’s interlocking cycles of death and reuse. The blood of a billion-year-old tree emerges from the sea as a drop of amber; 4,756,940 pieces of Lego float towards the Cornish Peninsula; a giant squid’s beak passes through a whale’s intestines into bottles of Chanel No. 5. The violence of colonisation underpins some of the transformations illuminated here, as we follow wave after wave of ruin and remaking. This is a rare kind of writing, both galaxy-sweeping and microscopically specific. The Chthonic Cycle reminds us to be chastened and scared by our world — its mind-bending age, the insane complexity of its systems, the violent upheavals and mass extinctions — as well as to be awed.
”Rich and lyrical, gorgeous and astonishing, scientific and poetic — this stunning collection has left me smiling, looking afresh at the world. I loved this book for its intensity and curiosity and its vivid language.” —Rebecca Priestley
”Una Cruickshank reaches across the history of life on Earth to hold a mirror up to our lives. With exacting precision, charisma and curiosity, The Chthonic Cycle casts light on the links between everything in the vast web of earthly delights, putting each of our lives in the perspective of deep time and the ever-present cycles of evolution and extinction. Every page of this rich and illuminating debut is a feast.” —Ash Davida Jane
Nights Out at Home: Recipes and stories from twenty-five years as a restaurant critic by Jay Rayner $55
”For the past twenty-five years, I have been reviewing restaurants across Britain and beyond, from the humblest of diners to the grandest of gastro-palaces. And throughout I've been taking the best ideas home with me to create glorious dishes for my own table. Now I get to share those recipes with you.” In Nights Out at Home, Jay Rayner's first cookbook, the award-winning writer and broadcaster gives us delicious, achievable recipes inspired by the restaurant creations that have stolen his heart over the decades, for you to cook in your own kitchen. With sixty recipes that take their inspiration from restaurants dishes served across the UK and further afield, Nights Out at Home includes a cheat's version of the Ivy's famed crispy duck salad, the brown butter and sage flatbreads from Manchester's Erst, miso-glazed aubergine from Freak Scene and instructions for making the cult tandoori lamb chops from the legendary Tayyabs in London's Whitechapel; a recipe which has never before been written down. It also features Jay's irresistible, MasterChef Critics-winning baked chocolate pudding with cherries, and his own personal take on the mighty Greggs Steak Bake. Seasoned with stories from Jay's life as a restaurant critic, and written with warmth, wit and the blessing, and often help, of the chefs themselves, Nights Out at Home is a celebration of good food and great eating experiences, filled with dishes to inspire all cooks. [Hardback]
”A fantastic collection of heart warming, full-flavoured recipes from one of Britain's leading food writers. A must buy for anyone who loves food, restaurants and cooking.” —Tom Kerridge
”Jay has a way with words, but he's also a dab hand in the kitchen. This book is not just a collection of food memories but also of recipes that make you want to roll up your sleeves and start cooking.” —Michel Roux
Lily, Oh Lily: Searching for a Nazi ghost by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman $37
Some family stories, fragments of their lives, continue to nag and haunt us. Lily Hasenburg was just such a figure in Holman's growing years. She was whispered into his ear by grandmother Eunice — in memorable stories of her older sister, who married and moved to Germany at the turn of the 20th century, and was later caught up in the Nazi web spun around Adolf Hitler. Unable to shake loose this story, Holman pursued her to Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden. Here, we have an account of his pilgrimage; the kind of family history we might bury, and forget — to our loss. [Paperback]
”Holman travels, learns German, encounters the lost who were always right there. Lily, Oh Lily is family memoir at full stretch, made with love, yearning and just a hint of reproach. A wise, timely, beautiful read.” —Diana Wichtel
The Horse: A galloping history of humanity by Timothy Winegard $45
The Horse is an epic history that begins more than 5500 years ago on the windswept grasslands of the Eurasian Steppe when the first horse was tamed and an unbreakable bond with humans was forged — a bond that transformed the future of humanity. Since that pivotal moment, the horse has carried the fate of civilisations on its powerful back. For millennia it was the primary mode of transport, an essential farming machine, a steadfast companion and a formidable weapon of war. With its unique combination of size, speed, strength, and stamina, the horse has influenced every facet of human life and widened the scope of human ambition and achievement. Horses revolutionised the way we hunted, traded, travelled, farmed, fought, worshipped and interacted. They fundamentally modified the human genome and the world's linguistic map. They determined international borders, moulded cultures, fuelled economies, and decided the destinies of conquerors and empires. And they were vectors of lethal disease and contributed to lifesaving medical innovations. Horses even inspired architecture, invention, furniture and fashion. From the thundering cavalry charges of Alexander the Great to the streets of New York during the Great Manure Crisis of 1894 and beyond, horses have been integral to both the grand arc of history and our everyday lives. [Paperback]
Jewish, Not Zionist by Marilyn Garson $30
Raised in Zionism, Marilyn Garson worked four years in Gaza and let it challenge everything she thought she knew. She returned to Aotearoa seeking both Jewish community and justice in Palestine. Painfully excluded by some, she co-founded Alternative Jewish Voices to let belief fuel activism. Nationally and internationally, this story comes from the front line of a principled movement for Jewish solidarity with Palestine. Garson grew up in Canada, the youngest of four sisters in a Zionist-Jewish household. She immigrated to Hokianga in the mid-1980s. From 1998 she worked in Cambodia and Afghanistan. In 2011, she received an offer to work in the Gaza Strip—an extraordinary invitation to live among people she had been told were her enemies. Her first book, Still Lives – a Memoir of Gaza tells the story of four years, two wars, and an unlikely social enterprise. Garson returned to Aotearoa in 2015. [Paperback]
The 113th Assistant Librarian by Stuart Wilson $24
Oliver Wormwood thinks his new job in the library will be boring. Until he learns that books hold great power — and danger. By the end of his first day, Oliver has witnessed the librarian's death, been frozen by a book, met a perplexing number of cats, and fought off a horde of terrifying creatures. With only a mysterious girl called Agatha to show him the ropes, Oliver needs to learn fast — if he wants to live longer than the 112 assistant librarians before him. [Hardback]
Eleven Writers and Leaders on Democracy, And why it matters by Margaret Atwood, Mary Beard, Elif Shafak, Lea Ypi, Lola Shoneyin, Aditi MIttal, Yuan Yang, Erica Benner, Adela Raz, Kaja Kallas, and Vjosa Osmani $19
Urgent reflections on the value of democracy from eleven women writers and thought-leaders 2024 is an exceptional year for democracy. Nearly half the world's population will take part in a national election, with billions heading to the polls. It's a thrilling, unprecedented moment for change — yet democracy is also under threat. Women are at the forefront of the fight for democratic rights, as well as most vulnerable when those rights disappear. Here eleven extraordinary women — leaders, philosophers, historians, writers and activists — explore democracy's power to uplift our societies. Between its ancient origins and its modern challenges, they share a vision for a better future — one we can build together. A bit late for some but even more urgent because of this. [Paperback]
“2024 is a year of elections. But will it be remembered as a year of democracy? That is in the balance. Democracy cannot be limited to a campaign, a vote, a victory speech. It is a process - or, to be more precise, a series of processes - that go to the heart of what a society really is. It depends on our shared understandings and on our commitment to making it work.” —Juliet Riddell