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The Abyss by Fernando Callejo (translated from Spanish by Yvette Siegert) $40
A memorably caustic autobiographical novel about the demise of a crumbling house in Medellín, Colombia. Fernando, a writer, visits his brother Darío, who is dying of AIDS. Recounting their wild philandering and trying to come to terms with his beloved brother's inevitable death, Fernando rants against the political forces that cause so much suffering. Vallejo is the heir to Céline, Thomas Paine, and Machado de Assis. He hurls vitriolic, savagely funny insults at his country and at his mother who has given birth to him and his many siblings. Within this firestorm of pain, Fernando manages to get across much beauty and truth: that all love is painful and washed in pure sorrow. He loves his sick brother and the family's Santa Anita farm (the lost paradise of his childhood where azaleas bloomed); and he even loves his country, now torn to shreds. Always, in this savage novel about loss — as if in the eye of Vallejo's hurricane of talent — we are in the curiously comforting workings of memory and of the writing process itself, as, recollecting time, it offers immortality. [Paperback]
"Proof that people in Colombia don't read is that Vallejo hasn't been shot yet." —Juan Gabriel Vasquez
"Vallejo inserts the violence battering his country into the very language of his text where words are no mere reflection, they are the violence that startles and overwhelms the reader." —Juan Goytisolo
"Vallejo's novel is about how to care for oneself and others, human and nonhuman beings, when everything seems doomed." —Bruno Franco, Full Stop

• Read an extract.

• Dying in time to escape global warming.

The Seers by Sulaiman Addonia $36
The Seers follows the first weeks of a homeless Eritrean refugee in London. Set around a foster home in Kilburn and in the squares of Bloomsbury, where its protagonist Hannah sleeps, the novel grapples with how agency is given to the sexual lives of refugees, presenting gender-fluid, trans and androgynous African immigrants, and insisting that the erotic and intimate side of life is as much a part of someone’s story as ‘land and nations’ are. Hannah arrives in London with her mother’s diary, containing a disturbing sexual story taking place in Keren, Eritrea, where the Allies defeated the Italians in the Second World War. In a gripping, continuous paragraph, The Seers moves between the present day and the past to explore intergenerational histories, colonial trauma, and the realities of the UK asylum system and its impact on young refugees. Sulaiman Addonia is an Eritrean-Ethiopian-British novelist. He spent his early life in a refugee camp in Sudan, and his early teens in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He arrived in London as an underage unaccompanied refugee without a word of English and went on to earn an MA in Development Studies from SOAS and a BSc in Economics from UCL. [Paperback]
”The Seers is an incandescent howl of anti-colonial rage and insatiable desire; a powerful and taboo-breaking love letter to a London made of stories, and a scathing indictment of the UK asylum system’s ability to break hearts and bodies to pieces again and again.” —Preti Taneja

• Writing without fear.

• Should politicians be listening to writers?

• Dancing on the page.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes) $40
Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital "creatives" exploring the excitements of the city, freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online. At first, they reasonably deduce that they've turned their passion for aesthetics into a viable, even enviable career, but the years go by, and Anna and Tom grow bored. As their friends move back home or move on, so their own work and sex life — and the life of Berlin itself — begin to lose their luster. An attempt to put their politics into action fizzles in embarrassed self-doubt. Edging closer to forty, they try living as digital nomads only to discover that, wherever they go, "the brand of oat milk in their flat whites was the same." Perfection is a scathing novel about contemporary existence, a tale of two people gradually waking up to find themselves in various traps, wondering how it all came to be. Was it a lack of foresight, or were they just born too late? [Paperback]
Short-listed for the 2025 International Booker Prize.
"Vincenzo Latronico is a writer who sees clearly and conveys it beautifully. In Perfection, he paints a stark picture of the conditions that have created a generation's 'identical struggle for a different life': globalisation, homogenisation, the internet. Though on one level the novel is (pitch-perfectly) 'about' Berlin and the 'creative professional' expatriates who have sought a different life in, and inevitably colonised, the city, the story of Anna and Tom will be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has tried to resist the flattening effects of whatever life is now. I can't recommend it highly enough." —Lauren Oyler
"Perfection gave me the gift of being able to hold a long span of time — in a relationship, in a city — and the experience of being young, and the experience of being not so young — all in my head at once. I could hold it there the way you hold a parable or fable, but with all these tiny details, too. It also functioned like a kind of murder mystery: what killed the magic? Was it their values, was it aging, was it... was it...? It's such a beautiful, thoughtful, impeccably crafted book." —Sheila Heti
"Perfection is a jewel of a novel: precisely cut, intricately faceted, prismatically dazzling at its heart. Vincenzo Latronico is the finest of writers." —Lauren Groff

• Rewriting Georges Perec.

• The age of aimless aspiration.

• Read an extract.

• An interview with the author and the translator.

• A reading.

The Honditsch Cross: A tale from 1813 by Ingeborg Bachmann (translated from German by Tess Lewis) $40
An early novel from the author of the wholly remarkable Malina, translated into English for the first time. In the final days of the Napoleonic occupation of Austria in 1813, a young theology student, returning from Vienna to his family home in Carinthia, finds the invading troops stationed there, led by a despotic officer who has been exploiting and terrorising his family and friends. He is immediately thrown into the centre of the conflict, torn between defending his homeland, the pull of physical desire, and the pursuit of his theological studies. In this work, Bachmann begins to explore themes that will pre-occupy her for the rest of her writing career: complex notions of nationality and patriotism, the roles and rights of women in patriarchal societies, the meaningless destruction of war and its aftermath, and the bitter moments of disillusionment that lead to intellectual maturity. [Paperback]
”A quietly furious work, bitterly conscious of the ideological threads that tie the blithe nationalism of the 19th century to its 20th century apotheosis. Bachmann’s father was a lieutenant in the Wehrmacht, and all her work is astoundingly clear-eyed about ambiguities, ambivalences and nostalgic rationalisations of fascism.” —The Berliner
"Equal to the best of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett." —The New York Times Book Review
"Bachmann's vision is so original that the effect is like having a new letter of the alphabet." —The Guardian

• Read Thomas’s review of Malina.

Gilgamesh: A new translation of the ancient epic by Sophus Helle $29
Gilgamesh is a Babylonian story about love between men; loss and grief; the confrontation with death; the destruction of nature; insomnia and restlessness; finding peace in one's community; the voice of women; the folly of gods, heroes, and monsters — and more. Translating directly from the Akkadian, Sophus Helle offers a literary translation that reproduces the original epic's poetic effects, including its succinct clarity and enchanting cadence. Millennia after its composition, Gilgamesh continues to speak to us in myriad ways. [Paperback]
"Looks to be the last word on this Babylonian masterpiece." —Michael Dirda, Washington Post
"Lively, earthy, and scrupulous in its scholarship." —Robert Macfarlane, New York Review of Books
"Sophus Helle's Gilgamesh is woven of earthly, muscular language that breathes an epic of gutsy dreams and ancient knowhow. In Helle's rendition, this scholar truly translates rhythm and movement until Gilgamesh breathes anew." —Yusef Komunyakaa
"The translation is elegant and eloquent. The essays and elucidations are learned, lively, and hugely illuminating. Sophus Helle is a poet, a scholar, and, if truth be told, a genius." —Marshall Brown, University of Washington
"Helle's new translation reminds us just what a miracle it is that Gilgamesh has survived, an emblem of mortality available only in fragments, yet speaking to our mortal loves and fears with undying force." —Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University

• Prismatic Gilgamesh.

• Working with fragments.

• Challenges.

Natalja’s Stories by Inger Christensen (translated from Danish by Denise Newman) $36
modeled after Boccaccio's Decameron, takes an usual approach to the theme of migration by focusing on the shifting ground of meaning itself. It is a tale told to the narrator by her grandmother — about her mother, "abducted" by a Russian from Copenhagen: taken to Russia, she tries to flee the Revolution; she dies and her ashes are carried back to Denmark. But the story is told and retold in marvelous ways, digressing playfully (often hilariously), and involving murders and absurd characters, with wonderful repeating motifs and passages. Natalja's Stories springs surprise after surprise and, instead of a conventional heartbreaking story of loss and disaster, the book appears as a tantalising account of a character seizing the moment, leaving the past behind, and becoming someone else — offering, in fact, a deconstruction of the usual take on migrant fate as a tragic narrative. [Paperback]
 "Her luminous prose confirms what was already evident in the poems: that Christensen was one of the eminent visionaries of the 20th century." —Los Angeles Review of Books
"She whispers to me in my own writing, a brilliant, fierce literary mother whom I will read and reread again and again." —Siri Hustvedt

• Read an extract!

Still Life with Remorse by Maira Kalman $80
Maira Kalman's most autobiographical and intimate work to date, Still Life with Remorse is a beautiful, four-color collection combining deeply personal stories and 50 striking full-color paintings. Tracing her family's story from her grandfather's birth in Belarus and emigration to Tel Aviv — where she was born — Maira considers her unique family history, illuminating the complex relationship between recollection, regret, happiness, and heritage. The vibrant original art accompanying these autobiographical pieces are mostly still lifes and interiors which serve as counterpoints to her powerful words. In addition to vignettes exploring her Jewish roots, Kalman includes short stories about other great artists, writers, and composers, including Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka, Gustav Mahler, and Robert Schumann. Through these narratives, Kalman uses her signature wit and tenderness to reveal how family history plays an influential role in all of our work, lives, and perspectives. A feat of visual storytelling and vulnerability, Still Life with Remorse explores the profound hidden in the quotidian, and illuminates the powerful universal truths in our most personal family stories. [Hardback]

• Look inside!

• Read Stella’s review.

• On walking and looking as a way of life.

• Women Holding Things.

Landfall 249: Aotearoa New Zealand arts and letters edited by Lynley Edmeades $35
For almost 80 years, Landfall has been a dedicated space for writers, artists and reviewers in Aotearoa New Zealand. Published twice a year, each volume showcases two full-colour art portfolios and brims with vital new fiction, poetry, cultural commentary, reviews and essays. Bringing together a range of voices and perspectives, from established practitioners to emerging talents, Landfall is always an exciting anthology with a finger on the pulse of innovation and creativity in Aotearoa today. Landfall 249: Autumn 2025 also announces the winner of the Landfall Young Writers’ Essay Prize, an annual competition that encourages up-and-coming writers to explore the world around them through words. Landfall 249 will feature the winning essay, alongside the judge’s report from Landfall editor, Lynley Edmeades. [Paperback]

• The contributors to this issue.

• Look inside.

The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica (translated from Spanish by Sarah Moses) $33
In the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, the unworthy live in fear of the Superior Sister's whip. Seething with resentment, they plot against each other and await who will ascend to the level of the Enlightened - and who will suffer the next exemplary punishment. Risking her life, one of the unworthy keeps a diary in secret. Slowly, memories surface from a time before the world collapsed, before the Sacred Sisterhood became the only refuge. Then Luca arrives. She, too, is unworthy — but she is different. And her arrival brings a single spark of hope to a world of darkness. [Paperback]
”Barbaric, brutal and utterly beautiful. The Unworthy is a searing haunt of a novel that I will never forget.” —Lucy Rose
”Brutal and aching. A perfect fever dream of a book.” —Heather Darwent
”Unflinching, uncompromising, and unforgettable. Agustina Bazterrica shines a light at the end of the brutal and bleak path we are on so that maybe, just maybe, we can turn around and forge a new one.” —Paul Tremblay

• The author’s experience at a Catholic school was the foundation of this book.

Japan: An autobiography by Peter Shaw $50
Peter Shaw first went almost unwillingly to Japan 25 years ago, staying in Tokyo for only two days. Surprised at how little he knew or understood he was, however, smitten. In the following years he returned many times searching for answers about the country’s culture: its art, architecture, food, religion, history and people. Accompanied by many of his own photographs this book conveys a New Zealand writer’s feelings and thoughts about a unique culture. A nicely designed and produced volume with photographs throughout. [Paperback with French flaps]

• Look inside!

Carbon: The book of life by Paul Hawken $40
Carbon animates the entirety of the living world. Though it comprises only a tiny fraction of Earth's composition, our planet would be lifeless without it. From the intricate microscopic networks of fungi in the Earth's soils to the tallest trees of the forests to every cell in every animal, the very fabric of life on Earth is shaped by carbon. Though it is much maligned as a driver of climate change, blamed for the possible demise of civilisation, that is only one part of its story. In this stirring, hopeful and deeply humane book, Paul Hawken illuminates the omnipresence of this life-giving element and the possibilities it provides for the future of human endeavour, inviting us to see nature, carbon and ourselves as exquisitely intertwined and inseparably connected. [Paperback]
”Carbon is an enormously hopeful book — hopeful about the creatures we live among and about our innate human capacities.” —Elizabeth Kolbert
”A book you'll find yourself quoting and reading aloud to anyone who will listen. Hawken tells the beautiful story of carbon's role in our world-as our lifeblood, our synthesis with all living things, our planet's protector-with the grace and fluency of a deep, compassionate thinker. A masterful, urgent, powerful book.” —Isabella Tree

The Story of Scandinavia: From the Vikings to social democracy by Stein Ringen $30
1,200 years of drama, economic rise and fall, crises, kings and queens, war, peace, language and culture! Scandinavian history has been one of dramatic discontinuities of collapse and restarts, from the Viking Age to the Age of Perpetual War to the modern age today. For a thousand years, the Scandinavian countries were kingdoms of repression where monarchs played at the game of being European powers, at the expense of their own populations. The brand we now know as ‘Scandinavia’ is a recent invention. During most of its history, Denmark and Sweden, and to some degree Norway, were bloody enemies. These sentiments of enmity have not been fully settled. Under the surface of collaboration remain undercurrents of hatred, envy, contempt and pity. What does it mean today to be Scandinavian? For the author, whose identity is Scandinavian but his life European, this masterly history is a personal exploration as well as a narrative of compelling scope. [Paperback]

The Light of Asia: A history of Western fascination with the East by Christopher Harding $32
From the time of the ancient Greeks onwards the West's relationship with Asia consisted for the most part of outrageous tales of strange beasts and monsters, of silk and spices shipped over vast distances and an uneasy sense of unknowable empires fantastically far away. By the twentieth century much of Asia might have come under Western rule after centuries of warfare, but its intellectual, artistic and spiritual influence was fighting back. The Light of Asia is a history of the many ways in which Asia has shaped European and North American culture over centuries of tangled, dynamic encounters, and the central importance of this vexed, often confused relationship. From Marco Polo onwards Asia has been both a source of genuine fascination and equally genuine failures of comprehension. [Paperback]

The Green Kingdom by Cornelia Funke $21
Caspia's summer is transformed when she discovers a bundle of letters containing ten botanical riddles in this enchanting adventure. Twelve-year-old Caspia hates big cities, especially one as busy as New York. So she isn't thrilled by the news that her parents are taking her to stay in Brooklyn. It's summer-devouring bad luck! But everything changes when Caspia discovers a bundle of letters, hidden in an old chest of drawers. They belonged to two sisters who lived there long ago. Each letter contains a 'green' riddle, with clues leading to a different plant. Caspia sets out to solve the riddles and, as she does, she meets friends she could never have imagined and discovers that anywhere can feel like home, if you are just brave enough to put down new roots. [Paperback]

Looking at Women Looking at War: A war and justice diary by Victoria Amelina $40
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Victoria Amelina was busy writing a novel, taking part in the country's literary scene, and parenting her son. Now she became someone new: a war crimes researcher and the chronicler of extraordinary women like herself who joined the resistance. These heroines include Evgenia, a prominent lawyer turned soldier, Oleksandra, who documented tens of thousands of war crimes and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, and Yulia, a librarian who helped uncover the abduction and murder of a children's book author. Everyone in Ukraine knew that Amelina was documenting the war. She photographed the ruins of schools and cultural centers; she recorded the testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses to atrocities. And she slowly turned back into a storyteller, writing what would become this book. On the evening of June 27th, 2023, Amelina and three international writers stopped for dinner in the embattled Donetsk region. When a Russian cruise missile hit the restaurant, Amelina suffered grievous head injuries, and lost consciousness. She died on July 1st. She was thirty-seven. She left behind an incredible account of the ravages of war and the cost of resistance. [Paperback]
”Rare, powerful and affecting, a work of principle and courage by a truly brilliant and inspiring writer.” —Philippe Sands

Ten Little Rabbits by Maurice Sendak $21

The magician pulls ten rabbits out of a hat — and then puts them back in! Acounting book up to ten and back again. [Board book]

• Look inside!

There’s still a week of autumn left to squirrel away your store of books for the winter. Click through to our website to place your orders. Your books can be sent to you by overnight courier or collected from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

Cry When the Baby Cries by Becky Barnicoat $60
A glorious antidote to parenting books, this darkly humorous, candid and insightful graphic memoir brings the early years of parenthood to life — in all their chaos, wonder and delirium. Intimate, relatable and very funny, Becky Barnicoat explores everything from the anatomy of the hospital bag to the frantic obsession with putting your baby down drowsy but awake, to the tyranny of gentle parenting. From pregnancy to the feral toddler years, Barnicoat extends a sticky hand to all new parents grappling with the impossible but joyous jigsaw puzzle of their lives. Barnicoat gives us permission to cry when the baby cries — and also laugh, snort, lie on the floor naked, drool and generally revel in a deeply strange new world ruled by a tyrannical tiny leader, growing bigger and more loved by the day. [Hardback]
”This book is a perfect testament to the wild ride of early parenting. It's tender, moving, beautifully drawn and also, extremely hilarious. Parents everywhere: you will feel very very seen.” —Isabel Greenberg

• Blood, sweat, tears, and body shaming.

• On turning motherhood into cartoons.

• The antidote to all that striving.

• Look inside!

Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno (translated from French by Natasha Lehrer) $40
"Reading Sad Tiger is like descending into an abyss with your eyes open. It forces you to see, to really see, what it means to be a child abused by an adult, for years. Everyone should read it. Especially teenagers." —Annie Ernaux
Sad Tiger is built on the facts of a series of devastating events. Neige Sinno was seven years old when her stepfather started sexually abusing her. At 19, she decided to break the silence that is so common in all cultures around sexual violence. This led to a public trial and prison for her stepfather, and Sinno started a new life in Mexico. Through the construction of a fragmented narrative, Sinno explores the different facets of memory — her own, her mother's, as well as her abusive stepfather's; and of abuse itself in all its monstrosity and banality. Her account is woven together with a close reading of literary works by Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Christine Angot, and Virginie Despentes among others. Sad Tiger — the title inspired by William Blake's poem ‘The Tyger’ — is a literary exploration into how to speak about the unspeakable. In this extraordinary book there is an abiding concern — how to protect others from what the author herself endured? [Paperback]
"An achingly vivid, cerebral memoir of her abuse and its long aftermath. Close-reading her own shards of memory alongside these texts, Sinno contends with both the power and the inevitable impotence of writing, particularly about abuse." —Lauren Christensen, New York Times
"Sad Tiger is not what you'd expect from a memoir about sexual abuse and trauma. Unlike Vanessa Springora's 2020 international bestseller Consent, say, which was also translated by Natasha Lehrer, Sad Tiger is not a taut narrative of devastation and reclamation. At times Sinno writes with the essayistic force of Virginie Despentes's King Kong Theory, at others with the vividness of Edouard Louis's novels. She shares Annie Ernaux's will to self-excavation and proclivity for experimentation. Sinno refuses to be hamstrung by genre, choosing a balletic approach, as if only a choreographed dance around her subject, again and again, will properly encapsulate its blast radius." —Elias Altman, Bookforum

• The atrocious memory palace.

An Uncommon Land: From an ancestral past of enclosure towards a regenerative future by Catherine Knight $50
A story of enclosure, dispossession, colonisation and — ultimately — hope for a better future. Through the lens of her ancestors’ stories, Catherine Knight throws light on the genesis and evolution of the commons, its erosion through enclosure and the ascendency of private property in parallel with the rise of capitalism — a history that has indelibly shaped New Zealand society and its landscape. Like other European settlers, the lives and future prosperity of the author’s ancestors had their foundations in war, land appropriation and environmental destruction — but in their histories lie glimmerings of the potentiality of commons: tantalising hints of an alternative path to a re-commoned, regenerative future. From a past of enclosure, resource exploitation and exponential growth, this book shines light on the potentiality of a different future, taking inspiration from our collective history. [Paperback]
”A highly original, intriguing and excellent work of scholarship, An Uncommon Land looks to the past to provide a pathway to a sustainable and fairer future. Weaving family histories of migration brilliantly into broader themes of colonisation, the commodification of land and climate change, Knight suggests we look to the concept of the commons as a way of managing finite environmental resources for the benefit of all. A timely, topical and essential read.” —Vincent O'Malley

I Shall Not Die: Titokowaru’s war, 1868—1869 by James Belich $40
"You were made a Pakeha, and the name of England was given to you for your tribe. I was made a Maori, and New Zealand was the name given to me. You forgot that there was a space fixed between us of great extent — the sea. You, forgetting that, jumped over from that place to this. I did not jump over from this place to that. Move off from my places to your own places in the midst of the sea." —Titokowaru.
Straddling the Maori and European worlds of the 1860s, Titokowaru was one of New Zealand's greatest leaders. A brilliant strategist, he used every device to save the Taranaki people from European invasion. When peaceful negotiation failed, he embarked on a stunning military campaign against government forces. His victories were many, before the battle he lost. Although he was 'forgotten by the Pakeha as a child forgets a nightmare', his vision was one that would endure. Titokowaru (Ngati Ruanui) was born in South Taranaki in 1823. Converting to Christianity (and pacifism) at 20, he later became disillusioned with Christianity and joined the bitter fighting of the period — protesting against continual land loss and the erosion of his people's rights. Leading a strong intertribal force, Titokowaru nearly succeeded in repelling the colonial forces in the Taranaki wars of 1868-69. But at the final hour his people deserted him, in circumstances that remain unclear. [Paperback]

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (translated from German by Daiel Bowles) $30
Realising he and she are the very worst kind of people, our unnamed middle-aged narrator embarks on a highly dubious road trip through Switzerland with his terminally ill and terminally drunken mother. They try unsuccessfully to give away or squander the fortune she has amassed from investing in armament industry shares. Along the journey they bicker endlessly over the past, throw handfuls of francs into a ravine and exasperate the living daylights out of their long-suffering taxi driver. The crimes of the twentieth century are never far behind, but neither is the need for more vodka. Eurotrash is a bitterly comic, vertiginous mirror-cabinet of familial and historical reckoning. Kracht's novel is a narrative tour-de-force of the tenderness and spite meted out between two people who cannot escape one another. [Paperback]
Long-listed for the 2025 International Booker Prize.
”Eurotrash is the auto-fictional account of a writer contemplating his unpleasant and abusive childhood, his morally repugnant ancestry and his toxic financial inheritance as he drives his crotchety, alcoholic, senile mother through the landscape outside Zurich. This doesn’t sound like much fun! But this book is one of the most entertaining and ultimately moving stories we read. It is brilliantly, bitterly funny, even as it documents a vicious and tarnished emotional universe. This book is immaculately and wittily translated; on every page its sentences sparkle and surprise like guilty-legacy gold.” —International Booker Prize judges’ citation
”Whether he's fictionalising history in order to question the validity of history, or fictionalising himself in order to question the validity of self, it is by now apparent to me and to his many readers that Christian Kracht is the great German-language writer of his generation.” —Joshua Cohen
”Christian Kracht is a master of the well-formed sentence, the elegance of which conceals horror. His novels involve Germany, ghosts, war and madness, and every conceivable fright, but they are also full of melancholy comedy, and they all hide a secret that one never quite fathoms.” —Daniel Kehlmann

Air by John Boyne $35
Being in limbo, 30,000 feet in the air, offers time to reflect and take stock. For Aaron Umber, it's an opportunity to connect with his 14-year-old son as they travel halfway across the world to meet a woman who isn't expecting them. Unsettled by his past, and anxious for his future, Aaron is at a crossroads in life. The damage inflicted upon him during his youth has made him the man he is, but now threatens to widen the growing fissures between him and his only child. This trip could bind them closer together, or tear them further apart. In this penetrating examination of action and consequence, fault and attribution, acceptance and resolution, John Boyne gives us a redemptive story of a father and a son on a moving journey to mend their troubled lives. This novella completes ‘The Elements’ quartet. [Hardback]

Three Wee Bookshops at the End of the World by Ruth Shaw $40
The Bookseller at the End of the World described the first part of Ruth Shaw's tumultuous life, touching readers in powerful ways. It became an international bestseller, translated into eleven languages. Three Wee Bookshops at the End of the World picks up Ruth's story with more charming, heartbreaking, brave and funny tales. Having found the love of her life, Lance, she tells of their sailing adventures together, world travels, conservation efforts and their wee bookshops. Life has never been easy for Ruth but, despite that, her book is chock full of extraordinary people and situations, many of them laugh-out-loud funny. Tales from the bookshops are interwoven with Ruth's story, along with expert book recommendations. Written in Ruth's characteristic style, this absorbing memoir traverses the highs and lows of a life lived to the full. [Hardback]

• Ruth Shaw (and a few other author-booksellers) interviewed.

The Sound of Utopia: Musicians in the time of Stalin by Michel Krielaas $55
When Stalin came to power, making music in Russia became dangerous. Composers now had to create work that served the state, and all artistic production was scrutinised for potential subversion. In The Sound of Utopia, Michel Krielaars depicts Soviet musicians and composers struggling to create art in a climate of risk, suspicion and fear. Some successfully toed the ideological line, diluting their work in the process; others ended up facing the Gulag or even death. While some, like Sergei Prokofiev, achieved lasting fame, others were consigned to oblivion, their work still hard to find. As Krielaars traces the twists and turns of these artists' fortunes, he paints a fascinating and disturbing portrait of the absurdity of Soviet musical life. [Hardback]

Mythica: A new history of Homer’s world, through the women written out of it by Emily Hauser $40
Hauser takes readers on an epic journey to uncover the astonishing true story of the real women behind ancient Greece's greatest legends — and the real heroes of those ancient epics, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Contrary to perceptions built up over three millennia, ancient history is not all about men. In Mythica Emily Hauser tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of the real women behind some of the western world's greatest legends. Following in their footsteps, digging into the history behind Homer's epic poems, piecing together evidence from the original texts, recent astonishing archaeological finds and the latest DNA studies, she reveals who these women — queens, mothers, warriors, slaves — were, how they lived, and how history has (or has not - until now) remembered them. A riveting new history of the Bronze Age Aegean and a journey through Homer's epics charted entirely by women — from Helen of Troy, Briseis, Cassandra and Aphrodite to Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso and Penelope — Mythica is a ground-breaking reassessment of the reality behind the often-mythologised women of Greece's greatest epics, and of the ancient world itself as we learn ever more about it. [Paperback]

The Midnight Plane: Selected and new poems by Fiona Kidman $40
The Midnight Plane comes in to land exactly half a century after the 1975 publication of Kidman’s debut book, the poetry collection Honey and Bitters and contains poems from each of her six published collections as well as new sequences. There’s a sense in which The Midnight Plane works like an alternative memoir, offering a poet’s immediacy of vision and gift of linguistic precision on a life unfolding in real time. The Midnight Plane speaks to human relationships, to connection and disconnection, to the mystery and the majesty of life, to seasons of loss and cycles of renewal. Each of these poems is, in its own way, a midnight plane, flying in the dark, navigating for home in sometimes perilous conditions. [Hardback]

The Eyes of Gaza: A diary of resilience by Plestia Alaqad $35
In early October 2023, Palestinian Plestia Alaqad was a recent graduate with dreams of becoming a successful journalist. By the end of November, she would be internationally known as the 'Eyes of Gaza'.  Millions of people would be moved by her social media posts depicting daily life in Gaza amid Israel's deadly invasion and bombardment. Written as a series of diary extracts, The Eyes of Gaza shares the horrors of her experiences while showcasing the indomitable spirit of the men, women and children that share Plestia's communities. From the epicentre of turmoil, while bombs rained around her and devastation gripped her people, she witnessed their emotions, their gentle acts of quiet, necessary heroism, and the moments of unexpected tenderness and vulnerability amid the chaos. Through the raw honesty and vulnerability of a normal 22-year-old woman trying to make her way through a human tragedy, The Eyes of Gaza is a powerful call for peace. It recounts a harrowing experience, but it is not a heart-breaking lamentation. Rather, it is a manifesto for hope, advocating for a better future for Gaza, the Middle East, and our divided world. [Paperback]

Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent $40
In 2003, seventeen-year-old Australian exchange student Hannah Kent arrives at Keflavík Airport in the middle of the Icelandic winter. That night she sleeps off her jet lag and bewilderment in the National Archives of Iceland, unaware that, years later, she will return to the same building to write Burial Rites, the haunting story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman executed in Iceland. The novel will go on to launch the author's stellar literary career and capture the hearts of readers across the globe. Always Home, Always Homesick is Hannah Kent's love letter to a land that has forged a nation of storytellers, her ode to the power of creativity. [Hardback]

Limitarianism: The case against extreme wealth by Ingrid Robeyns $30
An expert in inequality makes the case for a hard limit on personal wealth.  We all notice when the poor get poorer — when there are more rough sleepers and food bank queues start to grow. But if the rich become richer, there is nothing much to see in public and, for most of us, daily life doesn't change. Or at least, not immediately. In this game-changing intervention, leading philosopher and economist Ingrid Robeyns exposes the true extent of our wealth problem, which has spent the past fifty years silently spiralling out of control. In moral, political, economic, social, environmental and psychological terms, she shows, extreme wealth is not only unjustifiable but harmful to us all — the rich included. In place of our current system, Robeyns offers a breathtakingly clear alternative — limitarianism. The answer to so many of the problems posed by neoliberal capitalism — and the opportunity for a vastly better world — lies in placing a hard limit on the wealth that any one person can accumulate. [Paperback]
”Powerful — a must-read.” —Thomas Piketty
”Effortlessly navigating between ethics, political theory, economics and public policy, Ingrid Robeyns's nuanced and persuasive defence of limitarianism is also a much-needed manifesto for reimagining political institutions.” —Lea Ypi

A View from the Stars: Stories and essays by Cixin Liu $25
”We re mysterious aliens in the crowd. We jump like fleas from future to past and back again, and float like clouds of gas between nebulae; in a flash, we can reach the edge of the universe, or tunnel into a quark, or swim within a star-core. We re as unassuming as fireflies, yet our numbers grow like grass in spring. We sci-fi fans are people from the future.” —Cixin Liu, from the essay 'Sci-Fi Fans'
A View from the Stars features a range of short works from the past three decades of bestselling author Cixin Liu's prolific career, putting his nonfiction essays and short stories side-by-side for the first time. This collection includes essays and interviews that shed light on Liu's experiences as a reader, writer, and lover of science fiction throughout his life, as well as short fiction that gives glimpses into the evolution of his imaginative voice over the years. [Paperback]
”His stories are filled with a sense of wonder as they push ideas about the future of humanity to their extremes, and the personal essays offer a rare glimpse into attitudes towards science fiction in China and how the genre has changed. A fascinating collection.” —Guardian

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The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey $38
In a sinisterly skewed version of England in 1979, thirteen-year-old triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents of a New Forest home, part of the government’s Sycamore Scheme. Each day the boys must take medicine to protect themselves from a mysterious illness to which many of their friends have succumbed. Children who survive are allowed to move to the Big House in Margate, a destination of mythical proportions, desired by every Sycamore child. Meanwhile, in Exeter, Nancy lives a secluded life with her parents, who never let her leave the house. As the government looks to shut down the Sycamore homes and place their residents into the community, the triplets’ lives begin to intersect with Nancy’s, culminating in revelations that will rock the children to the core. Gradually surrendering its dark secrets, The Book of Guilt is a spellbinding and profoundly unnerving exploration of belonging in a world where some lives are valued less than others. [Paperback]

• The author introduces the book.

• Alarm bell.

• Monsters.

• Every beat feels right.

• Read the first chapter!

• Why 1979, specifically?

• Other books by Catherine Chidgey.

Erik Satie Three Piece Suite by Ian Penman $38
Composer, pianist and writer Erik Satie was one of the great figures of Belle Époque Paris. Known for his unvarying image of bowler hat, three-piece suit, and umbrella, Satie was a surrealist before surrealism and a conceptual artist before conceptual art. Friend of Cocteau and Debussy, Picabia and Picasso, Satie was always a few steps ahead of his peers at the apex of modernism. There's scarcely a turn in postwar music, both classical and popular, that Satie doesn't anticipate. Moving from the variety shows of Montmartre's Le Chat Noir to suburban Arcueil, from the Parisian demimonde to the artistic avant-garde, Erik Satie Three Piece Suite is an exhilarating and playful three-part study of this elusive and endlessly fascinating figure, published to mark the centenary of Satie's death. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Ian Penman is an ideal critic, one who invites you in, takes your coat and hands you a drink as he sidles up to his topic. He has a modest mien, a feathery way with a sentence, a century’s worth of adroit cultural connections at the ready, and a great well of genuine passion, which quickly raises the temperature.” — Lucy Sante
”Ian Penman – critic, essayist, mystical hack and charmer of sentences like they’re snakes – is the writer I have hardly gone a week without reading, reciting, summoning to mind. The writer without whom, etc.” —Brian Dillon

• The radical lord of light entertainment.

• Gymnopédies & Gnossiennes.

In the Rhododendrons: A memoir with appearances by Virginia Woolf by Heather Christle $60
When Heather Christle realises that she, her mother, and Virginia Woolf share a traumatic history, she begins to rewrite and intertwine each of their stories, in search of a more hopeful narrative and a future she can live with. On a recent visit to London's Kew Gardens, Christle's mother revealed details of a painful story from her past that took place there, under circumstances that strangely paralleled Heather's own sexual assault during a visit to London as a teenager. Her private, British mother's revelation — a rare burst of vulnerability in their strained relationship — propels Christle down a deep and destabilising rabbit hole of investigation, as she both reads and wanders the streets of her mother's past, peeling back the layers of family mythologies, England's sanctioned historical narratives, and her own buried memories. Over the course of several trips to London, with and without her mother, she visits her family's 'birthday hill' in Kew Gardens, the now-public homes of the Bloomsbury set, the archives of the British Library, and the backyard garden where Woolf wrote her final sentence. All the while, she finds that Woolf and her writings not only constantly seem to connect and overlap with her mother's story, but also that the author becomes a kind of vital intermediary: a sometimes confidante, sometimes mentor, sometimes distancing lens through which Christle can safely observe her mother and their experiences. Wide-ranging and prismatic, the fruit of an insatiably curious, delightfully brilliant mind, In the Rhododendrons is part memoir, part biography of Virginia Woolf, part reckoning with the things we cannot change and the ways we can completely transform, if we dare. This utterly original book will stir readers into new ways of seeing their own lives. [Hardback]
”Christle's exacting rigour and ferocious curiosity are matched only by the utter eccentricity of her vision, the delicious and frankly peerless freshness of her idiom: ‘There is a difference between bones and a book,’ she writes, ‘but both have at their center a spine.’ What results is irreducibly human. In the Rhododendrons is vital consolation, amidst the amidst. It's a triumph, an instant classic. Christle has become one of our art's most urgent living practitioners.” —Kaveh Akbar
”Stunning. I saw her working in a shaft of light, dusting layer after layer off her own life.” —Patricia Lockwood

• Back to the motherland.

• The body made metaphoric.

• Unaskable questions.

The Gender of Sound by Anne Carson $26
History is filled with unacceptable sounds: high-pitched voices, gossip, talkativeness, hysteria, wailing, ritual shouts. From whom? Those deviant from or deficient in the masculine ideal of self-control: women, catamites, eunuchs and androgynes. From antiquity to Margaret Thatcher via Sigmund Freud and Gertrude Stein, this book charts the gendering of sound in Western culture. Carson invites us to listen again, and in doing so to reimagine our conceptions of human order, virtue and selfhood. [Paperback]

This Compulsion in Us by Tina Makereti $40
In her first book of nonfiction, prizewinning author Tina Makereti writes from inside her many intersecting lives as a wahine Māori – teacher, daughter, traveller, parent – and into a past that is as alive and changeful as the present moment. Included are frank and moving essays about the wāhine who have shown her many ways of being a Māori woman, the pain and dark humour of living with an alcoholic, a blue boob from breast cancer treatment, and the potential of art to return power to survivors of colonialism. What if we could transform the events that made us who we are? What if there were a way back to the beginning? [Paperback]

An Atlas of Endangered Alphabets: Writing systems on the verge of vanishing by Tim Brookes $70
If something is important, we write it down. Yet 85% of the world's writing systems are on the verge of vanishing — not granted official status, not taught in schools, discouraged and dismissed. When a culture is forced to abandon its traditional script, everything it has written for hundreds of years — sacred texts, poems, personal correspondence, legal documents, the collective experience, wisdom and identity of a people — is lost. This Atlas is about those writing systems, and the people who are trying to save them. From the ancient holy alphabets of the Middle East, now used only by tiny sects, to newly created African alphabets designed to keep cultural traditions alive in the twenty-first century: from a Sudanese script based on the ownership marks traditionally branded into camels, to a secret system used in one corner of China exclusively by women to record the songs and stories of their inner selves: this unique book profiles dozens of scripts and the cultures they encapsulate, offering glimpses of worlds unknown to us — and ways of saving them from vanishing entirely. [Hardback]

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The Anatomy of Sand by Mikaela Nyman $30
the first poetry collection written in English by the Finnish–New Zealand poet Mikaela Nyman. In an expansive new collection encompassing myths and science, the political and personal, the local and global, lyrical and technical language, from outer space to the microscopic, Nyman ask us to pay attention to how our present-day actions will impact future ecological events. These poems listen to the creaking of space and wash of oceans, document the methane dunes on Pluto and eroding runes at Back Beach, and search the Finnish Kalevala mythology for answers. [Paperback]
”Like the tide, The Anatomy of Sand returns to the shoreline as a haven and a lens to examine our relationship with nature and environmental loss. Nyman is fascinated by the ways we insist on artificially replicating what nature has already abundantly provided, and reminds us that we do not sit outside of our environment. This book is urgent and timely, rich and lively.” —Helen Heath
”This is a book with flashes of humour, a querying of everything, and minute observation. There is a lovely mental toughness, an evolution in the poet herself, in a collection that is absolutely contemporary.” —Elizabeth Smither

The Origins on an Experimental Society: New Zealand 1769—1860 by Erik Olssen $65
a new account of the origins of New Zealand: how Pakeha settlers - nurtured on Enlightenment thought and evangelical humanitarianism — encountered Maori, and how the two peoples together developed a distinctively experimental society. With James Cook's arrival in 1769 and the subsequent colonisation, New Zealand became one of the few post-Enlightenment experiments in creating a new nation anywhere in the world. The Europeans who settled these islands brought with them a belief in the power of reason and experience to improve peoples and societies. Encounters between Maori and these new arrivals profoundly shaped the thoughts and behaviours of both peoples. Olssen argues that the people who settled New Zealand planned two experiments in making a better society. They hoped that, in contrast to earlier colonial projects, the indigenous New Zealanders would not be driven to extinction but eventually take their place as equals in a modern commercial society. And they aimed to create a society that was fairer and more just than the one they had left behind; a 'Better Britain'. While both experiments were first conceived by savants and philosophers, they gained ongoing support, by lodging in the hearts and minds of the settlers: whalers and missionaries, mothers and farmers. In turn, Maori adapted these new ideas to their own ends, giving up slavery and inter-tribal warfare, and adapting the institutions of the colonisers in ways that would re-define the experiments. This then is an ethnography of 'tangata Pakeha', a people of European descent changed by their encounters with 'tangata Maori' and their land — just as Maori were themselves changed — and the story of the society they built together. Ranging across intellectual and cultural history, from the beach at Paihia to the coffee houses of Paris, Olssen enables us to understand the origins of New Zealand anew. [Hardback]
”Erik Olssen's book is remarkably lucid and insightful on a broad front of historical scholarship; it is informed profoundly on philosophical, political and scientific thinking of the period, and overall a quite astonishing intellectual achievement.” - Atholl Anderson (Ngai Tahu)
”This new history argues that New Zealand was a series of ‘experiments’ in settling a country. The author tracks the ideas, philosophies and values which were carried in settlers' baggage, the early inter-connectedness between Maori and the newcomers that reshaped those experiments, and the profound significance of these decades for the future of the country and its peoples.” —Claudia Orange
”I found this book stunning, breathtaking even, in its scope and detail. It revisits and explores the origins, themes and complex patchwork of ideas that came together to underpin the founding years of Aotearoa New Zealand. Our early engagement with the intellectual and physical manifestations of global colonisation, as related by Olssen, is especially interesting. This is not an easy book but steady application to its contents leads to immeasurable rewards.” —Buddy Mikaere (Ngati Pukenga, Ngati Ranginui, Ngati Pikiao, Tuhoe)

Luminous by Silvia Park $37
In a fictional near-future Korea, robots have integrated seamlessly into society. They are housekeepers and policemen, teachers and bus drivers. They are our lovers. They are even our children. Siblings Jun and Morgan Cho haven t spoken to each other in several years. The children of a celebrated robot designer, both are still grieving the loss of their brother Yoyo, the earliest prototype for what humanoid robots have now become — nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. But Yoyo was always bound for a darker purpose, and his absence has left a chasm in the siblings lives. When a strange disappearance thrusts the siblings back together, neither of them realises that the investigation will not only force them to confront their fractured family’s past, but will also bring them back to Yoyo himself. [Paperback]
“Utterly beautiful.” —Raven Lailani
"With Ishiguro-esque precision, Park dissects sentience and reality, as well as love and death.” —Publishers Weekly

Set My Heart on Fire by Izumi Suzuki (translated from Japanese by Helen O’Horan) $27
A young woman named Izumi details her turbulent twenties in thirteen disarmingly candid vignettes set in the underground bar and club scene of 1970s Tokyo. Seamlessly delivering ennui alongside snark, and tragedy nose-to-nose with apathy, Set My Heart on Fire is singular representation of young womanhood, missteps and miscommunication, and music, men and meds. With chapters titled for tracks by The Zombies, The Supremes and the Rolling Stones, as well as songs by underground Japanese bands of the time, the music of the 1960s and 1970s permeates the story.  There are distinct traces of the fraught tenderness in Marguerite Duras's The Lover, and the raw, decadent post-war generational dissolution of Ryu Murakami's Almost Transparent Blue.  But Suzuki's novel is carried by her own singular charm and wit, which will be readily recognised and enjoyed by readers of her short stories. [Paperback]

The Incredible Insects of Aotearoa by Phil Sirvid and Simon Pollard $35
What do you call a grasshopper dressed as a gladiator? Why are sandfly bites so itchy? What links insects and Māori whakairo (carving)? How does a glow worm glow? Why does this book include sorcerers, vampires and dragons? What makes insects in Aotearoa so special? From our backyards to high in the mountains, through forests, along coastlines, and in the darkness of caves, award-winning science writer Simon Pollard and Te Papa insect expert Phil Sirvid answer these questions and more. Share in the secrets and marvels of our natural world through stunning close-up photographs, mātauranga Māori, insightful explanations, and meet-the-expert profiles. [Paperback]

• Look inside!

Private Revolutions: Coming of age in a new China by Yuan Yang $39
This is a book about the coming of age of four women born in China in the 1980s and 1990s, dreaming of better futures. It is about Leiya, who wants to escape the fate of the women in her village. Still underage, she bluffs her way on to the factory floor. It is about June, who at fifteen sets what her family thinks is an impossible goal — to attend university rather than raise pigs. It is about Siyue, ranked second-to-bottom of her English class, who decides to prove her teachers wrong. And it is about Sam, who becomes convinced that the only way to change her country is to become an activist even as the authorities slowly take her peers from the streets. With unprecedented access to the lives, hopes, homes, dreams and diaries of four ordinary women over a period of six years, Private Revolutions gives a voice to those whose stories go untold. At a time of rising state censorship and suppression, it unearths the identity of modern Chinese society and, through the telling, something of our own. [Paperback]
”An engrossing book that meticulously reports on a country in the throes of change, using the lives and choices of four women. What sets the story told in Private Revolutions apart is the speed and magnitude of this upheaval, captured by Yang with palpable admiration for the women negotiating these seismic shifts one day at a time.” —Mythili Rao, Guardian

Disaster Nationalism: The downfall of liberal civilisation by Richard Seymour $47
The rise of the new far-right has left the world grappling with a profound misunderstanding. While the spotlight often shines on the actions of charismatic leaders like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Rodrigo Duterte, the true peril lies elsewhere. They are but the political manifestations of a potent force — disaster nationalism. This mass cultural phenomenon, propelled through the vast networks of social media and fueled by far-right influencers, emerges from a reservoir of societal despair, fear, and isolation. At its core, disaster nationalism fixates on images of catastrophe — the 'Great Replacement,' Satanic 'cabals' — as explanations for its discontent. It yearns for an 'end of days,' a reckoning, a 'storm' as the QAnon faithful call it, to bring an end to its suffering. This yearning is only heightened by the relentless onslaught of real-world disasters — from economic recessions to global pandemics and ecological collapse. Within this seething cauldron, we witness not only the surge of far-right political movements but also the sparks of individual and collective violence against perceived enemies, from 'lone wolf' killers to terrifying pogroms. Should a new fascism emerge, it will coalesce from these very elements. This is disaster nationalism. In Disaster Nationalism, Richard Seymour delves deep into this alarming phenomenon, dissecting its roots, its influencers, and the threats it poses. With meticulous analysis and compelling storytelling, this book offers a stark warning and a call to action. [Hardback]
”What thinker would you bring to an earth on fire? You would not want to leave Richard Seymour at home: he is essential company for an age of compound catastrophes.” —Andreas Malm
”One of the most consistently brilliant and lyrical thinkers writing today.” —China Mieville

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami $37
In a world without privacy, what is the cost of freedom? Sara is returning home from a conference abroad when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside at the airport and inform her that she will commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, their algorithm has determined that she presents an imminent risk to the person she loves most, and must now be transferred to a retention centre for twenty-one days to lower her risk score . But when Sara arrives at Madison to be observed alongside other dangerous dreamers, it soon becomes clear that getting home to her family is going to cost more than just three weeks of good behaviour. And as every minor misdemeanour, every slight deviation from the rules, adds time to her stay, she begins to wonder if there might be more here than first meets the eye. Then, one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and setting off a chain of events that lead Sara on a collision course with the companies that have deprived her of her freedom. [Paperback]
”A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future. An elegant meditation on identity, motherhood, and what we sacrifice, unthinkingly, for the sake of convenience.” —Jennifer Egan

Wellness by Nathan Hill $28
When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the 90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process, Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other. [Paperback]
”American storytelling at its era-spanning best. An immersive, multi-layered portrait of a marriage, Nathan Hill's follow-up to The Nix is a work of quiet genius, tackling a few big questions: What is truth? What is love? And therefore, inevitably, what is true love?” —Observer

Will This Home Do? by Sophie Gilmore $30
Apologising is hard, especially when you’re feeling mad, so when an older sister gets into a fight with her younger sister, she sets off to find a new home. First she tries the dog house — Will this home do? No, it’s too small! What about the large leafy tree — Will this home do? No, because soon it starts to rain. The shed is too dark; the loft is full of moths. Could the very best home be with her little sister after all? A story that begins with the breaking of a toy and ends with the mending of a relationship.

• Look inside!

The Tear Bottle: A graphic story of love and things by Annemarie Jutel $40
In a series of simple line drawings, Jutel tells the story of a family heirloom that is not quite what she and her sisters remembered. Via the comedy of family dynamics, and with the backdrop of history, she delves into serious issues of death, grief and forgiveness. This is a book about the objects families covet as a way of holding on to their past. It is told by bickering sisters trying to find out the truth about a family heirloom with a surprising twist. A graphic memoir with serious intent, its simple and colourful drawings invite readers to think about their own family histories. Is it really our heirlooms, or the stories we tell about them that help us to understand ourselves, our whānau and what matters to us?

• Look inside.

Another England: How to reclaim our national story by Caroline Lucas $35
The right have hijacked ‘Englishness’. Can it be reclaimed? With the UK more divided than ever, ‘England’ has re-emerged as a potent force in culture and politics. But today the dominant story told about the country serves solely the interests of the right. The only people who dare speak of Englishness are cheerleaders for Brexit, exceptionalism and imperial nostalgia. Yet there are other stories, equally compelling, about who the English are: about the English people's radical inclusivity, their deep-rooted commitment to the natural world, their long struggle to win rights for all. These stories put the Chartists, the Diggers and the Suffragettes in their rightful place alongside Nelson and Churchill. They draw on the medieval writers and Romantic poets who reflect a more sustainable relationship with the natural world. And they include the diverse voices exploring the shared challenges of identity and equality today. Caroline Lucas delves into literary heritage to explore what it can teach us about the most pressing issues of our time: whether the toxic legacy of Empire, the struggle for constitutional reform, or the accelerating climate emergency. And she sketches out an alternative Englishness: one that all can embrace to build a greener, fairer future. [Paperback]
”Not just an inspiring, nuanced and deeply literate book, but that rarest of things — a necessary one.” —Jonathan Coe
”Cleverly deploys Elizabeth Gaskell, John Clare and Charles Dickens to demonstrate that a culture can be diverse and coherent, innovative and rooted; many stories told in one beautiful language.” —Telegraph
”Tells a new story about England and Englishness, and sets out the possibility for a progressive politics of land, place and nation. This is vital reading.” —Robert Macfarlane

New books for a new month! Autumn is the season for gathering enough books to see you through the reading months ahead. Click through to our website to secure your copies. We can have your books dispatched by overnight courier or ready to collect from our door.

On the Calculation of Volume: I by Solvej Balle (translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland) $30
”It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences. That we wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for these curious twists of fate.” Tara Selter has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly. We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18th: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months, or seasons. She finds herself in a lonely new reality without being able to explain why: how is it that she wakes every morning into the same day, knowing to the exact second when the blackbird will burst into song and when the rain will begin? Will she ever be able to share her new life with her beloved and now chronically befuddled husband? And on top of her profound isolation and confusion, Tara takes in with pain how slight a difference she makes in the world. (As she puts it: "That's how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November.") Balle is hypnotic in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs. The first volume's gravitational pull — a force inverse to its constriction — has the effect of a strong tranquiliser, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is intoxicating. [Paperback with French flaps]
“On the Calculation of Volume I takes a potentially familiar narrative trope — a protagonist inexplicably stuck in the same day — and transforms it into a profound meditation on love, connectedness and what it means to exist, to want to be alive, to need to share one’s time with others. The sheer quality of the sentences was what struck us most, rendered into English with deft, invisible musicality by the translator. This book presses its mood, its singular time signature and its philosophical depth into the reader. You feel you are in it, which is sometimes unnerving, sometimes soothing, and this effect lingers long after the book is finished.” —International Booker Prize judges’ citation

• Read Thomas’s review.

• Find out more about the book.

• Volume II uniform with this edition.

• Or choose this other edition!

• Other books on the 2025 International Booker Prize short list.

Slowing the Sun: Essays by Nadine Hura $40
”Hope is a shovel and will give you blisters.” Overwhelmed and often unmoved by the scientific and political jargon of climate change, Nadine Hura sets out to find a language to connect more deeply to the environmental crisis. But what begins as a journalistic quest takes an abrupt and introspective turn following the death of her brother. In the midst of grief, Hura works through science, pūrākau, poetry and back again. Seeking to understand climate change in relation to whenua and people, she asks: how should we respond to what has been lost? Her many-sided essays explore environmental degradation, social disconnection and Indigenous reclamation, insisting that any meaningful response must be grounded in Te Tiriti and anti-colonialism. Slowing the Sun is a karanga to those who have passed on, as well as to the living, to hold on to ancestral knowledge for future generations. [Paperback]
”Nadine’s writing can make us feel seen, less alone, more hopeful, more enlightened. He kaiwhakairo i te kupu, he­kaituhi­ ngā kokonga ngākau – a carver of words, a ­writer ­for all corners of the heart.” —Stacey Morrison (Ngāi Tahu, Te Arawa, Pākehā)

• How did Māui know when enough was enough?

• Narrating the seasons of grief.

• Standing shoulder to shoulder.

• More truth than my chest could hold.

• On the parallel worlds of climate change storytelling.

• Those riding shotgun.

• Raupatu.

The Covid Response: A scientist’s account of New Zealand’s pandemic and what happens next by Shaun Hendy $40
New Zealand’s pandemic response delivered one of the lowest Covid-19 health burdens in the world, thanks to early elimination and high vaccination rates. While border controls and early lockdowns were strict, domestic freedoms ultimately exceeded those in other advanced economies, making the country a global case study. Yet, these successes came at a cost — financial strain, social isolation and unequal access to support. How did we get here, and how did science shape decisions in real time? In The Covid Response, physicist Professor Shaun Hendy offers an insider’s perspective on New Zealand’s unique approach to the pandemic. He takes readers behind the scenes of the country’s science-driven response, sharing firsthand experiences as a key member of the advisory team at Te Pūnaha Matatini. Through this engaging narrative, Hendy unpacks the science behind critical decisions — ranging from lockdowns to the strategic use of genomic sequencing and data modelling. This book examines high-stakes decisions made in real time, their impact on New Zealand, and the lessons they offer for the future. [Paperback]

• A model response?

There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die by Tove Ditlevsen (translated from Danish by Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith) $30
While Tove Ditlevsen is now famous around the world as an extraordinary prose writer, in Denmark she has also long been celebrated as a poet. She published her first collection in her early twenties, and continued writing and publishing poetry until the end of her life. This new selection offers English readers a chance to explore her brilliant, surprising verse across nearly four decades of writing. In this playful, mournful, witty collection, little girls stand tip-toe inside adult bodies, achievements in literature and lethargy are unflinchingly listed, and lovers come and go like the seasons. With an introduction by Olga Ravn. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Meet the finest (and darkest) poet you've never read. Her poems read, at their best, like illuminations, transfiguring her life again and again” —Telegraph

The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth by Adrian Duncan $30
The contemplative and moving third novel from Irish author Adrian Duncan, exploring love, grief and their representations in art. John Molloy, an Irish restorative sculptor meets an Italian sociologist Bernadette Basagni while working on a contemporary-art project in the Alpine city of I_. As he falls in love, a distressing moment from his youth rises into view — when his mother, Sandra, while one night praying alone at a country grotto, has a holy vision that leads to his family's ostracisation and disintegration. The disastrous outfall of this has resonated unchecked through his life. The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth is a novel told in two parts, a decade apart: the first is told in fragments or 'blinks' that lead John to Bologna and Bernadette; the second opens with a letter from home asking him to pray for the speedy death of an dying friend, which sets in motion a day-long odyssey through the ancient streets and churches of Bologna, where John must confront not just his present and his past but also the bedrock of his psyche. [Paperback with French flaps]
”One of the most important and intriguing writers working now.” —Niamh Campbell
”Uncanny, strange and exquisite, akin to the fictions of Laszlo Krasznahorkai.” —Financial Times
”The kind of work that makes you remember why you read.” —Sunday Business Post
”A deliberative and delicate reading experience, revelatory in the truest sense of that word.” —Guardian

• Between repose and movement.

• Art, writing, film.

The Novel Life of Jane Austen: A graphic biography by Janine Barchas and Isabel Greenberg $50
Through vivid artwork and compelling narrative, readers are invited to journey alongside Jane Austen as she navigates the challenges and triumphs that shaped her works. Told in three parts (Budding Writer 1796-1797; Struggling Artist 1801-1809; Published Author 1809-1817), the gritty circumstances of Austen's own genteel poverty and the small daily injustices so often borne by creative women at this time, are shown against the backdrop of Georgian England and reflect many of the plots and characters woven into Austen's greatest works. All the settings and scenarios presented are based upon the historical record, including the clothing, architecture, decor and Regency locations. Sprinkled throughout, the Easter eggs and witty references to popular screen adaptations of Austen's novels will satisfy the casual and avid Austen fan alike. [Hardback]
”Where does wonderful literature come from? This exciting and thoughtful book explores this wondrous mystery for those who love the work of Jane Austen and for those who find her name only vaguely familiar. My hat is off to the terrific Janine Barchas and the terrific Isabel Greenberg. I wonder how they do it.” —Daniel Handler
”Truly delightful and charming; so fresh, informative and funny. Even the most devoted ‘Janeite’ will learn something new. The graphics are sensational. All in all, a truly magical way to learn about the life and works of Jane Austen.” —Paula Byrne

• Look inside!

Alive: An alternative anatomy by Gabriel Weston $40
What does it mean to live in a body? For Gabriel Weston, there was always something missing from the anatomy she was taught at medical school. Medicine teaches us how a body functions, but it doesn't help us navigate the reality of living in one. As she became a surgeon, a mother, and ultimately a patient herself, Weston found herself grappling with the gap between scientific knowledge and unfathomable complexity of human experience. In this captivating exploration of the body, Weston dissolves the boundaries that usually divide surgeon and patient, pushing beyond the limit of what science has to tell us about who we are. Focusing on our individual organs, not just under the intense spotlight of the operating theatre, but in the central role they play in the stories of our lives, a fuller and more human picture of our bodies emerges — more fragile, frightening and miraculous than we could have imagined. [Paperback]
”An exceptional, beautiful and absolutely absorbing book. Gabriel Weston is one of the best writers around, and when it comes to medicine and anatomy she redefines the genre. Alive is a tour of human life and bodies, but she also brings her own body, in the context of her own life, into an absolutely compelling narrative; sex, pregnancy, asylum seekers, breast implants and hearts — especially the author's own heart, in every sense. It is essential reading if you own a body and should be mandatory for all those who study them.” —Chris van Tulleken
”As Gabriel Weston demonstrates in this remarkable book, each organ of our body is a miracle of evolutionary imagination, performing tasks that are outlandishly creative and brilliant. An unusually compelling and illuminating book.” —Misha Glenny

• Custard yellow.

Universality by Natasha Brown $33
Words are your weapons, they're your tools, your currency. On a Yorkshire farm, a man is brutally bludgeoned with a solid gold bar. A plucky young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement. She solves the mystery, but her viral long-read exposé raises more questions than it answers. Universality is a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of truth and power. Through a voyeuristic lens, it focuses on words: what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean. A compellingly nasty celebration of the spectacular force of language. [Paperback]
”Universality is a precise dissection of class, wealth and power, written with a spareness that elevates and electrifies her prose. It's both intelligent and very entertaining.” —Elizabeth Day
”I emerged from this novel with the conviction that the murder victim Brown is here to avenge is discourse itself. Original, vital, and unputdownable.” —Tess Gunty

• The power of perspective.

Pub (‘Object Lessons’ series) by Philip Howell $23
The pub is an English institution. Yet its history has been obscured by myth and nostalgia. In this unique book, Philip Howell takes the public house as an object, or rather as a series of objects: he takes the pub apart and examines its constituent elements, from pub signs to the bar staff to the calling of "time." But Pub also explores the hidden features of the pub, such as corporate control, cultural acceptance and exclusion, and the role of the pub in communities. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Erudite, quirky, and amusing.” —Sebastian Faulks
”I never expected to read a philosophically alert book on British pubs. Philip Howell breathes life into this well-known but poorly understood object.” —Graham Harman

Mere by Danielle Giles $38
Norfolk, 990 AD. Deep in the Fens, isolated by a vast and treacherous mere, an order of holy sisters make their home. Under the steely guidance of Abbess Sigeburg they follow God's path, looking to their infirmarian, Hilda, to provide what comfort and cures she can. But when the mere takes a young servant boy, Sigeburg's grip falters and Hilda quickly realizes this place holds secrets darker and more unholy than she can fathom.  Then proud Sister Wulfrun, a recent arrival to the convent, has a vision: a curse is upon them and change must be brought. Is she saint or serpent? To Hilda, Wulfrun is a signal bolder and brighter than any fire set — one she cannot help but follow . [Paperback]
”It is rare for an author to fully recreate the strangeness of the past, but Danielle Giles has done exactly that.” —Costanza Casati

Wild Fictions by Amitav Ghosh $40
Wild Fictions is a collection of essays written over the past 25 years or so and published in various journals and periodicals. The essays can be clubbed under the broad headings of writings on literature and language, climate change and environment, human lives, travel and discoveries, and opinions and conversations. They focus on the abiding concerns that are reflected in Ghosh's works of fiction and non-fiction: colonisation, colonialism and its effects; the complex and delicate link between humans and nature; the ways in which we understand and interact with the world we live in; the importance of history and (re)discovery; how we tell stories, how we use language; and the importance of speaking and writing on issues and events that are key to our times. [Paperback]
”We owe a great debt to Ghosh's brilliant mind, avenging pen, and huge soul.” —Naomi Klein

Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko $30
This remarkable Australian novel features two extraordinary Indigenous stories set five generations apart. When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice. Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Granny Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives. In this brilliant epic novel, Melissa Lucashenko torches Queensland's colonial myths, while reimagining an Australian future. [Paperback]
”Lucashenko is an exhilarating writer, and this generous book is her most remarkable to date.” —Michelle de Kretser

Everything is Tuberculosis: The history and persistence of our deadliest infection by John Green $45
Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticised as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it. In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year. In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry's story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.

Your Face Belongs to Us: The secretive start-up that is dismantling your privacy by Kashmir Hill $39
When Kashmir Hill stumbled upon Clearview AI, a mysterious startup selling an app that claimed it could identify anyone using just a snapshot of their face, the implications were terrifying. The app could use the photo to find your name, your social media profiles, your friends and family – even your home address. But this was just the start of a story more shocking than she could have imagined. Launched by computer engineer Hoan Ton-That and politician Richard Schwartz, and assisted by a cast of controversial characters on the alt-right, Clearview AI would quickly rise to the top, sharing its app with billionaires and law enforcement. In this riveting feat of reporting Hill weaves the story of Clearview AI with an exploration of how facial recognition technology is reshaping our lives, from its use by governments and companies like Google and Facebook (who decided it was too radical to release) to the consequences of racial and gender biases baked into the AI. Soon it could expand the reach of policing — as it has in China and Russia — and lead us into a dystopian future. Your Face Belongs to Us is a gripping true story. It illuminates our tortured relationship with technology, the way it entertains us even as it exploits us, and it presents a powerful warning that in the absence of regulation, this technology will spell the end of our anonymity. 
”The dystopian future portrayed in some science-fiction movies is already upon us. Whether you like it or not, your face has already been scraped from the internet, stored in a giant database, and made available to law enforcement agencies, private corporations, and authoritarian governments to track and surveil you. Kashmir Hill's fascinating book brings home the scary implications of this new reality.” —John Carreyrou

• NZ Police access controversial online facial recognition website.

Unforgetting by Belinda Robinson $40
Good Friday, 1962. Belinda, who's just turned thirteen, is driving with her mother, obstetrician Diana Mason, to the country home of her family friends for the Easter break. As they bump along a dusty coastal road, Belinda tells her mother a shocking story of abuse she has kept secret for nearly eight years. At the same time, her younger brother Julian reveals the secret to their father, playwright Bruce Mason, as they converge on their friends' house from a different direction. It will take more than sixty years for Belinda to reveal the details of this story publicly. Who was going to believe her? Her parents were well known and respected, and not just in literary and medical circles. But finally, triggered by Julian's sudden death and inspired by one of New Zealand's finest writers, Belinda tackles the process of 'unforgetting', reviewing her traumatic past and coming to terms with its consequences.

Pranzo: Sicilian(ish) recipes and stories by Guy Mirabella $70
In Pranzo Guy Mirabella delves into his Sicilian heritage. Here you will find the gusto of Italian pastas and sauces, alongside herbs and spices, and ingredients like kolhrabi and prickly pear. Seasonal and sumptuous, Mirabella conveys his zest for food, art, and life in the pages of Pranzo. Designed with a playful eye, the book is a treat and the recipes infused with nourishment and pleasure.

• Look inside!

• Browse our cookbooks.

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks $38
Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz — just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy — collapsed and died on a Washington, DC street. After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, and living in Sydney, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humour, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on the US Memorial Day public holiday of 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf. Three years later, she booked a flight to remote Flinders Island off the coast of Tasmania with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on the island's pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death. [Hardback]

The End of Capitalism: Why growth and climate protection are incompatible — and how we will live in the future by Ulrike Herrmann $46
Capitalism has brought about many positive things. At the same time, however, it is ruining the climate and the environment, so that humanity's very existence is now at risk. 'Green growth' is supposed to be the saviour, but economics expert and bestselling author Ulrike Herrmann disagrees. In this book, she explains in a clear and razor-sharp manner why we need 'green shrinkage' instead. Greenhouse gases are increasing dramatically and unchecked. This failure is no coincidence, because the climate crisis goes to the heart of capitalism. Prosperity and growth are only possible if technology is used and energy is utilised. Unfortunately, however, green energy from the sun and wind will never be enough to fuel global growth. The industrialised countries must therefore bid farewell to capitalism and strive for a circular economy in which only what can be recycled is consumed. Herrmann makes a convincing argument that we won't get anywhere without personal restrictions and government planning. Her example for a solution is the British war economy of the 1940s. This is not a utopian scenario, but a comprehensive example of the restrictions and government-led plans needed now and in the future. [Paperback]

The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa (translated from Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai) $25
Thirteen-year-old Nanami Kosaki loves reading. The local library is a home from home and books have become her best friends. When Nanami notices books disappearing from the library shelves, she’s particularly curious about a suspicious man in a grey suit whose furtive behaviour doesn’t feel right. Should she follow him to see what he’s up to?  When a talking tabby cat called Tiger appears to warn her about how dangerous that would be, together they’re brave enough to follow the frightening trail to find out where all the books have gone. Will Nanami and Tiger overcome the challenges of the adventure ahead?

Build an autumn store of books for the reading days ahead. We can send your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door.

House of Fury by Evelio Rosero (translated from Spanish by Victor Meadowcroft) $42
Taking place entirely on a single evening — Friday, April 10, 1970 — in a large Bogotá mansion, House of Fury tells a hair-raising story. Nacho Caiciedo, a magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice, lives with his wife Alma and their six grown daughters. The Caiciedos have planned an enormous celebration in their home. But before the party has even started, the family is shocked by two pieces of news: their teenage daughter Italia is pregnant, and Alma's prodigal brother Jesús is expected at any moment. Guests from all levels of Bogotá society arrive, two earthquakes strike, and the party descends into debauchery; Nacho, out in the city streets, searching for Italia, is kidnapped by a ragtag militia, and its troops eventually invade the party and bring more chaos. House of Fury begins as a black comedy and unravels into a grim portent of the conflict that would rage across Colombia for fifty years. House of Fury is an indelible, fantastical work that with its unforgettable characters and unflinching, poetic, and humane voice, brings to light Colombia's violent history. [Paperback]
”Chekhov would've been mesmerized. In lieu of a single gun, Evelio Rosero sets up the contents of an entire armory. Building the intricate, involute procession of a single terrible night, the Colombian writer braids the many threads of his story with a candor and a knowingness that always hints towards the devastation to come. That House of Fury still manages to astound, then, is a testament to Rosero's finesse of the macabre, his merciless indictment of his nation's brutal history, and his utter disregard for narrative comforts.” —Xiao Yue Shan, Asymptote Journal

On the Clock by Claire Baglin (translated from French by Jordan Stamp) $38
In one strand, a young family bumps and scrapes through life. The hapless father balances demanding factory shiftwork, while the mother constantly prioritises the needs of others over her own. But there is also happiness: a trip to the seaside; sibling squabbles, games and laughter; tenderness and support. In another strand, a young woman describes her days working in a burger chain. It is exhausting, repetitive labour, too often peopled by tricky customers and even trickier managers. Hours pass. Days, weeks, years. It is an existence that marks the body and mind and governs a life. What emerges, alive with eloquent detail, is a compelling exploration of social inequality. Writing with nimble nuance, a sly, subtle wit, and a sharp ear, Claire Baglin marks her debut in On the Clock as a blazingly original talent. [Paperback with French flaps]
”A sophisticated new voice exploring the French working-class experience and the ways in which language may express its precarious specificities.” —Times Literary Supplement

• What does the literature of the working class look like?

The Accidentals by Guadalupe Nettel (translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey) $36
When an albatross strays too far from its home, or loses its bearings, it becomes an 'accidental', an unmoored wanderer. The protagonists of these eight stories each find the ordinary courses of their lives disrupted by an unexpected event and are pushed into unfamiliar terrain: a girl encounters her uncle in hospital, who was cast out of the family for reasons unknown; a menacing force hovers over a fracturing family on a rural holiday; a couple and their children inhabit a stifling world where it is better to be asleep than awake; a man's desire for a solution to his marital dissatisfaction has unforeseen consequences. Deft and disquieting, oscillating between the real and the fantastical. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Guadalupe Nettel yet again walks into uncertain terrain with these mysterious stories. There are secrets everywhere, she says, especially in life's most intimate and familiar aspects. The Accidentals never loses its sense of things being out of joint, and Nettel explores these fears with calm and with beauty.” —Mariana Enriquez
”I adored this collection, it spread its roots out within me. Nettel is an extraordinary writer.'“ —Daisy Johnson
”The Accidentals is a striking and compelling collection that searches for the extraordinary within the ordinary. Each narrative veers seamlessly from the mundane to the existential; the writing is deft, and unsettling prose imbues the work with a profound resonance. I loved these stories, mad and controlled, and brilliant.” —Elaine Feeney
”Nettel is one of the leading lights in contemporary Latin American literature. I envy how naturally she makes use of language; her resistance to ornamentation and artifice; and the almost stoic fortitude with which she dispenses her profound and penetrating knowledge of human nature.” —Valeria Luiselli

Visas Now! Aotearoa’s response to global refugee emergencies by Murdoch Stephens et al $30
This incisive study examines Aotearoa’s history of humanitarian immigrations and then zooms in on the high-stakes, one-off intakes of Syrians, Afghans and Ukrainians in the past decade. The book also includes nine people who share how their communities came together to seek emergency refugee intakes, including some whose calls went unanswered. Essential reading for anyone interested in humanitarian protection in a time of crisis. [Paperback]

• What’s inside.

• What happened to my friend.

Atlas of the New Zealand Wars, Volume 1: 1834—1864, Early Engagements to the Second Taranaki War edited by Derek Leask $90
This splendid and completely fascinating book will add new dimensions to your understanding of this pivotal period, and demonstrates the central place of cartography to the colonial project. In the Atlas of the New Zealand Wars, five decades of maps and plans from 1834 to 1884 provide remarkable new insight into the deep conflicts running through nineteenth-century Aotearoa. Beginning with early skirmishes off the Taranaki coast and at the Chathams, Volume One follows the tracks inland from the Bay of Islands towards the Hokianga in the Northern Wars; it reveals the web of Te Rauparaha's influence radiating out from Kapiti to Port Nicholson and across Cook Strait to the Wairau; it takes us inside the barracks and ramparts of the colony's new towns; and concludes as the brewing unrest around Waitara in Taranaki explodes into war. Through the maps, we meet the people: Hone Heke and FitzRoy, Te Rangitake and Pratt, warriors and missionaries; and we go where they went: from the flagpole at Kororareka to Kawiti's pa at Ruapekapeka, up the Hutt River to Boulcott's farm, across Taranaki from Waitara to Kaitake pa. Through both tangata and whenua we understand the conflicts and their consequences anew. Based on thirty years of research, the Atlas of the New Zealand Wars reveals a complex series of challenges and misunderstandings, skirmishes and negotiations, battles and wars that have profoundly shaped the lives of Māori and Pākeha on these islands ever since. [Hardback]
”Derek Leask’s Atlas is a magnificent labour of love. It adds a whole new — visual — dimension to our understanding of the New Zealand Wars.” — James Belich, Beit Professor of Global and Imperial History, University of Oxford

• Look inside!

Surplus Women by Michelle Duff $35
Survival, friendship, love, desire, pain, freedom. Jess is the only one in her group who hasn’t lost her virginity. Genevieve is being held captive in a dug-out with her gymnastics nemesis from 40 years ago. At night, Jade absorbs catcalls like Mario powering up on mushrooms. From heaven, the Dream Team data-analyses human destinies while worrying about their job security. As Whetū and Sia race to the hospital in the rain, Whetū remembers another night that changed everything. This is a collection of stories about women in past, present and future Aotearoa. Michelle Duff’s cast of hungry teenage girls, top detectives who forget to buy milk, frustrated archivists, duplicitous real estate agents, and ‘surplus women’ are all as vivid as wafts of Impulse from a backpack in the 90s. These stories move nimbly from realism to comic overdrive, from the outlandish to the simply true, with characters reappearing from new angles. As they meditate on power and patriarchy, love and bad decisions, these stories remind us of the sweet dreams we used to have and how it feels to wake up from them. [Paperback]
”Vibrant, eclectic, sharp as hell. We’re in the presence of a writer who is acutely aware of the way each story whispers to another — especially, crucially, around what girls and women leave chronically unsaid, the surplus silence in our lives.” —Tracey Slaughter
”The characters are unforgettable. This is a voice I am happy to spend time with, a voice that is offering something new.” —Tina Makereti

Zone by Mathias Énard (translated from French by Charlotte Mandell) $28
”Énard 's text is like a ball-bearing rolling around indefinitely inside a box over surfaces imprinted with every sort of information about the wider Mediterranean, from Barcelona to Beirut, and Algiers to Trieste (the ‘Zone’), past and present. Énard very effectively uses the necessarily one-directional movement of a sentence to sketch out, through endless repetition and variation, the multi-dimensional complexity of the political, cultural, historical, social and physical terrain of the entire Zone. The narrative, so to call it, takes the form of a single 496-page sentence perfectly capturing (or perfectly inducing the impression of) the thought processes of the narrator as he travels, in ‘real’ time by train from Milan to Rome bearing a briefcase of classified information on terrorists, arms dealers and war criminals to sell to the Vatican, speeding on amphetamines, fatigue and alcohol, in his memory through multistranded loops from his experiences, which include his involvement as a mercenary in Croatia and working for the French secret service as well as his string of personal relationships, and in even greater loops of knowledge and association that pertain to the places in which his experiences took place and the history associated therewith. Énard’s prose is so irresistible and so mesmeric that the reader is effortlessly borne along, its forward movement not at all inhibited by the encyclopedic effect of the loops, and the loops upon the loops, upon the strand of the narrator’s journey, nor by the pieces of painful psychological grit not yet abraded from the narrator’s personal history of involvement in the recent traumas of the Zone. By so seductively inhabiting the mind of his less-than-admirable narrator, a mind caught between obsessive focus and restless discursion, Énard provides a panoramic view of the political and personal violence that has shaped the history and cultures of the Zone, and also intimates the way in which an individual is caught irretrievably in the great web of their circumstances, submission to those circumstances being the price of travelling along them.”  —Thomas. [New paperback edition]

Death Goddess Guide to Self Love by Carin Smeaton $30
Death Goddess sings loud, proud and offkey about the trauma, mess and gore of our awa atua, red river fox, our frenemy enemy ovaries! This goddess isn’t afraid of nothing. She’s not afraid to spill her moon sickness on the western line. She is not afraid to kick up a storm in colonial institutions. She’s not gonna wear their shame. Rather, this collection kicks these brutal systems high up into the whetu for a pulse check. She’s Carin Smeaton’s third full length collection of new original poetry, her unexpected baby, her new born freedom fighter! [Paperback]
"Carin’s kupu come sideways, they break the rules, they respect the kuia and the power of slang, her poems are a testament to staying sly and aware, her angles are always a beautiful surprise, she embraces the ordinary and the divine, and biting into her mahi is to experience both, like popping candy let loose in the cage of the waha." —Talia Marshall

Going Mainstream: Why extreme ideas are spreading, and what we can do about it by Julia Ebner $28
Incels. Anti Vaxxers. Conspiracy theorists. Neo-Nazis. Once, these groups all belonged on the fringes of the political spectrum. Today, accelerated by a pandemic, global conflict and rapid technological change, their ideas are becoming more widespread: QAnon proponents run for U.S. Congress, neo-fascists win elections in Europe, and celebrity influencers spread dangerous myths to millions. Going Mainstream asks the question: What is happening here? Going undercover online and in person, UK counter-extremism expert Julia Ebner reveals how, united by a shared sense of grievance and scepticism about institutions, radicalised individuals are influencing the mainstream as never before. Hidden from public scrutiny, they leverage social media to create alternative information ecosystems and build sophisticated networks funded by dark money. Ebner's candid conversations with extremists offer a nuanced and gripping insight into why people have turned to the fringes. She explores why outlandish ideas have taken hold and disinformation is spreading faster than ever. And she speaks to the activists and educators who are fighting to turn the tide. Going Mainstream is a dispatch from the darkest front of the culture wars, and a vital wake-up call. [Paperback]
''With unparalleled insight and urgency, Ebner reveals the dangerous spread of extremist beliefs. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the terrifying new reality we face.'' —Eliot Higgins, author of We Are Bellingcat

Powsels and Thrums: A tapestry of a creative life by Alan Garner $45
In this memoir, Garner traces the line of his life: from a working-class childhood in the landscape of Cheshire during World War II, through a grammar school education and on to the University of Oxford, and then home to see if he could become what he most desired: a writer. We see the serendipitous moments that drove his course, from coming-of-age in a period of great cultural change, to crossing paths with a famous mathematician while out long-distance running, to the fateful day he chanced across Blackden, the medieval hall, miraculously located next to the giant telescope at Jodrell Bank, that was to become his lasting home and the setting for Treacle Walker. As Garner tells us, a lifetime of working with a pen produces the powsels and thrums of research, imagination and story. These oddments can be shaped into something more than its parts: a vivid tapestry of a creative life that will inspire any reader. [Hardback]
”Who could resist such a title? The term derives from handloom weaving, Alan Garner's great-grandfather's trade, and refers to the scraps of cloth that weavers kept for themselves - an evocative metaphor for the writings collected herein. These snippets, produces on the same magical loom, together attain a mesmerizing wholeness, vibrating with life and curiosity.” —Observer
”A sequence of work collected from various sources across the years which offers a remarkable window into Garner's mind and heart. I use the word window advisedly, for Garner's prose is as clear as glass, perfectly conveying the precision of his thought. You don't have to know his work well to become immersed in this little book.” —Spectator

• Blackden and Jodrell Bank.

Colony by Annika Norlin (translated from Swedish by Alice E. Olsson) $38
One morning, Emelie can't get out of bed. Her therapist calls it burnout. Her neighbour calls it the tiny work death. She needs to get away from the brightness of the city lights, the noise of the people, the constant demands, so she goes to the woods, pitches her tent overlooking the lake, breathes. And that's where she sees them, the Colony- A man with a sad face. A tall, strong, older woman. A woman in her forties, squatting to examine an ant hill. Another woman in her forties, short, long hair, ample bosom, good posture - the leader? An extremely beautiful man. A slightly younger man, in a Helly Hansen jacket and trucker hat. And a teenage boy, standing a little way from the group. Who are they? What do they mean to each other? And why do they behave in such strange ways- thanking the fish they eat, sleeping under a tree, singing off key, dancing without music, never letting the boy fully in? As Emelie becomes more and more drawn to the Colony, she begins to re-evaluate her own lifestyle. Wouldn't it be nice to live as these seven do? Apart from society and its expectations. But groups always have their dynamics and roles. Which are you? And what if you want to change? [Paperback]

Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages edited by Michelle Elvy and Vaughan Rapatahana $30
This sparkling collection of stories brings more than 40 languages together, highlighting the complex realities of Aotearoa’s multicultural and multilingual society. Including microfictions and creative nonfictions, plus 12 essays from language practitioners and experts, Te Moana o Reo holds words to the light, examining, contemplating and declaring who we are. This is a 21st-century view of Aotearoa, a taonga for our world. Writers include: David Eggleton, Airana Ngarewa, Melanie Kwang, Karlo Mila, Ghazaleh Gol, James Norcliffe, Robert Sullivan, Lynn Jenner, Harry Ricketts, Jana Grohnert, Serie Barford, Lynn Davidson, Renee Liang, Hēmi Kelly. [Paperback]

Mozart in Italy: Coming of age in the land of opera by Jane Glover $28
At thirteen years old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who had captured the hearts of northern Europe, but his father Leopold was now determined to conquer Italy. Together, they made three visits there, the last when Mozart was seventeen, all recounted here by conductor Jane Glover. Father and son travelled from the theatres and concert salons of Milan to the church-filled streets of Rome to Naples, poorer and more dangerous than the prosperous north, and to Venice, the carnivalesque birthplace of public opera. All the while Mozart was absorbing Italian culture, language, style and art, and honed his craft. He met the challenge of writing Italian opera for Italian singers and audiences, and provoked a variety of responses, from triumph and admiration to intrigue and hostility: in a way, these Italian years can be seen as a microcosm of his whole life. [Paperback]

Borderlines: A history of Europe told from the edges by Lewis Baston $40
Europe's internal borders have rarely been 'natural'; they have more often been created by accident or force. In Borderlines, political historian Lewis Baston journeys along twenty-nine key borders from west to east Europe, examining how the map of the continent has been redrawn over the last century, with varying degrees of success. The fingerprints of Napoleon, Alexander I, Castlereagh, Napoleon III and Bismarck are all there, but today's map of Europe is mostly the work of the Allies in 1919 and Stalin in 1945. To journey to the centre of the story of Europe, Baston takes us right to its edges, bringing to life the fascinating and often bizarre histories of these border zones. We visit Baarle, the town broken into thirty fragments by the Netherland-Belgium border, and stop in Ostritz, the eastern German town where Nazis held a rock festival. We meander the back lanes of rural Ireland, and soak up the atmosphere in the Viennese-style coffee houses of the elegant Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi. Through these borderlands, Baston explores how places and people heal from the scars left by a Europe of ethnic cleansing and barbed wire fences, and he searches for a better European future — finding it in unexpected places. [Paperback]

Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the countryside — Finding home in an English garden by Marchelle Farrell $28
What is home? It's a question that has troubled Marchelle Farrell for her entire life. Years ago she left Trinidad and now, uprooted once again, she heads to the peaceful English countryside — and finds herself the only Black woman in her village. Drawn to her new garden, Marchelle begins to examine the complex and emotional question of home in the context of colonialism. As her relationship with the garden deepens, she discovers that her two conflicting identities are far more intertwined than she had realised. Winner of the Nan Shepherd Prize. [Paperback]

Clara and the Birds by Emma Simpson $35
For as long as she can remember, Clara has always been fascinated with birds--where they go, how they take flight, and the way they immediately fly away from her when she comes into contact with them. Like the birds she so admires, Clara is considered shy by those around her. She too feels the urge to flee the company of others, preferring the comforting bubble of solitude instead. Convinced that her desire to be alone is a weakness, she fails to find her voice or recognize her own inner strength. That is, until she has a chance encounter with a bird who doesn't immediately fly away. [Hardback]

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Pakistan: Recipes and stories from home kitchens, restaurants, and roadside stalls by Maryam Jillani $65
Thanks to shared borders with Afghanistan, China, India, and Iran, and a history of migration and trade, Pakistani dishes draw upon a marvelous array of flavours and ingredients that make food one of the country's finest qualities. With over 100 recipes for sauces, chutneys, aromatic curries and subtly spiced vegetables, Pakistan is a perfect introduction to readers new to the cuisine and a welcome reminder of favorites to those already familiar. A few of the recipes that await: Spiced Chicken Dumplings, Lentil Fritters in Yogurt, Tangy Potato Curry, Slow-Cooked Lamb, Saffron-Infused Flatbread, and Parsi Wedding Custard. Along with essays profiling each of the country's regions, abundant and dramatic photography, and a show-stopping package, Pakistan is a cookbook to be read, savoured, and cooked from. [Hardback]

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These books are all keen to sit on the top of your reading pile. Which will you choose? We can dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door.

Phantom Limb by Chris Koehler $45
One evening, Gillis — a young Scottish minister who technically doesn't believe in god — falls into a hole left by a recently dug up elm tree and discovers an ancient disembodied hand in the soil. He's about to rebury it when the hand beckons to him. He spirits it back to his manse and gives it pen and paper, whereupon it begins to doodle scratchy and anarchic visions. Somewhere, in the hand's deep history, there lies a story of the Scottish reformation, of art and violence, and of its owner long since dead. But for Gillis, there lies only opportunity: to reinvent himself as a prophet, proclaim the hand a miracle and use it for reasons both sacred and profane: to impress his ex-girlfriend, and to lead himself and his country out of inertia and into a dynamic, glorious future. [Hardback]
”Thrillingly unfettered. Phantom Limb is its own kind of miraculous relic: disturbing and mesmerising, the work of a writer possessed of a rare power and vision.” —Daily Telegraph
”At once playful and deeply moving, ancient and shockingly new, Phantom Limb is a tremendous read: full of wisdom, madness, kindness and action. You won't read anything quite like it.” —Aidan Cottrell-Boyce

The Ways of Paradise: Notes from a lost manuscript by Peter Cornell (translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel) $28
A book at the intersection of fiction and essay, on the connections between art, literature, spirituality and the occult through history. In his foreword, Peter Cornell presents this so-called found manuscript as the work of a now-deceased, obscure researcher who spent three decades in the National Library of Sweden working on his magnum opus. Upon his death, no trace of this work remains aside from this set of footnotes notes and fragments which form an enigmatic set of texts. Ranging from the Crusades to Ruskin, Freud to surrealism, cubism, automatic writing, Duchamp, the Manhattan Project, Pollock and Smithson, this cult book, first published in Sweden in 1987, is now translated into English for the first time. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Like a collision between the fantastical libraries of Borges, David Markson’s art obsessed micronarratives and Iain Sinclair’s occult strain of psychogeography. The Ways of Paradise is a labyrinth I never wanted to escape.” —Chris Power
”Who could have imagined that a set of imaginary orphaned footnotes could yield so much pleasure and fascination? More than a study of the labyrinth motif, The Ways of Paradise is itself a labyrinth, an apparently slim volume pulsing with infinite, overlapping worlds, an intricate meditation on the abysses of reality and illusion.” —Joshua Cohen
”The Ways of Paradise is the story of a lost manuscript and the labyrinth of enigmas through which its obscure author wandered, a book that pleasurably situates the reader at the centre of the idea of fiction, a place of everything and nothing from which ever-widening circles of mystery and meaning spread out.” —David Hayden
”Just as any person tracking a spiral or walking a labyrinth will find their sense of space and time collapsed, viewing moments in the past and future of their journey from vividly altered perspectives as they make their way, so the reader of this remarkable ‘manuscript’ will be similarly enlightened. Open, allusive, constantly expanding its appreciation of the covert relations between culture and history, place and belief, The Ways of Paradise embodies its own utopian premise. Assembled with a lightness of touch and a precision in detail, profound in its accumulative insights, it understands that any book aspiring to the fullest incarnation of its potential remains in process more than it offers an arrival. No longer are fragments deployed only formally; rather they serve as waymarkers on a quest passage to the interior, the final labyrinth of human imagination, and the mind’s own mysterious corridors. The spaces between entries are where the doors to this charged site lie. Each traveller will find their own entrance, and each will surely be entranced.’ —Gareth Evans

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Mark Adams: A survey — He kohinga whakaahu by Sarah Farrar $80
Photographer Mark Adams is known for his focus on Samoan tatau, Māori–Pākehā interactions in Rotorua, carved meeting houses, locations of significance for Ngāi Tahu in Te Waipounamu, and Captain James Cook’s landing sites reflect his deep engagement with our postcolonial and Pacific histories. This first-ever comprehensive survey of his work honours one of our most distinguished — and continually compelling — photographers. It includes photographs taken across the Pacific, the United Kingdom and Europe that explore the migration of artistic and cultural practices across the globe, and examine the role of museums, and photography itself, in this dynamic and ongoing cross-cultural exchange. [Hardback]

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Being, Seeing, Making, Thinking: 50 Years of the Chartwell Project edited by Sue Gardiner and Megan Shaw $50
Since its establishment in 1974, Chartwell has championed the importance of creative visual thinking, shaping an expansive collection of contemporary art and an enduring programme of philanthropic and educational support. Illustrating over 150 images from the Chartwell Collection, the book features new writing on 50 selected artworks from New Zealand, Australia and further afield as well as rarely seen archival images of artists and exhibitions. The book offers unprecedented insight into the art, artists and remarkable story and philosophy of The Chartwell Project. Featuring a preface by Chartwell’s founder, Rob Gardiner, an essay by Chartwell’s chair, Sue Gardiner, a Timeline by co-editor Megan Shaw and 50 accompanying texts on artworks, this landmark book offers unprecedented insight into the art, artists and remarkable story and philosophy of the Chartwell Project. [Flexibound]

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• Creative thinking in action.

Groundwork: The art and writing of Emily Cumming Harris by Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson $60
Part inspired creative endeavour and part determined detective work, this long overdue book brings to light one of New Zealand's most significant botanical artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Just as Emily Harris's beautiful paintings occupy a liminal space between scientific botanical illustration and art, so this book occupies a shifting ground between biography and imagineered monograph. The result is often moving and always intriguing. Importantly, it restores to Aotearoa art history a figure who had almost disappeared. Emily Harris has been examined alongside her artist peers Sarah Featon and Georgina Hetley, but until this book neither her distinctive voice nor her almost 200 surviving images have been heard or seen in any quantity outside of archival or online spaces. Her life story is remarkable and her diaries, letters, poems and paintings constitute a fascinating legacy. Harris was born in England in 1837 and dies in Nelson in 1925. [Hardback]

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• Michele Leggott’s poetry collection Face to the Sky finds a special connection with Emily Cumming Harris.

Shade and Breeze by Quynh Tran (translated from Swedish by Kira Josefsson) $45
Má dreams of wealth and grandeur, Hieu dreams of Finnish girls. The younger brother, always on the periphery, always an observer, gradually disappears into his schoolwork, mesmerised by his own intellect. The three of them form a solitary world in a small Ostrobothnian town on the west coast of Finland. Má and Hieu, constantly on a collision course with each other and the community’s suffocating social codes. They live among people who want to talk openly about everything, who don’t understand the necessity of sometimes remaining in the shade. In sensitive and transfixing prose that has the effect of a series of tableaux, and with chapter headings reminiscent of the intertitles in a silent film, Tran’s multi-award-winning debut is a moving story about love, the compulsion to create, and the meaning of family. [Paperback]
”A magic voice. Working with the coming-of-age in a smalltown narrative, Quynh Tran creates a world completely of its own kind, a story of belonging and estrangement, and of the refugee experience. In a sensual, dreamy prose, still so very real, with an authority reminiscent of Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Tran has written a first novel that shines like a precious gem.” —Monika Fagerholm
”A perceptive debut, where the significant events are intentionally placed in the background, in line with the family’s wishes. Not everything should be discussed, claims the mother whose anger instead turns into a physical condition — a slap here and there. Nobody is capable of seeing how their actions cause a ripple effect, how human darkness is passed down through generations. In different ways, the family members try to find a mutual place where they can love one another. This makes Shade and Breeze a complex, delicate, and wistful debut. It deserves to be pulled into the light.” —Sydsvenskan

The Jade Cabinet by Rikki Ducornet $33
Made speechless by her eccentric father, the beautiful Etheria is traded for a piece of precious jade. Memory, her sister, tells her story, that of a childhood enlivened by Lewis Carroll and an orangutan named Dr. Johnson and envenomed by the pernicious courtship of Radulph Tubbs, Queen Victoria's own Dragon of Industry. The novel travels from Oxford to Egypt where one million ibis mummies wait to be transformed into fertiliser, where Baconfield the architect will cause a pyramid to collapse, and where a scorned and bloated hunger artist who speaks in tongues will plot a bloody revenge. Jade Cabinet is both a riveting novel and a reflection on the nature of memory and desire, language and power. [Paperback]

• The immanent ur-language.

The History of Medicine in Twelve Objects by Carol Cooper $45
THE TREPHINE, THE BONE SAW, THE MASK. THE MICROSCOPE. THE STETHOSCOPE. THE ETHER INHALER, THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE, THE OBSTETRIC FORCEPS, THE X -RAY MACHINE, THE E.C.T. MACHINE, THE HIP PROSTHESIS, THE HEART-LUNG MACHINE. Over the course of centuries, the ways in which doctors have engaged with sickness has changed drastically, and so too have the tools at their disposal. The history of these medical tools is truly astounding, revealing the true extent of human ingenuity, curiosity, and compassion. [Hardback]

The Companion to Volcanology by Brent Kininmont $25
The Companion to Volcanology is not a field guide to volcanoes. But tectonic shifts are present in Brent Kininmont's second book of poetry, and so are companions. The child, for instance, carried up a mountain in the titular opening poem, and companions alive to the brevity of their time together. Kininmont, who grew up in Aotearoa, has lived in Japan for many years, and so these poems are of a life between two places and of the body in anxious or joyful motion. [Paperback]
”Kininmont’s terrific second book has that sense of lived experience finding forms which release thought and feeling. I read it in one go as a kind of interrupted story.” —Damien Wilkins
”Luminous, surprising, inventive, original.” —Paula Green

Umai: Recipes from a Japanese Home Kitchen by Millie Tsukagoshi Lagares $65
In this beautiful book, you have precision alongside the simple and relaxed. Discover unfussy lunch dishes and favorite family meals. Find recipes that are a joy to make together and to share. Millie Tsukagoshi Lagares guides you through her home kitchen and out onto the streets to experience food is both serene and exhilarating. From dumplings to fungi to matcha cookies, you will find accessible recipes that will delight and sooth in the making and the eating. [Hardback]
”A vibrant exploration of Japanese cuisine with beautiful writing and exciting recipes to nourish the soul.” —Ixta Belfrage

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Caret by Adam Mars-Jones $30
”We make lazy assumptions about the centre of things and its location. Who's to say that the centre of things isn't in a corner, way over there?”; “People in authority are always saying you should know your rights, though I've noticed they don't much enjoy it when you do.”; “Nobody can be a person twenty-fours hours a day - it just can't be done. At night the sets dissolve and the performance falls away... We're off the books.” That's John Cromer talking, in this fresh instalment of his lifelong saga. For John, embarking on a new stage of life in 1970s Cambridge, charm and wit aren't just assets, they are survival skills. It may be a case of John against the world. If so, don't be in too much of a hurry to bet on the world. Conjuring a remarkable voice and mind, Caret is a feast of a novel, served on a succession of small plates, each portion providing an adult's daily intake of literary nourishment. Reading it is guaranteed to help you work, rest and play. [Paperback]
”Thank god for John Cromer and his creator Adam Mars-Jones, one of the funniest, most self-aware characters in English fiction, whose minute observations on everything from constipation to lust are a source of unexpected delight.” —Linda Grant
”Mars-Jones is building a facsimile of existence; a map with a scale that seems, when you’re reading it, to be closing on 1:1. It’s an inordinately bold technique, but in the end it succeeds: it feels, as we follow the seemingly endless meander of Cromer’s thoughts, that we’re not so much reading a story, as living in one.” —The Guardian

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God and the Devil: The life and work of Ingmar Bergman by Peter Cowie $40
A chronicle of the life and career of one of film's defining figures, God and the Devil draws on exclusive extracts from Bergman's diaries, letters and production workbooks. Peter Cowie brings us close to the man and the artist, as he wrestled with themes of love, sex and betrayal — with the figure of Death always hovering overhead. [Now in paperback]
"A commanding portrait: one that consistently ties events in his life to specific scenes, themes and locations in his movies. Having met Bergman in 1969 and corresponded with him until 1995, veteran film author Peter Cowie is able to channel first-hand knowledge of Bergman into a book that's respectful without being overly reverential." —Matt Looker, Total Film
"Indispensable, rich, engaging, thorough." —Sight & Sound

Munichs by David Peace $40
February 6, 1958, British European Airways Flight 609 crashed on take-off at Munich Airport. On board were the young Manchester United team, 'the Busby Babes', and the journalists who followed them. Twenty-one of the passengers died instantly, four were left fighting for their lives while six more were critically injured. Twenty-four hours later, Jimmy Murphy, the assistant manager of Manchester United, faced the press at the Rechts der Isar Hospital: 'What of the future, you ask? It will be a long, hard struggle. It took Matt Busby, Bert Whalley and myself twelve years to produce the 1958 Red Devils. It was long, hard, tiring work, but we succeeded. At the moment, I am so confused, so tired and so sad, I cannot think clearly, but what I do know is that the Red Devils will rise again.' Munichs is the story of how Manchester United rose again, of the crash and its aftermath, of those who survived and those who did not, of how Britain and football changed, and how it did not; a novel of tragedy, but also of hope. [Paperback]
”Peace writes the boldest and most original British fiction of his generation.” —Richard Lloyd Parry, The New York Times

Pearl: A graphic novel by Sherrie Smith and Christine Norrie $21
”We are in Japan in the 1940s with Amy, a 13-year-old Japanese American girl born in Hawaii, sent to visit her ailing great-grandmother. After Pearl Harbour is bombed Amy is stuck in Japan, where she is conscripted by the military to be a Monitor Girl listening in and translating U.S. radio messages. The other story thread is the one her great-grandmother tells her: the Japanese annexation of the Ryukyu Kingdom in Okinawa in 1879. Both are stories of survival and hope, and for Amy, identity, the conflict of being both Japanese and American. Christine Norrie’s illustrations capture the confusion and emotion of the situation, and the sharp singular colour palette has great impact.” —Stella

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Crack-Up Capitalism: Market radicals and the dream of a world without democracy by Quinn Slobodian $30
An important book right now, showing how capitalist extremists profit from the collapse of the democratic nation. Look at a map of the world and you'll see a neat patchwork of nation-states. But this is not where power actually resides. From the 1990s onwards, globalisation has shattered the map, leading to an explosion of new legal entities — tax havens, free ports, gated enclaves and special economic zones. These spaces are freed from ordinary forms of regulation, taxation and mutual obligation — and with them, ultracapitalists believe that it is possible to escape the bonds of democratic government altogether. Slobodian follows the most notorious radical libertarians — from Milton Friedman to Peter Thiel — around the globe as they search for the perfect home for their free market fantasy. The hunt leads from Hong Kong in the 1970s to South Africa in the late days of apartheid, from the neo-Confederate South to the medieval City of London, charting the relentless quest for a blank slate where capitalism and democracy can be finally uncoupled. [Paperback]

Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good by Eley Williams $35
Eley Williams returns with a thrilling collection of short stories exploring the nature of relationships both intimate and transient — from the easy gamesmanship of contagious yawns to the horror of a smile fixed for just a second too long. A courtroom sketch artist delights in committing portraits of their lover to paper but their need to capture likenesses forever is revealed to have darker, more complex intentions. A child's schoolyard crush on a saint marks a confrontation with the reality of a teenage body in flux. Elsewhere, an editor of canned laughter loses their confidence and seeks divine intervention, and an essayist annotates their thoughts on Keats by way of internet-gleaned sex tips. Moderate to Poor, Occasionally Good hums with fossicking language and ingenious experiments in form and considers notions of playfulness, authenticity and care as it holds relationships to account: their sweet misunderstandings, soured reflections, queer wish fulfilments and shared, held breaths. [Paperback]
”Stories that work from the inside out: glancing, intriguing.” —Guardian
”Erudite and audacious.” —Kieran Goddard
”Frequently brilliant and deeply pleasurable.” —Caoilinn Hughes

Windswept: Life, Nature and Deep Time in the Scottish Highlands by Annie Worsley $29
Annie Worsley traded a busy life in academia to take on a small-holding or croft on the west coast of Scotland. It is a land ruled by great elemental forces — light, wind and water — that hold sway over how land forms, where the sea sits and what grows. Windswept explores what it means to live in this rugged, awe-inspiring place of unquenchable spirit and wild weather. Walk with Worsley as she lays quartz stones in the river to reflect the moonlight and attract salmon, as she watches otters play tag across the beach, as she is awoken by the feral bellowing of stags. Travel back in time to the epic story of how Scotland’s valleys were carved by glaciers, rivers scythed paths through mountains, how the earliest people found a way of life in the Highlands — and how she then found a home there millennia later. [Paperback]
”Windswept is a wonderful work, prose-painted in bold, bright strokes like a Scottish Colourist's canvas. It is a story of learning to keep time differently, in one of the most spectacular landscapes in Britain. Annie Worsley has written a gorgeous almanac or year-book in which the minutes, hours and months are marked not by the tick of clock-hands but weather-fronts, bird migrations and plant-patterns of growth and decay.” —Robert Macfarlane
”A shaft of golden stormlight, a blast of pure Highland air, Windswept is an exhilarating account of life lived closer to the elements than most of us will ever have the chance to experience.” —Melissa Harrison
”I have read pages and pages of this wonderful book, swept away by its beauty and understanding, its chromatic brilliance, flickering and surging into colour at every turn, moulded to its mountains and all the subtleties of its winds and skies. Honestly it is a great, great book.” —Adam Nicolson

Fog Island by Tomi Ungerer $35
Two young siblings find themselves cast away on mysterious Fog Island. No one has ever returned from the island's murky shores, but when the children begin to explore, they discover things are not quite as they expected. Ungerer's captivating drawings evoke the eerie beauty and magic surrounding this timeless adventure. [Hardback]

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Pop-Up Surrealism by Gérard Lo Monaco $454
In this magical book, pop-up engineer Gérard Lo Monaco brings to life eight works of art by leading surrealists: Salvador Dalí, Victor Brauner, Jean Arp, Man Ray, Joseph Cornell, Dora Maar, René Magritte and André Breton. Short texts introduce each work and its historical context, while hand-painted illustrations bring a new dimension to this revolutionary period in modern art. [Hardback]

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Any of these books could go straight to the top of your reading pile. We can dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door.

Lesser Ruins by Mark Haber $38
Bereft after the death of his ailing wife, a retired professor has resumed his life's work-a book that will stand as a towering cathedral to Michel de Montaigne, reframing the inventor of the essay for the modern age. The challenge is the litany of intrusions that bar his way — from memories of his past to the nattering of smartphones to his son's relentless desire to make an electronic dance album. As he sifts through the contents of his desk, his thoughts pulsing and receding in a haze of caffeine, ghosts and grievances spill out across the page. From the community college where he toiled in vain to an artists' colony in the Berkshires, from the endless pleasures of coffee to the finer points of Holocaust art, the professor's memories churn with sculptors, poets, painters, and inventors, all obsessed with escaping both mediocrity and themselves. Laced with humor as acrid as it is absurd, Lesser Ruins is a spiraling meditation on ambition, grief, and humanity's ecstatic, agonising search for meaning through art. This book delivers many of the reading pleasures of Thomas Bernhard.
"Lesser Ruins is a near perfect document of what it is to procrastinate, spun out in Haber's signature absurdist, looping, intellectually ecstatic style." —Emily Temple, Literary Hub
"Haber's novel is fluent and compelling, often rhapsodic, with a cumulative power to its repetitions." —Hal Jensen, Times Literary Supplement

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Twigs and Stones by Joy Cowley and Gavin Bishop $30
Snake and Lizard live together in a burrow in the desert. They are such good friends that Lizard decides to display their names above the burrow entrance. But three small words can cause trouble between friends. They must decide whose name should appear first. Then Lizard makes an unfortunate spelling mistake—he thinks it’s very funny but Snake is not laughing. Snake finds some spelling of her own that will teach Lizard a lesson! The friends eventually find a way to put the argument behind them in this funny picture book that holds a mirror to our human flaws and reminds us that names and nicknames must be used with care.

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Tree Spirits Grass Spirits by Hiromi Ito (translated from Japanese by Jon L. Pitt) $40
A series of intertwined poetic essays written by Japanese poet Hiromi Ito — part nature writing, part travelogue, part existential philosophy. Written between April 2012 and November 2013, Tree Spirits Grass Spirits adopts a non-linear narrative flow that mimics the growth of plants. Tree Spirits Grass Spirits serves as what we might call a phyto-autobiography: a recounting of one’s life through the logic of flora. Ito’s graciously potent and philosophical prose examines immigration, language, gender, care work, and death, all through her close (indeed, at times obsessive) attention to plant life.
"Ito's vivid descriptions of the physicality of the natural world carry over to her reflections on what it means to be a human moving through the environment. Jon Pitt's translation gracefully conveys Ito's engaged yet casual tone while allowing space for the rhythm and mouthfeel of each sentence, and it's not an exaggeration to say that every paragraph in this book is a joy to read." —Kathryn Hemmann
"These ambient poems about the flora of the California desert and Kumamoto, Japan are philosophical meditations on the peculiarity of human storytelling and naming practices.. Ito's poems suggest that the ways we humans look at plants contain information about how we produce both selves and others as well as narratives about death and transformation."  —Angela Hume

• Translating Kodama Kudasama.

Plasmas by Céline Minard (translated from French by Annabel L. Kim) $35
The stories in Plasmas dive into a post-human, more-than-human world where life as we know it has been replaced by life as it goes on. Acrobats glide through the air attached to biotech devices, an archivist presents scenes from Earth after interstellar colonization to her students, and scientists in Siberia play god with a manmade beast. Written as a series of vignettes into futures near and far, Plasmas dives into questions of legacy, memory, the body, and technology through striking prose from one of France's leading sci-fi writers. Equally comfortable in the worlds of Donna Haraway and Vladimir Nabokov, Plasmas is stunning in both philosophical and literary depth.
"Plasmas is a cubist painting: representing reality, while simultaneously shattering our perception of it." —The Harvard Gazette
"Plasmas is six stories that, as an archipelago-vaguely disquieting, wonderfully styled-constitutes a unique literary planet, if not a constellation of heretofore unclassified matter, forming an unprecedented unknown." —Le Monde

One Boat by Jonathan Buckley $39
On losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast — the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago. She immerses herself again in the life of the town, observing the inhabitants going about their business, a quiet backdrop for her reckoning with herself. An episode from her first visit resurfaces vividly — her encounter with John, a man struggling to come to terms with the violent death of his nephew. Soon Teresa encounters some of the people she met last time around: Petros, an eccentric mechanic, whose life story may or may not be part of John's; the beautiful Niko, a diving instructor; and Xanthe, a waitress in one of the cafés on the leafy town square. They talk about their longings, regrets, the passing of time, their sense of who they are. Artfully constructed, absorbing and insightful, One Boat is a brilliant novel grappling with questions of identity, free will, guilt and responsibility.
”Exactly why Buckley is not already revered and renowned as a novelist in the great European tradition remains a mystery that will perhaps only be addressed at that final godly hour when all the overlooked authors working in odd and antique modes will receive their just rewards.” —Ian Sansom, Times Literary Supplement

• A boat pressing against the outline of the sea.

The Spanish Mediterranean Islands Cookbook by Jeff Koehler $70
Explore the diverse cuisine of Spain's Balearic Islands - Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera — through 155 authentic home cooking recipes. Located off the Spanish Mediterranean coast, the Balearic Islands are renowned for their natural beauty, yet their cuisine has been largely underappreciated. This evocative recipe collection transports readers to the family kitchens, cafes, and markets of the archipelago, revealing a distinct culinary heritage shaped by the region's geography. The islands' most beloved dishes celebrate local produce, familiar Mediterranean ingredients — olive oil and garlic, rice and fresh fish — and resourceful cooking methods passed down for generations. From Menorcan-Style Stuffed Eggplant, Baked Fish with Spinach and Swiss Chard, Black Rice with Cuttlefish and Artichokes, and Pork with Wild Mushrooms to Baked Figs, Almond Cookies, and Formentera's most famous dessert, Fresh Cheesecake with Mint, the book's recipes include both sweet and savoury classics. Alongside the bounty of dishes, acclaimed author Jeff Koehler presents short essays highlighting culinary traditions, such as weekly village markets and St Martin's Day festivities; local ingredients, including cured sausages and tomato preserves; and essential techniques, such as preparing a perfect sofregit.

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Boodle Boodle Boodle by Geoff Stahl $28
The Clean's 1981 EP catalysed independent music in Aotearoa and defined what became known as the ‘Dunedin Sound’ At the time, The Clean were seen as ambassadors for a burgeoning independent music culture in Aotearoa, drawing on the DIY spirit of punk and post-punk centred around Dunedin. Geoff Stahl considers the influence and legacy of the EP and band on indie music in New Zealand and elsewhere. Examining the myth of the ‘Dunedin Sound’ associated with The Clean, the EP, and Flying Nun Records, he details how this myth emerged, its repudiation by many of the artists it presumes to cover, and its complicated persistence in the contemporary New Zealand imaginary.

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Song of a Blackbird Maria van Lieshout $30
Emma is a young student about to be drawn into what will become the biggest bank heist in European history: swapping 50 million guilders' worth of forged treasury bonds for real ones — right under the noses of the Nazis. Emma's life — and the lives of thousands, including a little girl named Hanna — hangs in the balance. Almost seventy years later, Annick discovers something surprising about her family. Her grandmother needs a bone marrow donor but none of her relatives is a match. In fact, they are not even related. Desperate to find a living blood relative, Annick dives into the past, aided by her grandmother's only childhood possession, five copper etchings, and the name of their maker: Emma Bergsma. In this stranger-than-fiction graphic novel, Maria van Lieshout weaves a tale about family, courage and the power of art. Beautifully done.
”So heart-rending and familiar, and so brilliantly, unforgettably different.” —Morris Gleitzman
”Song of a Blackbird illustrates, with great tenderness, how the past lives within us. This is essential, illuminating reading.” —R. J. Palacio

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The Crisis of Narration by Byung-chul Han $31
Narratives produce the ties that bind us. They create community, eliminate contingency and anchor us in being.  And yet in our contemporary information society, where everything has become arbitrary and random, storytelling shouts out loudly but narratives no longer have their binding force.  Whereas narratives create community, storytelling brings forth only a fleeting community — the community of consumers.  No amount of storytelling could recreate the fire around which humans gather to tell each other stories. That fire has long since burnt out.  It has been replaced by the digital screen, which separates people as individual consumers.  Through storytelling, capitalism appropriates narrative: stories sell. Storytelling is storyselling.  The inflation of storytelling betrays a need to cope with contingency, but storytelling is unable to transform the information society back into a stable narrative community. Rather, storytelling is a pathological phenomenon of our age.
"Like a Sartre for the age of screens, Han puts words to our prevailing condition of not-quite-hopeless digital despair." —The New Yorker

• The coming of Phono sapiens.

A History of the World in Six Plagues: How contagion, class and captivity shape us — From Cholera to Covid-19 by Edna Bonhomme $40
Edna Bonhomme traces the long history of viral outbreaks under conditions of social confinement-the plantation system, colonial camps, imprisonment, quarantine, factories-and reveals how these enclosed spaces fuel epidemics. This is a book about the complicated histories of movement and stagnation, and about the time we live in, with a focus on the racialised history of several key epidemics from the impact of cholera on the plantation economy to HIV/AIDS outbreaks in US prisons.
”An expansive portraiture of how colonialism and confinement have influenced our understanding of illness and humanity. Thankfully, due to the author's talent and sheer strength in combining personal narrative with history, this book is also tender as it tackles some of the most stigmatised subjects of our time.” —Morgan Jerkins

Twist by Colum McCann $37
Anthony Fennell, a journalist, is in pursuit of a story buried at the bottom of the sea- the network of tiny fibre-optic tubes that carry the world's information across the ocean floor — and what happens when they break. So he has travelled to Cape Town to board the George Lecointe, a cable repair vessel captained by Chief of Mission John Conway. Conway is a talented engineer and fearless freediver — and Fennell is quickly captivated by this mysterious, unnerving man and his beautiful partner, Zanele. As the boat embarks along the west coast of Africa, Fennell learns the rhythms of life at sea, and finds his place among the band of drifters who make up the crew. But as the mission falters, tensions simmer — and Conway is thrown into crisis. A terrible, violent tragedy is unfolding on the life he has left behind on land; and, trapped out at sea, it seems as if the vast expanse of the ocean is closing in. Then Conway disappears; and Fennell must set out to find him.
”McCann may follow Coppola upriver and Conrad to the heart of darkness but the concerns of his novel are contemporary and urgent and utterly compelling. This is an ambitious novel, note perfect, wild but controlled, with its deft apparatus mapping our most mysterious 21st century malaise — the great loneliness of the connected world.” —Kevin Barry

The World After Gaza by Pankaj Mishra $45
an essential reckoning with the war in Gaza, its historical conditions, and moral and geopolitical ramifications. Memory of the Holocaust, the ultimate atrocity of Europe's civil wars and the paradigmatic genocide, has shaped the Western political and moral imagination in the postwar era. Fears of its recurrence have been routinely invoked to justify Israel's policies against Palestinians. But for most people around the world - the 'darker peoples', in W. E. B Du Bois's words — the main historical memory is of the traumatic experiences of slavery and colonialism, and the central event of the twentieth century is decolonisation — freedom from the white man's world. The World after Gaza takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it within as well as outside the West, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of two competing narratives of the last century — the West's triumphant account of victory over Nazi and communist totalitarianism and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the darker peoples' frequently thwarted vision of racial equality. At a moment when the world's balance of power is shifting and a long-dominant Western minority no longer commands the same authority and credibility, it is critically important to enter the experiences and perspectives of the majority of the world's population. As old touchstones and landmarks crumble, only a new history with a sharply different emphasis can reorient us to the world and worldviews now emerging into the light. In this concise, powerful and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis — about whether some lives matter more than others, why identity politics built around memories of suffering is being widely embraced and why racial antagonisms are intensifying amid a far-right surge in the West, threatening a global conflagration.
”In this urgent book, Mishra grapples with the inexplicable spectacle of stone-faced Western elites ignoring, and indeed justifying, the slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Mishra reflects on the supposedly universal consensus that emerged from the Holocaust, as well as his own early sympathies for Israel, as he expounds on the terrible toll of this passivity in the face of atrocity.” —Rashid Khalidi
”This profoundly important and urgent book finds Mishra, one of our most intellectually astute and courageous writers, at the peak of his powers. His outrage is hard to ignore. But at the centre of this book is a humane inquiry into what suffering can make us do, and he leaves us with the troubling question of what world will we find after Gaza.” —Hisham Matar

Wife by Charlotte Mendelson $38
When Zoe Stamper, specialist in Ancient Greek Tragedy, meets fellow academic Dr Penny Cartwright at a faculty event, she seems impossibly glamorous. After all, Zoe is several rungs down the academic pecking order, and a nervous ingenue as far as Penny's sophisticated circle is concerned. But Penny leaves Zoe a cryptic note, and a passionate affair ensues. Once Penny confesses all to her live-in lover, Penny and Zoe move in together and their happiness seems assured. But there is something else Penny needs as badly in her life as Zoe's adoration, and thus the beginning of their affair might also have signalled its end.
”A devastating treat of a novel: funny, furious, dark and delicious.” —Sarah Waters
”It takes the most ferocious intelligence, skill and a deep reservoir of sadness to write a novel as funny as this. I adored it.” —Meg Mason

Too Late to Awaken: What lies ahead when there is no future? by Slavoj Žižek $30
We hear all the time that it's five minutes to global doomsday, so now is our last chance to avert disaster. But what if the only way to prevent a catastrophe is to assume that it has already happened - that we're already five minutes past zero hour? Why do we seem unable to avert our course to self-destruction? Too Late to Awaken sees Slavoj Žižek deliver his most forceful, hopeful account of our discontents yet. Surveying the interlocking crises we currently face — global warming, war, famine, disease — he points us towards the radical, emancipatory politics that we need in order to halt our drift towards disaster.

Replenish your reading pile with these new arrivals! Books can be sent by overnight courier or collected from our door.

The Place of Shells by Mai Ishizawa (translated from Japanese by Polly Barton) $40
In the summer of 2020, as Germany slowly emerges from lockdown, a young Japanese woman studying in Göttingen waits at the train station to meet an old friend. Nomiya died a decade earlier in the Tōhoku tsunami, but he has suddenly returned without any explanation. The reunited friends share a past that's a world away from the tranquillity of Göttingen. Yet Nomiya's spectral presence destabilises something in the city: mysterious guests appear, eerie discoveries are made in the forest and, as the past becomes increasingly vivid, the threads of time threaten to unravel. With a literary style reminiscent of W. G. Sebald, Yoko Tawada, and Yu Miri, The Place of Shells is an astounding exploration of the strange orbits of memory and the haunting presence of the past. [Paperback]
"A work of great delicacy and seriousness. Ishizawa anchors the temporal and the ghostly with a transfixing pragmatism, and the result is a shifting, tessellated kaleidoscope of memory, architecture, history and grief." —Jessica Au
”This attempt to imprint upon humanity the experiences of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in a way that only a novel can achieve deserves to be highly esteemed.” —Yoko Ogawa
”Here we find a form of language that attempts to venture, dancing, into a past enveloped in silence.” —Yoko Tawada

• Unfortunate lodgers, resident ghosts.

• Read an extract.

Central Otago Couture: The Eden Hore Collection by Jane Malthus and Claire Regnault, with photographs by Derek Henderson $70
In 1975, a makeshift museum opened on a farm in the tussocked hills of the Maniototo region of Central Otago. The main feature of this new attraction was the more than 220 high-end fashion garments on display. It has been called one of the most significant collections of its kind in Australasia. And it was housed in an old tractor shed. It had been amassed by J Eden Hore, a successful but quietly spoken high-country farmer — a man of many contrasts. He embodied and boldly defied the stereotype of the ' Southern Man' , confidently forging his own idiosyncratic path through life. Central Otago Couture tells the compelling story of his string of eccentric and memorable obsessions, from Miss New Zealand shows to a menagerie of animals, at the centre of which was his collection of over 270 high-fashion garments. The collection' s continued existence, acquired by the Central Otago District Council, honours and recognises the skills of New Zealand creatives and designers of the 1970s and 1980s, and represents a unique slice of couture fashion not found anywhere else in the country. To this end, fashion photographer Derek Henderson has captured these extraordinary garments in the empty majesty of the Central Otago landscapes that Eden Hore loved, bringing these stories to life for a new generation. [Hardback]

• Look inside!

• The Naseby attraction.

Dysphoria Mundi by Paul B. Preciado $48
A mutant text assembled from essays, philosophy, poetry and autofiction that captures a moment of profound change and possibility. Rooted in the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic, and taking account of the societal convulsions that have ensued, Preciado tries to make sense of our times from within the swirl of a revolutionary present moment. The central thesis of this monumental work is that dysphoria, to be understood properly, should not be seen as a mental illness but rather as the condition that defines our times. Dysphoria is an abyss that separates a patriarchal, colonial and capitalist order hurtling toward its end from a new way of being that, until now, has been seen as unproductive and abnormal but is in fact the way out of our current predicament. With echoes of visionaries such as William S. Burroughs and Kathy Acker, Preciado's theoretical writing is propelled by lyric power while providing us with a critical toolbox full of new concepts that can guide our thinking and our actions: transition, cognitive emancipation, denormalization, disidentification, 'electronic heroin', digital coups, necro-kitsch. Dysphoria Mundi is Preciado's most accessible and significant work to date, in which he makes sense of a world in ruins around us and maps a joyous, radical way forward. [Paperback with French flaps]
"How lucky we are to have Paul Preciado as companion and interpreter of all we've just been through, with a global pandemic — luckier still is the gift of his revolutionary optimism, which runs through his thorough, gritty analysis of our current predicament. If you're tired of ricocheting between neofascists and doomer dudes, here comes Dysphoria Mundi to recast our situation as ‘the most beautiful (or devastating) collective adventure we have ever embarked on’, and give us new strategies and inspiration to reconceptualise — and stay on — the ride." —Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
"Paul Preciado's singular genius is for writing vividly within the immediacy of everyday life, and then also unraveling from there the deeper historical forces that shape those moments. In Dysphoria Mundi we learn how the invisible traces of a virus thread bodies and societies together, lacing us into shifting regimes of power and commodification. Preciadio has that rare ability to lead the reader through familiar situations to unexpected conceptual insight. An essential thinker for the contemporary world." —McKenzie Wark, author of Reverse Cowgirl
”This monumental work brings the commitments of the bibliophile to bear on a time and a world now irreversibly out of joint. Drawing on theories of language, mind, technology, immunology to retell a story of this world, Preciado's work more firmly shatters the binaries responsible for the destruction of love and futurity." —Judith Butler

Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix (translated from French by Helen Stevenson) $43
In November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the Channel causing the death of 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, all but two of the migrants had died. The narrator of Delecroix's fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies? A shocking, moral tale of our times, Small Boat reminds us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes. [Paperback]
”Following the disastrous deaths of 27 people, when a dinghy capsizes while crossing the Channel, the book’s narrator — who works for the French authorities and who had refused to send a rescue team — attempts to justify the indefensible and clear her conscience. In a world where heinous actions often have no consequence, where humanity’s moral code appears fragile, where governments can condemn whole swathes of society to poverty or erasure, Small Boat explores the power of the individual and asks us to consider the havoc we may cause others, the extent to which our complacency makes us complicit – and whether we could all do better. A gut-punch of a novel. “ —judges’ citation, International Booker Prize 2025

• Other books long-listed for the 2025 International Booker Prize.

There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem (translated from French by Laëtitia Saint-Loubert and Karen Fleetwood) $42
The name Dessaintes is one to reckon with. A bombastic, violent and increasingly dangerous clan, little do they know that their downfall is being chronicled by one of their own. This is La Reunion in the 1980s: high unemployment and low expectations, the legacy of postcolonialism. One little girl makes a bid for escape from her sadistic parents' reign of terror and turns to school for salvation. Rich in the history of the island's customs and superstitions, and driven by a wild, offbeat humour, this picaresque tale manages to satirize the very notion of freedom available in this French territory, and perhaps even the act of writing itself and where it might lead you. [Paperback]
“A rollicking, sardonic picaresque set on the French outpost of La Réunion in the. 1980s. The novel has important things to say about colonialism and society, but it’s also tremendous fun — darkly funny, acerbic, energetic. There’s scarcely a dull moment on the page, and the translation is remarkably slick.” —judges’ citation, Republic of Consciousness Prize 2025
”A tour-de-force as volcanic as the little island of La Reunion, a tiny sliver of France marooned in the Indian Ocean, ‘a heap of rubble on the edge of the world’. The narrator of Gaëlle Bélem's novel, a little girl no-one wanted, the unloved daughter of the Dessaintes, is determined to be someone, to tell the story of her family, and through them the story of an island founded on slavery, poverty, cruelty and superstition with a caustic wit and a keen eye. It is a tragi-comedy worthy of Zola, candid and unflinching, yet shot through with humour and poignancy and even a glimmer of hope. Belem's novel is a joyous discovery and in Laetitia Saint-Loubert and Karen Fleetwood she has found translators alert to the nuances of French and Creole and to the poetry threaded through this startling debut.” —Frank Wynne

• Other books on the 2025 International Booker Prize long list.

• Other books on the 2025 Republic of Consciousness Prize short list.

Pox Romana: The plague that shook the Roman world by Colin Elliott $70
In the middle of the second century AD, Rome was at its prosperous and powerful apex. The emperor Marcus Aurelius reigned over a vast territory that stretched from Britain to Egypt. The Roman-made peace, or Pax Romana, seemed to be permanent. Then, apparently out of nowhere, a sudden sickness struck the legions and laid waste to cities, including Rome itself. This fast-spreading disease, now known as the Antonine plague, may have been history's first pandemic. Soon after its arrival, the Empire began its downward trajectory toward decline and fall. In Pox Romana, historian Colin Elliott offers a comprehensive, wide-ranging account of this pivotal moment in Roman history. Did a single disease — its origins and diagnosis still a mystery — bring Rome to its knees? Carefully examining all the available evidence, Elliott shows that Rome's problems were more insidious. Years before the pandemic, the thin veneer of Roman peace and prosperity had begun to crack: the economy was sluggish, the military found itself bogged down in the Balkans and the Middle East, food insecurity led to riots and mass migration, and persecution of Christians intensified. The pandemic exposed the crumbling foundations of a doomed Empire. Arguing that the disease was both cause and effect of Rome's fall, Elliott describes the plague's ‘pre-existing conditions’ (Rome's multiple economic, social, and environmental susceptibilities); recounts the history of the outbreak itself through the experiences of physician, victim, and political operator; and explores postpandemic crises. The pandemic's most transformative power, Elliott suggests, may have been its lingering presence as a threat both real and perceived. [Hardback]
”Enlightening. Elliott expertly draws on trace evidence such as census records, real estate contracts, and paleoclimate research to make his case. It's an informative history that serves to encourage better pandemic preparedness today." —Publishers Weekly

Mother Naked by Glen James Brown $38
The City of Durham, 1434. Out of a storm, an aging minstrel arrives at the cathedral to entertain the city's most powerful men. Mother Naked is his name, and the story he's come to tell is the Legend of the Fell Wraith: the gruesome 'walking ghost' some say slaughtered the nearby village of Segerston forty years earlier. But is this monster only a myth, born from the dim minds of toiling peasants? Or does the Wraith - and the murders - have roots in real events suffered by those fated to a lifetime of labour? As Mother Naked weaves the strands of the mystery — of class, religion, art and ale — the chilling truth might be closer to his privileged audience than they could ever imagine. Taking its inspiration from a single payment entered into Durham's Cathedral rolls, 'Modyr Nakett' was the lowest-paid performer in over 200 years of records. Set against the traumatic shadow of the Black Death and the Peasant's Revolt, Mother Naked speaks back from the margins, in a fury of imaginative recuperation. [Paperback]
”Exhilarating, freewheeling, brilliantly plotted and politically scathing, Mother Naked is a tour de force of language and style, and absolutely a novel for our times.” —Preti Taneja

• Other books short-listed for the 2025 Republic of Consciousness Prize.

• Cuddy by Benjamin Myers is also set around Durham Cathedral.

Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda (translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary) $35
In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life as they fight, sew, skirt, cheat, cry, and lie their way through their tangled circumstances. From the all-powerful daughter of a cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking Indigenous roots, these women spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to survive, telling their stories in bold, unapologetic voices. At once social critique and black comedy, Reservoir Bitches is a raucous debut from one of Mexico's most thrilling new writers. [Paperback]
”Reservoir Bitches is a blisteringly urgent collection of interconnected stories about contemporary Mexican women. It absolutely bangs from the first page to the last. It’s extremely funny but deadly serious and we loved the energy and flair of the dual translators’ approach. It packs an enormous political and linguistic punch but is also subtle, revelatory and moving about the ways in which these women hustle, innovate, survive or don’t, in a world of labyrinthine dangers. This book weaves the riotous testimony of the living and the dead to create an expletive-rich feminist blast of Mexican literature. “ —judges’ citation, International Booker Prize 2025

• Other books on the 2025 International Booker Prize long list.

How to Leave the World by Marouane Bakhti (translated from French by Lara Vergnaud) $40
Everyone is asking about his identity. Gay? Muslim? French? Moroccan? Instead of choosing a side, he writes a book. A book about the forest and the city, Paris and Tangiers, shame and forgiveness, dating apps and spiritual discovery. A book about growing up as a diaspora kid in rural France, with desires that want to emerge at any cost. Told in mesmerising prose, How to Leave the World is a beautiful non-answer. [Paperback]

• Other books short-listed for the 2025 Republic of Consciousness Prize.

One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad $38
As an immigrant, Omar El Akkad believed the West would be a place of freedom and justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the various Wars on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests and more, and watching the slaughter in Gaza, he has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. This powerful book is a chronicle of that painful realisation, a moral grappling with what it means — as a citizen of the US, as a father — to carve out some sense of possibility during these devastating times. [Paperback]
”This book is a howl from the heart of our age. I struggle to find more precise wording that might capture its ferocious, fracturing rage, as it seeks to describe the indescribable, make coherent an increasingly incoherent world.” —Richard Flanagan
”It is difficult to understand the nature of a true rupture while it is still tearing through the fabric of our world. Yet that is precisely what Omar El Akkad has accomplished, putting broken heart and shredded illusions into words with tremendous insight, skill and courage. A unique and urgently needed book.” —Naomi Klein

The Fermentation Kitchen: Recipes and techniques for kimchi, kombucha, koji, and more by Sam Cooper $48
Explore a wide range of authentic and adapted techniques from across cultures and continents and harness bacteria, yeast, and fungus to create a variety of ferments to add flavour to dishes, boost gut health, and give perishable produce a new lease of life. Reconnect with these natural processes and learn to incorporate ferments into your everyday cooking with guides to flavour, texture and aroma alongside recipe ideas serving as inspiration. [Hardback]
”Definitely the best koji book in the world written in English by far!” —Haruko Uchishiba, founder of The Koji Fermentaria

• Look inside.

Cities Made Differently by David Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky $40
Full of playful graphics, provocative questions, and curious facts, this book asks what makes a city and how we might make them differently. What makes a city a city? Who says? Drafted over decades out of a dialogue between artist and author Nika Dubrovsky, the late anthropologist David Graeber, and Nika's then four-year-old son, this delightful and provocative book opens a space for invention and collaboration. Fusing anthropology, literature, play, and drawing, the book is essentially a visual essay that asks us to reconsider our ideas about cities and the people who inhabit them. Drawing us into a world of history and myth, science and imagination, Graeber and Dubrovsky invite us to rethink the worlds we inhabit — because we can, and nothing is too strange or too wonderful to be true. With inspired pictures and prompts, Cities Made Differently asks what a city is, or could be, or once was. Sleeping at the bottom of the ocean? Buried in lava? What were those cities of long ago, and what will the cities of the future be? They might be virtual, ruled by AI, or islands of beautiful architecture afloat in seas of greenery. They might be utopian places of refuge or refugee camps as far as the eye can see. On land, underground or aloft, excavated or imagined, cities, this book tells us in provocative and funny ways, can be anything we want them to be-and what we want them to be can tell us something about who we are. [Paperback]

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An Architecture of Hope: Reimagining the prison, Restoring a house, Rebuilding myself by Yvonne Jewkes $48
Should architecture be used for punishment? How might the spaces we inhabit nurture or damage us? How can we begin to start over after the worst has happened? Criminologist Yvonne Jewkes grapples with these questions every day as the world's leading expert on rehabilitative prison design; she also faces them in her personal life when her partner of 25 years leaves her in the middle of a nightmare renovation project and then lockdown sees her trapped there. Used to fighting the punitive prison system to create spaces that encourage reflection, healing, even hope for those incarcerated, she must learn to be similarly compassionate to herself, as she considers what might help someone at the lowest point in their life to rebuild. There are 11.5 million prisoners worldwide, and most of them will eventually be released back into society. Yvonne asks, 'Who would you rather have living next door to you? Or sitting on the train next to your daughter? Someone who has been treated with decency in an environment that has helped to heal them and instilled hope for their future? Or someone who has effectively been caged and dehumanised for years?' Challenging our expectations of what prisons are for, she takes us along their corridors, into cells, communal spaces, visitors' areas, and staffrooms, to the architects' studios where they are designed, and even into her own home, to show us the importance of an architecture of hope in the face of despair. [Hardback]
”A book full of insights to illuminate the way we look at architecture. Jewkes's beautiful descriptions not only evoke the feel of the air in a space, but also reveal the moral significance of its design. So refreshingly distinctive from other types of prison books — a beautiful meditation on the universal need for sanctuary, what it means when it is taken away from us, and the courage it takes to reclaim it.” —Andy West
”Yvonne Jewkes takes a vital question — what are prisons for? — and turns it into a much wider and beautifully written reflection on the meaning of home. Her book is full of hard-won authority and expertise conveyed in tenderly human ways.” —Joe Moran

Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert fell down the rabbit hole and came up with the universe by Ken Krimstein $55
A fascinating and superbly executed graphic biography. During the year that Prague was home to both Albert Einstein and Franz Kafka from 1911-1912, the trajectory of the two men's lives wove together in uncanny ways — as did their shared desire to tackle the world's biggest questions in Europe's strangest city. In stunning words and pictures, Einstein in Kafkaland reveals the untold story of how their worlds wove together in a cosmic battle for new kinds of truth. For Einstein, his lost year in Prague became a critical bridge set him on the path to what many consider the greatest scientific discovery of all time, his General Theory of Relativity. And for Kafka, this charmed year was a bridge to writing his first masterpiece, ‘The Judgment’. Based on diaries, lectures, letters, and papers from this period amid a planet electrifying itself into modernity, Einstein in Kafkaland brings to life the emergence of a new world where art and science come together in ways we still grapple with today. [Hardback]
"Clever, charming, amusing, and just plain brilliant. Ken Krimstein is the most inventive graphic biographer on the planet-and certainly the only one who could explain both Einstein and Kafka. A page turner on gravity and relativity!" —Kai Bird

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Squares and Other Shapes with Joseph Albers $25
This book uses the vivid artworks of Josef Albers to guide small children through a wide range of geometrics, one artwork per page, beginning with squares and returning to them as a familiar refrain throughout. The variations between the vibrant shapes adds to the book’s visual richness, and the accompanying text provides an engaging commentary that will encourage discussion. Josef Albers was a leading pioneer of 20th-century Modernism, best known for his ‘Homages to the Square’ paintings and his publication Interaction of Colour. Albers was a teacher, a writer, a painter, and a theorist. In this attractive book, his art is used to teach shapes, one of the most important concepts for young children to learn. [Board book]

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Replenish your reading pile with these new arrivals, still fresh from their cartons! Books can be sent by overnight courier or collected from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

Changing My Mind by Julian Barnes $30
"We always believe that changing our mind is an improvement, bringing a greater truthfulness to our dealings with the world and other people. It puts an end to vacillation, uncertainty, weak-mindedness. It seems to make us stronger and more mature. Well, we would think that, wouldn't we?" In this engaging and erudite essay, critically acclaimed writer Julian Barnes explores what is involved when we change our minds: about words, about politics, about books; about memories, age, and time. [Paperback]
”Provocative and entertaining.” —Independent

• Memory is a feeble guide.

Bookish: How reading shapes our lives by Lucy Mangan $50
As a child, Lucy Mangan was reading all the time, using books to navigate the challenges and complexities of this world and many others. As an adult, she uses her new relationship with literature to seize upon the most important question — (how) do books prepare us for life? This account of Mangan’s reading life starts at the cusp of teenage, when everything — including the way we read — undergoes a not-so-subtle transformation. Here, Mangan vividly recounts her metamorphosis from young bookworm to bookish adult, from the way school curricula can impact our relationship with literature to the growing pains of swapping the pleasures of re-reading for those of book-hoarding. Revisiting the books of all genres — from thrillers and bonkbusters to historical sagas and apocalyptic zombie stories — that ferried her through each important stages of life — falling in love, finding a job, becoming a mother and navigating grief — Bookish is a coming-of-age in books. It's also an ode to our favourite bookish spaces — from the smallest secondhand bookstalls to libraries, glorious big bookshops and our very own book rooms — and a love story to how books not only shelter our souls through hard times and help us find ourselves when we feel lost, but also help us connect with the people we love through shared stories. [Hardback]

• “Books picked me up on bad days.”

• Never lost for words.

• Bookworm dealt with Mangan’s childhood reading.

Paris 1935 by Jean Follain (translated from French by Kathleen Shields) $36
Jean Follain’s Paris 1935 is an intimate, multi-layered portrait of the capital where he has been living for ten years, a celebration of what a city is at a point in time: priests and prostitutes and poets, shop assistants and shoplifters, immigrants and war-wounded invalids, royalists and revolutionaries, women, men and children all work and play and dream in these streets. [Paperback]
” ‘It is good to cross Paris as though it were a village,’ Jean Follain writes in the opening section of this book. And that is exactly what he goes on to do, refusing ever to see the city in terms of grand abstraction or civic ‘projects’, but always from intricate, surprising detail, the Paris of the petites gens. The unnamed wanderer encounters the city in its teeming particulars, not without irony, but always with compassion, and a strange intimate knowledge of the poor office workers walking with bowed heads, the little cobbler, the black-aproned watchmaker, the old servant woman weeping quietly in a public garden. Whether in poetry or prose, Follain is one of the great modern French writers, a secret garden waiting to be discovered by the curious. The publication of the first English edition of Paris, so nimbly translated by Kathleen Shields, is cause for joy.” —Stephen Romer
”Within Follain’s diorama, thirty-two individual scenes are divided not only by the usual places (‘Department Stores’, ‘Cemeteries’, ‘The Left Bank’), but people (‘Girls’, ‘Women’) as well as the more abstract (‘Solitude’, ‘Paris Spirits’, ‘The Elements’). They do not trace the terrain of a standard map but one where the eye and the mind lead each other gloriously astray with no fear of becoming lost. Kathleen Shields’s translation captures an important aspect of the Parisian diorama, that of the rhythm of prose. It is never enough to merely describe, no matter how detailed. In fragments of lines such as ‘girls with small ears and vast sad cinemas’, and ‘women who sigh as they lace up their high boots but no longer tremble when regiments go by’ the city sings and cries, whispers and moans, layering its longings and memories like masonry. What makes this such a jewel-like niche within literature is the sense we are being told part of an epic more than travelogue as we are guided through the city. Somewhere, above the buildings and parks, looking in through windows at lovers and quarrels, is someone who views every scenario with an innate understanding that bad and good, Paris simply would not be without each exposed human fragment. Their telling will be bound with the next person’s telling, and the next throughout time to create a complete but ever-changing narrative of Paris.” —Tomoé Hill, 3:AM

The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine by Mario Levrero (translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott and Kit Schluter) $35
Widely viewed as one of the most inventive bodies of work from 20th-century Latin America, Mario Levrero's writing is distinguished by its bounteous imagination. In none other of the author's books is this imagination so clearly on display as in The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine, his 1970 debut collection of stories. It gathers a variety of Levrero's earliest and most formally inventive publications, ranging from dazzling single paragraph micro-fictions à la Donald Barthelme to adventurous Lewis Carroll-esque tales of forty pages' length. From the shocking surreal twists of 'Beggar Street' to the Escher-like grammatical maze of 'The Boarding House', via the pseudo-fairy tale classic 'The Basement', this book explores uncanny domestic spaces, using the structures of the stories themselves as tools for re-inventing narrative possibility. [Paperback with French flaps]
"These stories contain Levrero's most secret side and, in a way, 80% of the DNA that made him an extraordinary writer." —Fabian Casas
"One of Latin American literature's most balanced and well-constructed books." —Elvio Gandolfo

And the Walls Became the World All Around by Johanna Ekström and Sigrid Rausing $40
When the celebrated Swedish writer Johanna Ekström found out that she was dying from an eye melanoma she asked her closest friend, Sigrid Rausing, to finish her last book. Rausing transcribed and edited the thirteen handwritten notebooks left by Ekström. The result is a memoir of exceptional depth and intensity, published to critical acclaim in Sweden in 2023. The work showcases Ekström's vivid imagination, writerly precision, and psychological insight, interwoven with Rausing's spare and sober reflections. And the Walls Became the World All Around is a literary experiment, a testament to friendship, and a deep meditation on grief. [Hardback]
”Johanna Ekström's prose towards the end is clear as glass. The last notebooks are amongst the best things she has ever written. Sublime, devastating.” —Dagens Nyheter
”Dreambook, poet's journal, diary of a love lost and an illness that is in part perceptual, this is a book like no other I have read. Intertwined in its very making, there is also a story of friendship and grief. Hypnotic and haunting, the whole is bathed in a northern light that had me reaching for a Bergman classic.” —Lisa Appignanesi

• Mysterious intimacy.

• A sense of loss.

Toward Eternity by Anton Hur $38
In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer. The body's cells are entirely replaced with nanites — robot or android cells which not only cure those afflicted but leaves them virtually immortal. Literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning Beloved, in honor of his husband. When Yonghun — himself a recipient of nanotherapy — mysteriously vanishes into thin air and then just as suddenly reappears, the event raises disturbing questions. What happened to Yonghun, and though he's returned, is he really himself anymore? When Dr. Beeko, the scientist who holds the patent to the nanotherapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness from the machine into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive — and begin to replicate — their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences. Exploring the nature of intelligence and the unexpected consequences of progress, the meaning of personhood and life, and what we really have to fear from technology and the future, Toward Eternity is a gorgeous, thought-provoking novel that challenges the notion of what makes us human — and how love survives even the end of that humanity. [Paperback]
"Hur is first and foremost one of our best writers. This chilling gem of speculative fiction is written with the restrained elegance and dazzling precision of an expert who can bend, tone, and ultimately alchemise language into a truly singular storytelling experience. You'll never look at the intersections of poetry and biology, and art and technology, the same again. What a delight to witness a writer in complete control of his craft, to experience the thrills of invention as unforgettable as the most canonical cautionary tales of the genre." —Porochista Khakpour

Crypt: Life, death and disease in the Middle Ages and beyond by Alice Roberts $55
The history of the Middle Ages is typically the story of the rich and powerful, there's barely a written note for most people's lives. Archaeology represents another way of interrogating our history. By using cutting-edge science to examine human remains and burials, it is possible to unearth details about how individuals lived and died that give us a new understanding of the past — one that is more intimate and inclusive than ever before. The seven stories in Crypt are not comforting tales. We meet the patients at one of the earliest hospitals in England and the victims of the St Brice's Day Massacre. We see a society struggling to make sense of disease, disability and death, as incurable epidemics sweep through medieval Europe. We learn of a protracted battle between Church and State that led to the murder of Thomas Becket and the destruction of the most famous tomb in England. And we come face to face with the archers who went down with Henry VIII's favourite ship, the Mary Rose. [Hardback]
”A gripping set of tales. Roberts demonstrates how the disciplines of osteoarchaeology, palaeopathology, osteobiology and, newest of all, archaeogenomics, are increasingly used to modify, amplify and even correct written records with all their slant and spin. Fascinating.” —Guardian

One Day: A true story of courage and survival in the Holocaust by Michael Rosen and Benjamin Phillips $30
A poignant and ultimately uplifting picture book based on a true story of an escape from a convoy to Auschwitz. “Get through one day and then on to the next. One day at a time. One day after another.” Eugène Handschuh was a Jewish member of the Resistance in occupied Paris. After he was captured by the Nazis, he was placed on a convoy to Auschwitz. Against all the odds, with the help of strangers and fellow members of the Resistance, Eugène and his father escaped the convoy and survived — when so many others did not. Michael Rosen was inspired to tell this story after discovering his father’s uncle and aunt were on the same convoy as Eugène, but never returned. The remarkable illustrations are by Benjamin Phillips, who also did the wonderful Alte Zachen. [Hardback]

• Look inside.

Against Progress by Slavoj Žižek $22
What does 'progress' mean? Can things get better? And how, when we are constantly battered on all sides by deepfakes, doomers and disorienting relativisms, can we make any headway at all in the face of unprecedented ecological, social and political crises? In this collection of iconoclastic essays, Slavoj Zizek disrupts the death-grip that neoliberalists, Trumpian populists, toxic self-improvement industries and accelerationists alike have established on the idea of progress. In a whirlwind tour that takes in everything from gentrification to the theory of relativity, Lacan to Lenin, Putin to Mary Poppins and Taylor Swift to the end of the world, these essays never stop asking hard questions of imagined futures. Nor does Zizek shrink from the hardest question of all: How do we free ourselves from the hypocritical, guilt-ridden dreaming in which we're enmeshed, and begin to build a better world? [Paperback]

Zest: Climbing from depression to philosophy by Daniel Kalderimis $40
Zest is a personal account of how we can seek meaning and joy by facing and accepting our imperfections. Daniel, a Wellington King’s Counsel, describes his journey of depression with humour, wisdom, and philosophy — he sought more than wellness platitudes to manage these struggles. His book connects strands of philosophy from Stoicism and Buddhism, and draws from writings by George Eliot and Iris Murdoch. This is not a manual for how to ‘get well’. It’s for the many people in careers like Kalderimis: the high-fliers and the driven who don’t stop to smell the flowers, then hit the wall and wonder how to get over that wall. Kalderimis’s book can help people see there is no ‘cure’ as such, that they need to embrace this part of them to understand they can still live an enjoyable and successful life. [Paperback]

Pharmacopoeia: A Dungeness notebook by Derek Jarman $26
'I planted a dog rose. Then I found a curious piece of driftwood and used this, and one of the necklaces of holey stones on the wall, to stake the rose. The garden had begun. I saw it as a therapy and a pharmacopoeia.' In 1986 artist and filmmaker, Derek Jarman, bought Prospect Cottage, a Victorian fisherman's hut on the desert sands of Dungeness. It was to be a home and refuge for Jarman throughout his HIV diagnosis, and it would provide the stage for one of his most enduring, if transitory projects - his garden. Conceived of as a 'pharmacopoeia' — an ever-evolving circle of stones, plants and flotsam sculptures all built and grown in spite of the bracing winds and arid shingle — it remains today a site of fascination and wonder. Pharmacopoeia brings together the best of Derek Jarman's writing on nature, gardening and Prospect Cottage. Told through journal entries, poems and fragments of prose, it paints a portrait of Jarman's personal and artistic reliance on the space Dungeness offered him, and shows the cycle of the years spent there in one moving collage. [Paperback with French flaps]

• Visit the garden at Prospect Cottage.

A Northern Wind: Britain, 1962—65 by David Kynaston $33
How much can change in less than two and a half years? In the case of Britain in the Sixties, the answer is: almost everything. From the seismic coming of the Beatles to a sex scandal that rocked the Tory government to the arrival at No 10 of Harold Wilson, a prime minister utterly different from his Old Etonian predecessors. A Northern Wind brings to vivid life the period between October 1962 and February 1965. Drawing upon an unparalleled array of diaries, newspapers and first-hand recollections, Kynaston's masterful storytelling refreshes familiar events — the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Big Freeze, the assassination of JFK, the funeral of Winston Churchill - while revealing in all their variety the experiences of the people living through this history. Major themes complement the compelling narrative: an anti-Establishment mood epitomised by the BBC's controversial That Was The Week That Was; a welfare state only slowly becoming more responsive to the individual needs of its users; and the rise of consumer culture, as Habitat arrived and shopping centres like Birmingham's Bull Ring proliferated. Multi-voiced, multi-dimensional and immersive. [Now in paperback]
”Kynaston's primary aim is to document ‘a ceaseless pageant as, in all its daily variousness, it moves through time’. This he achieves with a breathtaking array of treasures: diaries, provincial newspapers, political speeches, films and novels are woven together to provide a kaleidoscope of contrasting perspectives, defying any attempt to create a neat story of progress or nationhood. This is a richly evocative, thought-provoking and, above all, compassionate study of those who lived through the much-mythologised 1960s. We can only hope that when historians write about our own times, they will extend the same generosity of spirit.” —Selina Todd, TLS

The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey $34
A previous novel from the Booker-winning author of Orbital. Fifteenth-century Oakham, in Somerset; a tiny village cut off by a big river with no bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found: accident, suicide or murder? The village priest, John Reve, is privy to many secrets in his role as confessor. But will he be able to unravel what happened to the victim, Thomas Newman, the wealthiest, most capable and industrious man in the village? And what will happen if he can't? Moving back in time toward the moment of Thomas Newman's death, the story is related by Reve — an extraordinary creation, a patient shepherd to his wayward flock, and a man with secrets of his own to keep. Through his eyes, and his indelible voice, Harvey creates a medieval world entirely tangible in its immediacy. [Paperback]
”Beautifully rendered, deeply affecting, thoroughly thoughtful.” —New York Times

Mammoth by Eva Baltasar (translated from Catalan by Julia Sanches) $33
Mammoth's protagonist is a disenchanted young lesbian, inexperienced, irritated by life, eager to gestate, and determined to strip everything else down to essentials. She seduces men at random, swaps her urban habitat for an isolated farmhouse, befriends a shepherd, nurses lambs, battles stray cats, waits tables, cleans house, and dabbles in sex work — all in pursuit of life in the raw. This small bomb of a novel, not remotely pastoral, builds to a howling crescendo of social despair, leaving us at the mercy of Eva Baltasar's wild voice. [Paperback]
”A surprising slim novel that trembles with the force of an approaching stampede. Baltasar's sharp and forthright prose (adeptly translated by Julia Sanches) demonstrates how much can lie within one person, through the boiling, enraged voice of the narrator. Baltasar's novel howls to ask: What is a life made according to one's own rules? A quiet but hard-staring fighter of a book, Mammoth is, in a world doomed to end, one woman's strange and powerful cry against her own extinction.” —Mary Marge Locker, New York Times

This Fiction Called Nigeria: The struggle for democracy by Adéwálé Májà-Pearce $37
In this groundbreaking work the essayist and critic Adewale Maja-Pearce delivers a mordant verdict on Nigeria's crisis of democracy. A mosaic of ethnic and religious groups, the most populous country in Africa was fabricated by British colonisers at the turn of the twentieth century. When Nigerians went to the polls to vote in the 2023 elections, they had experienced a quarter century of democracy, after a similar period of almost unbroken military dictatorship. Yet the blessings of self-rule are unclear to many, especially among the more than half of the population living in extreme poverty. Buffeted by unemployment, saddled with debt, rent by bandits and Islamic fundamentalists, Nigeria faces the threat of disintegration. Maja-Pearce shows that recent mobilisations against police brutality, sexism and homophobia reveal a powerful undercurrent of discontent, especially among the country's youth. If Nigeria has a future, he shows here, it is in the hands of the young, unwilling to go on as before. [Paperback]

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie $38
Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until — betrayed and brokenhearted — she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve. In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, and on our interconnected world. [Paperback]
”Dream Count reads like a feminist War and Peace. Suffused with truth, wit and compassion, this is a magnificent novel that understands the messiness of human motivation and is courageous enough to ask difficult questions. It made me feel frustrated about the world but very good about the state of fiction.” —Sunday Times
”This is a complex, multi-layered beauty of a book. It is deeply and richly feminist. It explores big themes - misogyny, masculinity, race, colonialism, cultural relativism, the abuse of power, both personal and institutional - but it does so subtly, almost imperceptibly ... Dream Count is an extraordinary novel. Please let it not be another decade until Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie returns once more.” —Nicola Sturgeon, New Statesman

Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa $25
Palestine, 1948. A mother clutches her baby son as Israeli soldiers march through the village of Ein Hod. In a split second, he is snatched from her arms and the fate of the Abulheja family is changed forever. Mornings in Jenin is a devastating novel of love and loss, war and oppression, heartbreak and hope, spanning five countries and four generations of one of the most intractable conflicts of our lifetime. [New paperback edition]
”A powerful and passionate insight into what many Palestinians have had to endure since the state of Israel was created. Susan Abulhawa guides us through traumatic events with anger and great tenderness too, creating unforgettable images of a world in which humanity and inhumanity, selflessness and selfishness, love and hate grow so close to each other.” —Michael Palin
”Abulhawa looks into the darkest crevices of lives, conflicts, horrendous injustices, and dares to shine light that can illuminate hidden worlds for us, who are too often oblivious. A major writer of our time, to read Abulhawa is to begin to understand not simply the misinformation we have received for decades about what has gone on in Palestine and the Middle East, but to come to terms with our own resistance to feeling the terror of our own fear of Truth.” —Alice Walker

Violet and the Velvets #1: The Case of the Missing Stuff by Rachael King (with illustrations by Phoebe Morris) $19
Meet Violet Grumble: a music-loving, guitar-toting tween whose dream is to compete at BandChamps. The problem is that none of her friends can play an instrument. Violet won't let that stop her! But things get tougher when the band's gear starts to go missing — what's going on? Can Violet solve the mystery and harness her ADHD powers? Can she help the Velvets overcome stage fright AND beat The Alphas at the final showdown? After all, you only need three chords to play a song ... how hard can it be? [Paperback]

• The author on bass.

These new books are keen to get onto your shelf. We can have them dispatched by overnight courier or ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

Tony Fomison: Life of the artist by Mark Forman $60
In a career spanning three decades, Tony Fomison (1939- 1990) produced some of Aotearoa's most artistically and culturally significant paintings and drawings, the backdrop of which was a life — inseparable from his art — of enduring intrigue. A man of multitudes and a self-perceived outsider, Fomison was a son, sibling and lover; activist, archaeologist and scholar; trickster, addict and disrupter; and — above all else — an artist who shed light on the human condition and reimagined life in Aotearoa. In this compelling biography, developed over more than a decade, Mark Forman draws on archival material and interviews with more than 150 people including Fomison's family and close friends, leading contemporary artists, political activists, and art professionals. The result is a comprehensive yet lively and accessible biography that reveals the man and his art to a new generation of readers. [Hardback]
”As a boy Tony had drawn maps and diagrams and medieval battle scenes. He' d read fairy tales and been enchanted by local sites of Maori history. As a young man he was a vagrant on the streets of Paris, was twice imprisoned, spent time in a mental hospital, battled destructive addictions, and experienced unrequited love and loneliness. All of this would become the underworld of his art, the subterranean realm where he could dwell so as to create work that expressed something of the human condition. But it was always far wider than just his own story. Endlessly curious about Pacific and Maori history and art, and enchanted by European Renaissance art, he wanted to find a new visual language for what it meant to live in the Pacific; he wanted to make room at the back of our heads.” —from the author’s introduction
”I had been convinced that someone who had not known Tony personally, who was not party to the secret painting cultures of that time, was not the right person to write Tony’s life. I was quite wrong . . . Mark Forman’s understanding of Tony’s painting is profound and insightful, and his research is remarkable, as he recovers the memories of the survivors of the art scenes that Tony was part of with intelligence and sensitivity. You get a window that opens onto an Aotearoa rarely glimpsed. Yes, the interviews are telling, but Mark keeps his focus on Tony’s paintings: Tony’s pursuit of the exact technique to express his passionate hunger for transcendence through seeing. That way Tony could find redemption. Best image? Shirley Grace’s ‘Tony at Williamson Ave’. Brilliant. The first image, the all-too-human Tony, magicking himself into a best-version Tony, the role he so aspires to, the Tagaloa of the visually inspired.” —Jacqueline Fahey, artist and friend of the artist

• Look inside.

You Are Here by Whiti Hereaka and Peata Larkin $45
Jan Medlicott Acorn Fiction Prize winner Whiti Hereaka and the artist Peata Larkin, cousins who share the same whakapapa, collaborate in a project based on the Fibonacci number sequence. In a feat of managed imagining, Hereaka's words spiral out to the centre of the book and then back in on themselves to end with the same words with which the text began. As the pattern spools out and then folds back, Peata Larkin's meticulous drawings of tāniko and whakairo and her lush works on silk weave their own entrancing pattern. 'It is my hope that by the time you have walked that path that you are now a different reader and will read those words in a new way,' Hereaka says. You Are Here is a beguiling and important addition to the ‘kōrero’ series. [Hardback]

• Look inside!

• What is it that stops you now?

• Listen to Stella’s review on RNZ.

• How the book came to be made.

• Other collaborations in the Kōrero series.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami (translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda) $37
In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of the Mothers. Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the species depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings — but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world. Unfolding over geological eons, Under the Eye of the Big Bird is at once an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it and a meditation on the qualities that, for better and worse, make us human. [Paperback]
”Haunting. Less experimental fiction and more fiction on the human experiment — what kinds of new approaches to mating, community and family will allow people to survive? Kawakami finds humour and warmth in the puzzles of existence and extinction." -Hilary Leichter, The New York Times Book Review
"An accomplished mosaic novel spanning thousands of years, it investigates change on the grandest scale: the evolutionary fate of humanity. The power and the pain of the novel lies in its ability to bridge between humanity as an abstract and humanity as a characteristic, to pick out moments from a vast sweep of time and show their insignificance and their simultaneous, ultimate importance. The novel ends with a plea from a speaker who doesn't know if they will ever be heard: I wanted to reach back into the page and say, you are." —Niall Harrison, Locus Magazine

• Read an extract.

• Other books long-listed for the 2025 International Booker Prize.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes) $40
Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital "creatives" exploring the excitements of the city, freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online. At first, they reasonably deduce that they've turned their passion for aesthetics into a viable, even enviable career, but the years go by, and Anna and Tom grow bored. As their friends move back home or move on, so their own work and sex life — and the life of Berlin itself — begin to lose their luster. An attempt to put their politics into action fizzles in embarrassed self-doubt. Edging closer to forty, they try living as digital nomads only to discover that, wherever they go, "the brand of oat milk in their flat whites was the same." Perfection — Vincenzo Latronico's first book to be translated into English — is a scathing novel about contemporary existence, a tale of two people gradually waking up to find themselves in various traps, wondering how it all came to be. Was it a lack of foresight, or were they just born too late? [Paperback with French flaps]
”Perfection gave me the gift of being able to hold a long span of time — in a relationship, in a city — and the experience of being young, and the experience of being not so young — all in my head at once. I could hold it there the way you hold a parable or fable, but with all these tiny details, too. It also functioned like a kind of murder mystery: what slowly killed the magic? Was it their values, was it aging, was it... was it...? It's such a beautiful, thoughtful, impeccably crafted book.” —Sheila Heti

• Other books long-listed for the 2025 International Booker Prize.

On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer (translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott) $43
Noenka is a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her own choosing. When her abusive husband of just nine days refuses her request for divorce, Noenka flees her hometown in Suriname, on South America's tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo. Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by romance and new freedoms, but also forever haunted by her past and society's expectations. Newly translated by Lucy Scott, Astrid Roemer's classic queer novel is a tentpole of European and post-colonial literature. And amid tales of plantation-dwelling snakes, rare orchids, and star-crossed lovers, it is also a blistering meditation on the cruelties we inflict on those who disobey. Roemer, the first Surinamese winner of the prestigious Dutch Literature Prize, carves out postcolonial Suriname in barbed, resonant fragments. [Paperback]
”A modern classic set in Suriname and lyrically rendered into English for the first time, On a Woman’s Madness is a testament to both the resilience of queer lives that exist everywhere and everytime and the alchemy of literary translation where a perfect book meets its perfect translator. Through its heightened understanding of character and history filtered through a lush and enriched language, Astrid Roemer draws from suffering, heat, and imprisonment to create a story of love, survival, and freedom that translator Lucy Scott expertly reweaves into English with an empathetic, artistically accomplished touch.” —International Booker judges’ citation

• Read an extract.

• Other books long-listed for the 2025 International Booker Prize.

Clay Eaters by Gregory Kan $30
Clay Eaters traverses a network of fault lines diverging and converging at unexpected angles: a mysterious jungle island, military reconnaissance training, the spirits in the trees and abandoned temples, old family homes, the echoes across rooms, the dining table set for the archetypal feast. Here the author asks what it means to write the self, and what it is the living must carry. [Paperback]
”Kan is a sophisticated and accomplished poet and he creates a unique tone in his poems, using simple language in a sort of alchemy to make emotional depth. The poems come together to create a feeling of an unhurried, loving and honest gaze at his family, himself and his world. Clay Eaters is an original and significant collection.” —Lynn Jenner

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa (translated from Japanese by Polly Barton) $35
Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spine curvature and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. Within the limits of her care home, her life is lived online: she studies, she tweets indignantly, she posts outrageous stories on an erotica website. One day, a new male carer reveals he has read it all — the sex, the provocation, the dirt. Her response? An indecent proposal... Written by the first disabled author to win Japan's most prestigious literary award and acclaimed instantly as one of the most important Japanese novels of the 21st century, Hunchback is an extraordinary, thrilling glimpse into the desire and darkness of a woman placed at humanity's edge. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Filled with unforgettable insight.” —Sayaka Murata
”Written with guts and wit, Hunchback is a tender and defiant story which forces readers to think far beyond ableist concepts of who gets to desire and be desired.” —AnOther Magazine
”Uproariously funny, unflinching, and merciless. It's not very often you encounter this provocative and yet so refreshingly honest a read.” —Mariana Enriquez

• Other books long-listed for the 2025 International Booker Prize.

Makeshift Seasons by Kate Camp $25
The failings of the body
can be a form of company
a trapped nerve ringing in the night
like music.
Kate Camp's poetry has been described by readers as fearless, affable, and containing a surprising radicalism and power. In her new collection, she is ever alert to the stories unfolding all around us and inside our own bodies. As she is striding away from hope, she is also holding on tightly to the promise of morning. The poems move between distant planets and Chappies Dairy, between Mont-Saint-Michel and the lighthouse in Island Bay, with every moment, every feeling, every conviction on the edge of becoming another. Like the plumber who can hear water running deep underground, Makeshift Seasons is a book of extraordinarily sharp sensing and knowing. [Paperback]
”These magical, knotty works react to a fragile world, and Camp navigates the light along with the dark.” —Paula Green
”Each poem’s like a bumper ride in a fairground, crashing into obstacles, at once jarring and exhilarating.” —David Eggleton
”Here is ‘the so-called outside world’, and here is its wonderfully sensitive, fluently understated poet.” —Stephanie Burt

Pātaka Kai: Growing food sovereignty by Jessica Hutchings, Jo Smith, Johnson Witehira and Yvonne Taura $45
We face a biodiversity crisis and a climate meltdown. Our food systems are broken, our soils are depleted and our seeds are owned by global corporations. Colonial capitalism dictates the mainstream response to these crises, drowning out Indigenous perspectives and solutions, yet Indigenous practices and understandings of kai (food) offer important pathways to ensuring ecological, cultural and socio-economic sustainability as well as greater connection to kai in our everyday lives. This book salutes Indigenous food heroes from across Aotearoa and neighbouring islands in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa who take a holistic approach that considers the interconnectedness of people, land and food. Their inspiring stories show how change begins locally and on a small scale. Written by verified hua parakore farmers, activists, Indigenous researchers and Indigenous food sovereignty leaders Jessica Hutchings and Jo Smith, Pataka Kai encourages a return to Indigenous values and practices to achieve kai sovereignty and well-being. [Flexibound]

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A Training School for Elephants by Sophy Roberts $40
From the author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia comes a new book tracing the contexts and implications of a forgotten colonial folly in the Congo. In 1879, King Leopold II of Belgium launched an ambitious plan to plunder Africa's resources. The key to cracking open the continent, or so he thought, was its elephants — if only he could train them. And so he commissioned the charismatic Irish adventurer Frederick Carter to ship four tamed Asian elephants from India to the East African coast, where they were marched inland towards Congo. The ultimate aim was to establish a training school for African elephants. Following in the footsteps of the four elephants, Roberts pieces together the story of this long-forgotten expedition, in travels that take her to Belgium, Iraq, India, Tanzania and Congo. The storytelling brings to life a compelling cast of historic characters and modern voices, from ivory dealers to Catholic nuns, set against rich descriptions of the landscapes travelled. She digs deep into historic records to reckon with our broken relationship with animals, revealing an extraordinary — and enduring — story of colonial greed, ineptitude, hypocrisy and folly. [Paperback]
”History and travelogue combine wonderfully in this tale of colonial plunder and hubris. Sophy Roberts' luminous new book is a journey through Africa from Zanzibar to Lake Tanganyika and back, retracing the steps of a long-forgotten expedition. Reflective, watchful, calm, Roberts is such a vivid travel writer that you forget what a brilliant historian she is. She has the water-diviner's gift for stories in unlikely places.” —Guardian

over under fed by Amy Marguerite $25
perhaps the good things
that come to those who wait
are the leftovers
of those who have
already waited.
In her debut collection, Amy Marguerite explores the peculiar loveliness and specific loneliness of the human condition. Writing from experiences with anorexia nervosa, limerence and a particularly tumultuous situationship, these poems act as a confessional to hunger, desire and immoderation. Precise, vivid and sometimes disturbing in detail, over under fed seeks to reconcile chaos and recovery. [Paperback]
”Amy Marguerite has a completely original voice and sensibility that makes everything she writes extraordinary and compelling. This is a collection as much about desire, requited and unrequited love, and other forms of relationships — especially relationships with women — as it is about the hunger to live fully and beautifully, the hunger for beauty and intensity, the hunger for a charged, combustible life of dreams and elation.” —Anna Jackson
”In this stunning debut collection from Amy Marguerite, we are taken on an ever-dizzying but always dazzling journey of obsession and love and obsessive love that guides us through a landscape of pain, dysphoria, eating disorders, trauma, mental health and hope, with the compelling, compassionate and incisive insight of someone who has struggled in the webs of their ghosts and is weaving anew. These poems dare you to enter into the spirals and not be changed, slowly but certainly finding solace in the flux. With a masterful use of repetition, an eloquently distressed and elegantly restrained lyricism, over under fed explores the spirals of the mind in a knowing chaos of the body, asking us how we might map our way through perpetually falling as we yearn to be caught and seek to fly.” —Amber Esau

The Futures of Democracy, Law, and Government by Geoffrey Palmer et al, edited by Mark Hickford and Matthew S.R. Palmer $70
A stock-take of increasingly urgent issues underlying our collective life in Aotearoa in the form of essays by leading judges, scholars, and politicians on constitutional government; democracy and its integrity; indigenous-state relations and Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi; the environment and climate change; law reform and human rights. The papers were originally presented at a conference in honour of Geoffrey Palmer, and reflect the themes that have animated his career in public affairs. Contents include: ‘Law, politics, policy and government’ by Geoffrey Palmer; ‘Some reflections on Cabinet government: A former minister’s perspective’ by David Caygill; ‘The role of political parties in New Zealand’s democracy’ by Margaret Wilson; ‘Safeguarding democracy through prudent anticipatory governance: the case of climate change adaptation’ by Jonathan Boston; ‘Governing an unimaginable future’ by Simon Upton; ‘Legal myth-takes and the Crown’s claim to sovereignty over Aotearoa New Zealand: The implications for New Zealand’s constitution’ by Claire Charters; ‘Ultimate legal principles for Aotearoa New Zealand: The place of the Treaty of Waitangi’ by Alex Frame; ‘Constitutional legitimacy and diversity: The value of pluralism and filling gaps in the common law’ by Mai Chen; ‘Back to the future: Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s 'new public law'‘ by Dean Knight; ‘Legal change: 'reform', 'legality' and the (once?) 'political constitution'‘ by Jack Hodder; ‘The rights frame of mind’ by Helen Winkelmann; ‘Bills of rights: “Nonsense upon stilts” or an enhancement of democracy?’ by Kenneth Keith; ‘Some lessons for governance in New Zealand drawn from the global context’ by Colin Keating; ‘Normative mismatch and the failure of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’ by Jonathan Carlson. [Hardback]

Toitū te Whenua: People and places of the New Zealand Wars by Lauren Keenan $45
An accessible guide to significant places and people of the New Zealand Wars from a Māori perspective. This comprehensive guidebook journeys through the pivotal sites of the New Zealand Wars, from the Far North to Wellington, offering a unique perspective on events that shaped Aotearoa. Lauren Keenan (Te Ātiawa ki Taranaki) brings to life the key battles, influential figures, and significant locations on an essential chapter in this country's past. Complete with detailed maps and easy-to-follow driving directions, Toitū te Whenua- Places and People of the New Zealand Wars is the perfect companion for exploring these historic sites. As the only guide of its kind written from a Māori viewpoint, it is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of New Zealand's colonial history. [Paperback]

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Clay: A human history by Jennifer Lucy Allan $60
People have been taking handfuls of earth and forming them into their own image since human history began. Human forms are found everywhere there was a ceramic tradition, and there is a ceramic tradition everywhere there was human activity. The clay these figures are made from was formed in deep geological time. It is the material that God, cast as the potter, uses to form Adam in Genesis. Tomb paintings in Egypt show the god Khum at a potter's wheel, throwing a human. Humans first recorded our own history on clay tablets, the shape of the characters influenced by the clay itself. The first love poem was inscribed in a clay tablet, from a Sumerian bride to her king more than 4000 years ago. Born out of a desire to know and understand the mysteries of this material, the spiritual and practical applications of clay in both its micro and macro histories, Clay: A Human History is a book of wonder and insight, a hybrid of archaeology, history and lived experience as an amateur potter. [Hardback]
 “I read this book and immediately went out to buy some clay. Fascinating and powerful.” —Brian Eno
”I thought I knew a lot about pottery, but I didn't, not as much as I do now. From the earliest earthenware to the history of porcelain, along with the author's own progress working with different clays and glazes, I have loved learning from every chapter in this beautiful and affecting book.” —Vashti Bunyan

A Atlas of Endangered Alphabets: Writing systems on the verge of vanishing by Tim Brookes $70
If something is important, we write it down. Yet 85% of the world's writing systems are on the verge of vanishing — not granted official status, not taught in schools, discouraged and dismissed. When a culture is forced to abandon its traditional script, everything it has written for hundreds of years — sacred texts, poems, personal correspondence, legal documents, the collective experience, wisdom and identity of a people — is lost. This Atlas is about those writing systems, and the people who are trying to save them. From the ancient holy alphabets of the Middle East, now used only by tiny sects, to newly created African alphabets designed to keep cultural traditions alive in the twenty-first century: from a Sudanese script based on the ownership marks traditionally branded into camels, to a secret system used in one corner of China exclusively by women to record the songs and stories of their inner selves: this unique book profiles dozens of scripts and the cultures they encapsulate, offering glimpses of worlds unknown to us — and ways of saving them from vanishing entirely. [Hardback]

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Your new books — just out of the carton! We can have your order dispatched by overnight courier or ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang (translated from Korean by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris) $40
One morning in December, Kyungha receives a message from her friend Inseon saying she has been hospitalised in Seoul and asking that Kyungha join her urgently. The two women have last seen each other over a year before, on Jeju Island, where Inseon lives and where, two days before this reunion, she has injured herself chopping wood. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation, Inseon has had to leave behind her pet bird, which will quickly die unless it receives food. Bedridden, she begs Kyungha to take the first plane to Jeju to save the animal. Unfortunately, a snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon's house at all costs, but the icy wind and snow squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save Inseon's bird — or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness which awaits her at her friend's house. There, the long-buried story of Inseon's family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in the archive painstakingly assembled at the house, documenting a terrible massacre on the island of 30,000 civilians, murdered in 1948-49. We Do Not Part is a hymn to friendship, a eulogy to the imagination, and above all a powerful indictment against forgetting. [Hardback]
”Unforgettable. A disquietingly beautiful novel about the impossibility of waking up from the nightmare of history. Hang Kang's prose, as delicate as footprints in the snow or a palimpsest of shadows, conjures up the specters haunting a nation, a family, a friendship.” —Hernan Diaz
”A visionary novel about history, trauma, art and its tremendous costs. Han Kang is one of the most powerfully gifted writers in the world. With each work, she transforms her readers, and rewrites the possibilities of the novel as a form.” —Katie Kitamura

• “A great act of creative culmination.”

• Other books by Han Kang, 2024 Nobel Laureate in Literature.

Mountainish by Zsuzsanna Gahse (translated from German by Katy Derbyshire) $36
A narrator and her dog are criss-crossing the Swiss Alps. She travels with friends who share her interest in food, languages and their topographical contexts. They collect colours, even look for colourlessness, and develop the idea of a walk-in diary, a vain attempt to archive their observations. Gradually, other mountains appear in their observations and memories, as do the mountains of literature and art. Mountains may be sites of fear and awe, of narrow-mindedness, racism and ever-looming collapse; Alpine lodges may be places of hospitality, retreat and unexpected encounters; of nature under threat. In 515 notes, Zsuzsanna Gahse unfolds a finely woven interplay between her six characters while giving us a vivid panorama of mountain worlds, a multi-layered typology of all things mountainish. [Paperback]

• Nothing is done because it was there.

Gloss by Kyra Wilder $38
Transposing the Greek myth of the Hesperides nymphs (guarding the Golden Apples in the legend of Hercules) to Marin County at the turn of the millennium, Gloss is an unconventional psychological thriller with feminist bite. Apple farmer Lee Lotan is a passionate cook who runs an alternative therapy programme for young women suffering from an unnamed eating disorder. Ari, Eleni and Hesper meet at his farm, Golden Apples, one summer. His seemingly benevolent methods have a long-term impact on his young charges. A year later, a trial is underway and the girls reunite to testify. From the chorus of their voices emerges a surreal, kaleidoscopic picture of trauma and its aftermath: ambivalence, guilt, denial, lingering fascination, and the gaps left by things too difficult to speak aloud. As the story reaches its surreal climax, the girls discover the incompetence of the criminal justice system and the cathartic delights of personal revenge. Wilder paints desire and disgust alike in sensuous, delicate prose. [Wrappered paperback][
”Taut and vivid. It is like stepping into a delicately described hallucinatory nightmare and I was completely mesmerised all the way through. The themes of coercive control and psychological disintegration are so chilling and important.” —Suzanne Joinson

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Cold Kitchen: A year of culinary journeys by Caroline Eden $50
”With its union of practicality and magic, a kitchen is a portal offering extended range and providing unlikely paths out of the ordinary. Offering opportunities to cook, imagine and create ways back into other times, other lives and other territories. Central Asia, Turkey, Ukraine, the South Caucasus, Russia, the Baltics and Poland. Places that have eased into my marrow over the years shaping my life, writing and thinking. They are here, these lands I return to, in this kitchen.” A welcoming refuge with its tempting pantry, shelves of books and inquisitive dog, Caroline Eden finds comfort away from the road in her basement Edinburgh kitchen. Join her as she cooks recipes from her travels, reflects on past adventures and contemplates the kitchen's unique ability to tell human stories. This is a hauntingly honest, and at times heartbreaking, memoir with the smell, taste and preparation of food at its heart. From late night baking as a route back to Ukraine to capturing the beauty of Uzbek porcelain, and from the troublesome nature of food and art in Poland to the magic of cloudberries, Cold Kitchen celebrates the importance of curiosity and of feeling at home in the world. Nicely written [Hardback]
”A quiet and beautiful book, a unique blend of history, place, love, food and belonging. Eden writes so sincerely and so intimately you miss her as soon as you've read the last page.” —Diana Henry
”Powerfully evocative and beautifully written Cold Kitchen will warm your heart. Curl up with this book and let it gently take you places near and far; you will find a sense of home, the hearthstone of our shared humanity.” —Elif Shafak
”A hugely accomplished work that manages to be wildly enjoyable, often moving and always thoughtful.” — Olivia Potts, The Spectator
”One of the most brilliant travel writers of her generation, Caroline Eden is masterful at evoking the flavours and emotions of her encounters while on the road in eastern Europe and Central Asia. In Cold Kitchen, she weaves together the contemporary and the historical, the mundane and the magical, in a heartfelt memoir on the meanings of both distant adventures and the comforts of home.” —Fuchsia Dunlop

• Other books by Caroline Eden.

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton $45
”Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and snoozed in your house for hours on end. This happened to me.” When lockdown led busy professional Chloe to leave the city and return to the countryside of her childhood, she never expected to find herself custodian of a newly born hare. Yet when she finds the creature, endangered, alone and no bigger than her palm, she is compelled to give it a chance at survival. Raising Hare chronicles their journey together and the challenges of caring for the leveret and preparing for its return to the wild. We witness an extraordinary relationship between human and animal, rekindling our sense of awe towards nature and wildlife. This improbable bond of trust serves to remind us that the most remarkable experiences, inspiring the most hope, often arise when we least expect them. [Hardback]
”I savoured every carefully chosen and perfectly polished word and I cared so deeply about Hare that I found myself holding my breath . . . This is more than a wildlife memoir, it's a philosophical masterpiece ruminating on our place as human beings in nature.” —Clare Balding
”Raising Hare is an astounding achievement. Not since I read Salar the Salmon by Henry Williamson have I witnessed such insight into a creature of the wild. This is a great and important tale for our times, for all of us, in the same league as Ted Hughes, Alice Oswald, Thomas Hardy and indeed Henry Williamson himself. I am so pleased Chloe Dalton told us about raising hare. I will not forget it and nor will anyone who reads it.” —Michael Morpurgo
”A beautiful book that makes you think profoundly about how we so often tune out the natural world around us. Chloe Dalton is a tender, curious, wise, mind-expanding guide, connecting readers with the wild we humans once knew so well. I will be recommending this to everyone.” —Matt Haig

Mrs Calder and the Hyena by Marjorie Ann Watts $38
”Mrs Calder is frail and distracted. She annoys her daughter by living in disorder, taking up with vagrants, hanging around churchyards and giving free rein to her imagination (she thinks about her doctor with no clothes on). But the real hindrances to right perception in this tale, and throughout Marjorie Ann Watts’s exhilarating second collection, produced at the tender age of ninety-eight, are not the fantasies by which we sustain ourselves but the suffocating illusions of others. Particularly those who want what’s best for us. Where is safe? Where can we start again? Whether in homes troubled by age and bereavement or foreign cities consumed by idealistic revolution, ‘there are no answers’, as Mrs Calder herself puts it, except to pick up these stories wherever we left off, and – gratefully – read on.” —Will Eaves
”As in the fiction of Penelope Fitzgerald, which whom Watts shares attributes, there runs through these stories the sometimes unnerving perspective of the visionary. Watts is especially good on the alchemy that chance affinities between seemingly disparate sorts can generate. An extension of this is her sense of the liberation that attends a confluence between the natural world and the human spirit. Humankind, with its frailties and follies but occasional defiant triumphs, is portrayed within a world where birdsong, the scent of wild narcissi, the sound of water and the broad palette of skies complement the coolly ironic but compassionate voice of a born storyteller.” —Salley Vickers, Spectator

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Playing Possum: How animals understand death by Susana Mons $58
When the opossum feels threatened, she becomes paralysed. Her body temperature plummets, her breathing and heart rates drop to a minimum, and her glands simulate the smell of a putrefying corpse. Playing Possum explores what the opossum and other creatures can teach us about how we and other species understand mortality, and demonstrates that the concept of death, far from being a uniquely human attribute, is widespread in the animal kingdom. With humour and empathy, Susana Mons tells the stories of ants who attend their own funerals, chimpanzees who clean the teeth of their dead, dogs who snack on their caregivers, crows who avoid the places where they saw a carcass, elephants obsessed with collecting ivory, and whales who carry their dead for weeks. Mons, an expert on animal cognition and ethics, shows how there are more ways to conceive of mortality than the human way, and challenges the notion that the only emotional reactions to death worthy of our attention are ones that resemble our own. Blending philosophical insight with new evidence from behavioral science and comparative psychology, Playing Possum dispels the anthropocentric biases that cloud our understanding of the natural world, and reveals that, when it comes to death and dying, we are just another animal. [Hardback]
"Mons upends our anthropocentric views of death and makes the case that other species possess the cognitive requirements to understand death and mortality." —Francisco J. Rivera Rosario
"Playing Possum is an unexpected mix of witty and grisly, cerebral and earthy. Monso doesn't so much answer questions about death as raise new ones, encouraging us to shed our reflexive anthropocentrism by paying close attention to what animals do, even when it fails to accord with human modes of behavior." —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times
"Playing Possum identifies a new discipline: comparative thanatology, the study of 'how animals react to individuals who are dead or close to dying, the physiological processes that underlie their reactions, and what these behaviors tell us about the minds of animals.' Monso is tender-hearted in her empathic descriptions but hard-headed when it comes to interpreting what an animal might be experiencing."—David P. Barash, Wall Street Journal

Hekla and Laki by Marine Schneider $40
Carried in by a strong wind, a tiny creature named Hekla twirls delicately into a crater, falling at the feet — and, very suddenly, into the life — of an old giant named Laki. Each is vastly different from the other: Laki is a solitary being, preferring order and calmness, while Hekla is young, spirited, and messy. But in their newfound state of coexistence, they learn to live together and help each other grow, forging an attachment that binds them in life — and in death. Inspired by two Icelandic volcanoes, Hekla and Laki is a story about the beauty and the brutality of life, the passing of knowledge over time, and new possibilities that follow loss. [Hardback]

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The National Telepathy by Roque Larraquy (translated from Spanish by Frank Wynne) $38
In September 1933, the Peruvian Rubber Company delivers nineteen indigenous people from the Amazon to businessman Amado Dam, intended for Argentina's first Ethnographic Theme Park. Unexpected among the human cargo is an artefact harbouring a sloth with a fascinating yet terrifying secret: the ability to create erotically explosive telepathic connections between people. What ensues is a raucous satire of men's fear of women's bodies, of the illusion of logic in the structures of so-called civilisation, and the way class and race obscure identities when the observer is a man with power. In The National Telepathy, Roque Larraquy, one of the most original voices in contemporary Argentinian literature, brings us a literary high-wire act, an over-the-top comic grotesque about atrocity. This shocking, bizarre, funny, imaginative novel lays all-too-bare the secret longings and not-so-secret machinations of a social class that will stop at nothing in order to stay on top. [Paperback with French flaps]
"The National Telepathy is a graphic, acerbic work of satirical science fiction unlike anything you're likely to have ever read." —The Skinny

The Elements of Baking: Make any recipe gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, or vegan by Katarina Cermelj $70
The definitive guide to making any recipe gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, vegan or even gluten-free vegan. With a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry, Katarina Cermelj lays out the science behind baking and the ingredients that make it work, so you can easily adapt your baking to your diet and lifestyle, and still make sure it tastes spectacular. With an abundance of mouth-watering recipes together with actual quantitative rules that you can use to convert any recipe into whatever version you fancy, The Elements of Baking will transform the way you think about ingredients. It will be a constant companion in the kitchen and the book you refer to every time you want to bake. Interesting and useful for gluten-inclusive, dairy-inclusive, egg-inclusive no-vegans too! [Hardback]

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The Universe in Verse: 15 portals to wonder through science and poetry by Maria Popova $40
Poetry and science, as Popova writes in her introduction, "are instruments for knowing the world more intimately and loving it more deeply." In 15 short essays on subjects ranging from the mystery of dark matter and the infinity of pi to the resilience of trees and the intelligence of octopuses, Popova tells the stories of scientific searching and discovery. These stories are interwoven with details from the very real and human lives of scientists--many of them women, many underrecognized--and poets inspired by the same questions and the beauty they reveal. Each essay is paired with a poem reflecting its subject by poets ranging from Emily Dickinson, W. H. Auden, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Maya Angelou, Diane Ackerman, and Tracy K. Smith, and is stunningly illustrated by celebrated artist Ofra Amit. Together, they wake us to a "reality aglow with wonder." [Hardback]

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A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine story by Nathan Thrall $30
Milad is five years old and excited for his school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but tragedy awaits- his bus is involved in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, rushes to the chaotic site, only to find Milad has already been taken away. Abed sets off on a journey to learn Milad's fate, navigating a maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must face as a Palestinian. Interwoven with Abed's odyssey are the stories of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and pasts unexpectedly converge- a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a deeply immersive, stunningly detailed portrait of life in Israel and Palestine, and an illumination of the reality of one of the most contested places on earth. [New paperback edition]
”A deeply immersive portrait of daily life in Israel and the West Bank arranged around the story of a Palestinian child and a school trip that ends in tragedy following a traffic accident. Weaving together the ordinary and interwoven lives of Jewish and Palestinian inhabitants, Thrall, a Jerusalem-based author and journalist, illuminates the complex realities of one of the world's most contested regions.” —Financial Times

How to Choose a Chess Move by Andrew Soltis $37
International Grandmaster Andrew Soltis brings you a foolproof guide to choosing your best next chess move, every time. There are more than 30 moves you can choose from an average position, yet Chess Masters regularly manage to select the best moves - and they do it faster, more confidently and with less calculation than other players. This practical guide, a brand new, fully updated edition of a chess classic, explains the tricks, techniques and shortcuts Masters employ to find the best way forward, at every stage of a game. Drawing on the wisdom of some of the greatest chess players of all time, with analysis from over 180 games, it covers: Employing specific cues to identify good moves. Streamlining analysis of the consequences of moves. Using both objective and highly subjective criteria to find the right move - from any position. This invaluable book provides a fascinating insight into the way Chess Masters think, and is a must for all players who want to hone their decision-making skills. [Paperback]

Out of the carton and onto your shelves! Any of these books will provide the substance for an increase in your reading time. Your books can be dispatched by overnight courier, or collected from our door.

Star Gazers by Duncan Sarkies $38
The alpacas are nervous. Accusations are flying about a rigged election, a mysterious illness is spreading, the Alpaca News is being censored by higher powers, and skullduggery is threatening the Breeders Showcase. Amidst a mass of self-interested parties, a forthright vet and a diplomatic engineer strive to protect the herds and restore democracy. By turns vital, farcical, heartbreaking and chilling, the much-anticipated alpaca novel by Duncan Sarkies is a wild and tender leap – or, more accurately, pronk – into the heart of alpaca breeding, and a snapshot of a world at a crossroads. [Paperback]
”It’s like Succession, but with alpacas.” —Toby Manhire, The Spinoff
”I cannot think of another New Zealand writer who comes close to Sarkies’ restless intelligence, swift shifts of tone, technical control across several genres and sheer creative inventiveness.” —Fiona Farrell
”Any book about an election, political intrigue and general ratfuckery is going to grab my attention. An allegorical narrative that is most definitely of its time. Sarkies asks important questions, challenging his readers and doing it in an accessible way. I loved it.” —Grant Robertson

Black Sugarcane by Nafanua Purcell Kersel $30
A soft worrier, I’m Nua-No-Myth
speaking in centipede,
with a sweet hiding
in the dark of my cheek.
Restless in form and address, these engaging and generous poems ricochet from light to dark, quiet to loud, calm to violence.  We meet a loved twin sister as she dives towards the Sacred Centre, a grandmother who knows everything by heart, a shrugging office clerk, and Nafanua herself, an enigmatic shapeshifter.
At the heart of Black Sugarcane is a sequence of erasure poems arising from the seminal essay 'In Search of Tagaloa' by Tui Atua Tamasese Ta'isi Efi. From the worlds contained in the text, these poems rise as if inevitable. Another sequence responds to the devastating tsunami that stuck between the Samoan islands of Upolu and Tutuila in September 2009. Within the line, within the word and even the letter, these poems speak to creation and translation, destruction and regeneration. [Paperback]
”The poems in Black Sugarcane are laced with panthers and cobras. Nafanua Purcell Kersel yields her machete-pen with ease, humour and aroha, clearing paths, riding waves, carving memory and bending time. Her poetic vision is both minuscule-microscopic and drone-distant, opening space for the va to take shape. She is writing on a branch from the same rakau as Selina Tusitala Marsh and Tusiata Avia.” —Anne-Marie Te Whiu

Childish Literature by Alejandro Zambra (translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell) $30
How do we write about the singular experience of parenthood? Written in a 'state of attachment', or 'under the influence' of fatherhood, Childish Literature is an eclectic guide for novice parents, showing how the birth and growth of a child changes not only the present and the future, but also reshapes our perceptions of the past. Shifting from moving dispatches from his son's first year of existence, to a treatise on 'football sadness', to a psychedelic narrative where a man tries, mid-magic mushroom trip, to re-learn the subtle art of crawling, this latest work from Alejandro Zambra shows how children shield adults from despondency, self-absorption and the tyrannies of chronological time. At once a chronicle of fatherhood, a letter to a child and a work of fiction. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Childish Literature shows shows boundless — and bounding — enthusiasm for the chaos and curiosity that his son, Silvestre, has brought into his life. Alejandro Zambra makes being a writer seem like the least solitary, most joyful job in the world — an enthusiasm that makes this his most engaging book yet.” —Jonathan Gibbs, Times Literary Supplement
”What a rare and wonderful experience, to read a writer of such brilliance, wit and style as Alejandro Zambra on the subjects of fatherhood and childhood. I relished every page of this beautiful, surprising book.” —Mark O'Connell
”Zambra is one of my favourite living writers (which makes Megan McDowell one of my favourite translators). Childish Literature is funny, playful, sincere and, for me, as a new father, reassuring, not because of parenthood platitudes (quite the opposite), but for its line of anxious questioning on how one fathers a child without a ‘tradition of fatherhood’. It has clarified some of the depth of love alongside the concerns I have as a new father. Zambra is once again doing the work of great literature, providing (and provoking) old and new ideas around family, education, literature and art. He is childlike and deeply serious about the spaces and times we live in. If you have read this book, let's talk about it!” —Raymond Antrobus
”Every beat and pattern of being alive becomes revelatory and bright when narrated by Alejandro Zambra. He is a modern wonder.” —Rivka Galchen

• Read an excerpt.

• Childhood and its antecedents.

• Laughter and tears.

• Other books by Alejandro Zambra.

Heroines by Kate Zambreno $30
“I am beginning to realize that taking the self out of our essays is a form of repression. Taking the self out feels like obeying a gag order―pretending an objectivity where there is nothing objective about the experience of confronting and engaging with and swooning over literature." Zambreno began a blog called Frances Farmer Is My Sister, arising from her obsession with the female modernists and her recent transplantation to Akron, Ohio, where her husband held a university job. Widely reposted, Zambreno's blog became an outlet for her highly informed and passionate rants about the fates of the modernist "wives and mistresses." In her blog entries, Zambreno reclaimed the traditionally pathologized biographies of Vivienne Eliot, Jane Bowles, Jean Rhys, and Zelda Fitzgerald: writers and artists themselves who served as male writers' muses only to end their lives silenced, erased, and institutionalized. Over the course of two years, Frances Farmer Is My Sister helped create a community where today's "toxic girls" could devise a new feminist discourse, writing in the margins and developing an alternative canon. In Heroines, Zambreno extends the polemic begun on her blog into a dazzling, original work of literary scholarship. Combing theories that have dictated what literature should be and who is allowed to write it―from T. S. Eliot's New Criticism to the writings of such mid-century intellectuals as Elizabeth Hardwick and Mary McCarthy to the occasional "girl-on-girl crime" of the Second Wave of feminism―she traces the genesis of a cultural template that consistently exiles female experience to the realm of the "minor”, and diagnoses women for transgressing social bounds. "ANXIETY: When she experiences it, it's pathological," writes Zambreno. "When he does, it's existential." By advancing the Girl-As-Philosopher, Zambreno reinvents feminism for her generation while providing a model for a newly subjectivised criticism. [Paperback]

• Blogged and tumbled.

Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud by Lee Murray $28
Wellington, 1923: a sixty-year-old woman hangs herself in a scullery; ten years later another woman 'falls' from the second floor of a Taranaki tobacconist; soon afterwards a young mother in Taumarunui slices the throat of her newborn with a cleaver. All are women of the Chinese diaspora, who came to Aotearoa for a new life and suffered isolation and prejudice in silence. Chinese-Pakeha writer Lee Murray has taken the nine-tailed fox spirit huli jing as her narrator to inhabit the skulls of these women and others like them and tell their stories. Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud is an audacious blend of biography, mythology, horror and poetry that transcends genre to illuminate lives in the shadowlands of our history. [Paperback]

• Other books long-listed for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Speak / Stop by Noémi Lefebvre (translated from French by Sophie Lewis) $44
Speak / Stop comprises two interrelated texts: a chorus of unidentified voices followed by a work of literary criticism that only Noémi Lefebvre could write — a semiotic fever dream that weighs meaning and meaning-making against idea and ideology. Abstracted, irreverent, and full of biting satire, Lefebvre picks apart hypocrisies in our lives and the language of our lives, skewering our literary pieties before delving headfirst into the paradox of self-criticism. Working against conventional notions of genre and form, Speak / Stop is "a madhouse of earthworm sentences" interrogating concerns of class and taste, ease, and inclusion/exclusion that are the foundations of Lefebvre's work. [Paperback]
"Lefebvre stages a sparkling dialogue about class, literature, and longing to escape one's life. Readers of experimental literature are in for a treat." —Publishers Weekly
"Lefebvre's approach is intellectual but unpretentious. Her pugnacious prose is consistently delightful. Using cultural criticism and fiction to further the possibilities of both, this is another rapturous work from Lefebvre, allergic to cliché and lazy thinking alike." —Declan Fry

• Read an extract.

• Read Thomas’s reviews of others of Lefebvre’s books.

The Magic Cap by Mireille Messier and Charlotte Parent $35
A delightfully illustrated picture book. Many moons ago, in a tiny, thatched cottage at the edge of the woods, lived two children named Isaura and Arlo with their hedgehog, Crispin. When their beloved pet becomes ill, Isaura suggests that they seek the magical healing power of gnomes. Convinced this will heal it, the children set off into the woods with humble offerings, hoping to attract the gnomes. The trick does not seem to work, however, and gnomes are nowhere to be seen despite the children's good intentions. Isaura and Arlo will have to remain hopeful and wish for a magical solution!

• Look inside this lovely book!

Why Fish Don’t Exist: A story of loss, love, and the hidden order of life by Lulu Miller $37
When Lulu Miller’s relationship falls apart, she turns to an unlikely figure for guidance — the 19th-century naturalist, David Starr Jordan. Poring over his diaries, Lulu discovers a man obsessed with nature's hidden order, devoted to studying shimmering scales and sailing the world in search of new species of fish. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake sends more than a thousand of Jordan’s specimens, housed in glass jars, plummeting to the ground, the story of his resilience leads Lulu to believe she has found the antidote to life’s unpredictability. But lurking behind the tale of this great taxonomist lies a darker story waiting to be told: one about the human cost of attempting to define the form of things unknown. An idiosyncratic, personal approach to this fascinating scientific biography, Why Fish Dont Exist is an astonishing tale of newfound love, scientific discovery and how to live well in a world governed by chaos. [Now in paperback]
 “I want to live at this book's address: the intersection of history and biology and wonder and failure and sheer human stubbornness. What a sumptuous, surprising, dark delight.” —Carmen Maria Machado
”Her book took me to strange depths I never imagined, and I was smitten.” —The New York Times Book Review
”A story told with an open heart, every page of it animated by verve, nuance, and full-throated curiosity.” —Leslie Jamison
”This book will capture your heart, seize your imagination, smash your preconceptions, and rock your world.” —Sy Montgomery
”Moves gracefully between reporting and meditation, big questions and small moments. A magical hybrid of science, portraiture, and memoir-and a delight to read.” —Susan Orlean

Silk: A history in three metamorphoses by Aarathi Prasad $28
Through the scientists who have studied silk, and the biology of the animals from which it has been drawn, Prasad explores the global history, natural history, and future of a unique material that has fascinated the world for millennia. For silk, prized for its lightness, luminosity, and beauty is also one of the strongest biological materials ever known. More than a century ago, it was used to make the first bulletproof vest, and yet science has barely even begun to tap its potential. As the technologies it has inspired - from sutures to pharmaceuticals, replacement body parts to holograms - continue to be developed in laboratories around the world, they are now also beginning to offer a desperately needed, sustainable alternative to the plastics choking our planet. Prasad's Silk is a cultural and biological history from the origins and ancient routes of silk to the biologists who learned the secrets of silk-producing animals, manipulating the habitats and physiologies of moths, spiders and molluscs. Because there is more than one silk, there is more than one story of silk. More than one road, more than one people who discovered it, and wove its threads. [New paperback edition]
”A tour of the anecdotal, the industrial and the gruesome. Readers coming to this globetrotting and species-leaping volume expecting vignette after genteel vignette of 5,000-odd years of Chinese silk manufacture are in for a nasty shock. Here be spiders, and not just spiders, but metre-long Mediterranean clams, and countless moth species spinning their silks everywhere from Singapore to Suriname.” —Financial Times

Birds of the Nelson/Tasman Region, And where to find them by Peter Field $25
This clear and useful illustrated book describes the history, habits and habitats of all the birds known from this region, noting changes in abundance and distribution. The best sites to find the species are described, along with a set of maps to show these locations in detail. [Paperback]

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Girl by Ruth Padel $38
Ruth Padel takes a fresh and questioning look at girlhood and its icons. Across a triptych of interlocking sequences, she unravels the millennia of myth woven around girls. A moving retelling of the Christian story transforms the Virgin Mary into a girl in a Primark T-shirt, facing a life shaped by divine will. Unearthed from the Cretan labyrinth, a prehistoric Snake Goddess is reshaped at the hands of a male archaeologist. Between these evocative figures, myth turns personal. Delicately crafted lyrics, sometimes taking adventurous shapes, explore snapshots from the poet's own life blended with archetypes from India, European fairy tale, ancient Greece and Urban Dictionary- girl as soul, girl as creative energy, girl as the sacred power of nature, vulnerable but unstoppable. [Paperback]
”One of our most gifted poets turns her gaze to the terrain of girlhood: Padel taps into that unique and beautiful time where all the mystery, wonder and mythmaking fold into each other. This is tender and exquisite poetry” —Mona Arshi
”In these searching, restless poems, Ruth Padel excavates the violence, beauty and danger of girlhood, asking again and again ‘Who makes you girl? When does it stop?’ Formally inventive and with a dazzling control of the lyric line, Padel uses the poem as time travelling machine, examining the acts of resistance that connect girls to the women they will become.” —Kim Moore

The Extinction of Experience: Reclaiming our humanity in a digital world by Christine Rosen $40
Human experiences are disappearing. Social media, gaming and dating apps have usurped in-person interaction; handwriting is no longer prioritised in schools; and emotion is sooner expressed through likes and emojis than face-to-face conversations. With headphones in and eyes trained on our phones, even boredom has been obliterated. But, as Christine Rosen expertly shows, when we embrace this mediated life and conform to the demands of the machine, we risk becoming disconnected and machine-like ourselves. There is another way. For too long, under the influence of corporate giants and tech enthusiasts, we've accepted the idea that change always means better. But rapidly developing technology isn't neutral - it's ambivalent, and capable of enormous harm. To improve our well-being, help future generations flourish and recover our shared humanity, we must become more critical, mindful users of technology, and more discerning of how it uses us. From TikTok challenges and algorithms to surveillance devices and conspiracy culture, The Extinction of Experience reveals the human crisis of our digital age - and urges us to return to the real world, while we still can. [Paperback]
”Technology is having pervasive effects on us all, effects which are hard to put into words. Christine Rosen finds the words I've longed for. The Extinction of Experience is an extremely important book, and its message all the more urgent as AI threatens to make everything effortless, frictionless, and disembodied.” —Jonathan Haidt
”A fascinating and timely book about the essential real-world experiences we're watching vanish before our screen-addled eyes. Resisting the lure of nostalgia, but rejecting the glib assumption that more technology is always better, Christine Rosen makes a passionate case for the face-to-face, embodied, analogue, unpredictable, unmediated life, and its centrality to a vibrant and truly meaningful human existence.” —Oliver Burkeman

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Books of Mana: 180 Māori-authored books of significance edited by Jacinta Ruru, Angela Wanhalla and Jeanette Wikaira $65
Books of Mana celebrates the rich tradition of Māori authorship in Aotearoa New Zealand. It reveals the central place of over 200 years of print literacy within te ao Māori and vividly conveys how books are understood as taonga tuku iho – treasured items handed down through generations. In this beautifully illustrated collection of essays, some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most renowned Māori thinkers join the editors in a wide-ranging kōrero about the influence and empowerment of Māori writing. Books of Mana builds on the work of editors Jacinta Ruru, Angela Wanhalla and Jeanette Wikaira, who curated Te Takarangi, a selected list of Māori-authored non-fiction books published since 1815. Launched in 2018, the Te Takarangi list now comprises 180 titles, each representing an important touchstone in an extensive landscape of Māori literature. Books of Mana explores the ways these books have enriched lives and helped to foster understanding of Māori experience, both at home in Aotearoa and internationally. What emerges from the essays collected within these covers is a clear vision of the importance of writing as activism and a profound sense that these Māori-authored non-fiction books, and the knowledge they contain, are taonga. [Hardback]

• Look inside!

• Other books on te ao Māori.

Golden Enterprise: New Zealand Chinese merchants, 1860s—1970s by Phoebe H. Li $80
Golden Enterprise offers a compelling re-examination of New Zealand Chinese history from the 1860s to the 1970s, focusing on the pivotal role of Cantonese merchants. These early entrepreneurs not only facilitated Chinese immigration but also shaped the identity of Chinese New Zealanders within the broader context of New Zealand’s shifting relationships with China, Britain, and the wider world. Drawing on extensive archival research in both Chinese and English sources, Phoebe H. Li illuminates the merchants’ transnational business and social networks, providing fresh perspectives on Chinese migration to the South Pacific. Well illustrated. [Hardback]

• Look inside.

• Other books long-listed for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Aerth by Deborah Tompkins $36
Magnus lives on Aerth, which is currently moving into an Ice Age, with a strange virus limiting the population. When the planet Urth is discovered, he vows to become an astronaut and travel there, but on arriving he finds it hot, crowded, corrupt and violent, despite it being initially welcoming. Slowly Magnus realises he will not find what he's looking for, but there seems no way back. Aerth is a story about migration, climate, conspiracy theories and interplanetary homelessness. [Paperback with French flaps]
”What planet are we on? Can we leave? Does it mean we can never go home again if we do? What does a phrase like worlds apart really mean? Deep-forged, witty and resonant, this dimensionally stunning novella deals with dystopia and hope in a way that reveals them as profoundly related. A work of real energy and narrative grip, brilliantly earthy and airy at once, it blasts open a reader's past/future consciousness and taps into literary antecedents as disparate as Hardy and Atwood. Funny, terrifying, humane, this is a thrilling journey in a story the size of a planet — no, the size of several, all of them altogether strange and uncannily familiar.” —Ali Smith

Equality: What it means and why it matters by Thomas Piketty and Michael J. Sandel $29
In this compelling dialogue, two of the world’s most influential thinkers reflect on the value of equality and debate what citizens and governments should do to narrow the gaps that separate us. Ranging across economics, philosophy, history, and current affairs, Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel consider how far we have come in achieving greater equality. At the same time, they confront head-on the extreme divides that remain in wealth, income, power, and status nationally and globally. What can be done at a time of deep political instability and environmental crisis? Piketty and Sandel agree on much: more inclusive investment in health and education, higher progressive taxation, curbing the political power of the rich and the overreach of markets. But how far and how fast can we push? Should we prioritise material or social change? What are the prospects for any change at all with nationalist forces resurgent? How should the left relate to values like patriotism and local solidarity where they collide with the challenges of mass migration and global climate change? To see Piketty and Sandel grapple with these and other problems is to glimpse new possibilities for change and justice but also the stubborn truth that progress towards greater equality never comes quickly or without deep social conflict and political struggle. [Hardback]

• Other books by Thomas Piketty.

• Other books by Michael Sandel.

Lexicon of Affinities by Ida Vitale (translated from Spanish by Sean Manning) $39
With entries as varied as 'elbow', 'Ophelia', 'progress', the painter Giorgio Morandi, 'chess', 'Eulalia' (a friend of the author's aunt), and 'unicorn', Ida Vitale constructs a dictionary of her long and passionately engaged artistic life. Taking the reader by the arm, she invites us to become her confidant, sharing her remarkable 20th century as a member of a storied generation of Latin American writers, of whom she is the last remaining alive. It's a compendium of friendship, travel, reading, and the endless opportunities she found for 'the joyful possibility of creation.' Like every dictionary, Lexicon of Affinities seeks to impose order on chaos, even if in its exuberant, whimsical profusion it lays bare the unstable character of the cosmos. [Paperback with French flaps]
"Vitale's prose is drop dead gorgeous." —Jeremy Garber
"Extraordinary. Giving due attention to Vitale's prose will bring you reassurance and optimism." —Lunate
"A vibrant and playful memoir-in-dictionary-form. A joyous celebration of a life well lived, with entries that range from the simple to the titanic." —Literary Hub
"Indispensable. Vitale's language has a precision that reminds us that memory exists: that today precision is an act of distinction and recognition." —Letras Libre

Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai (translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet) $42
The National Book Award winner’s breathtaking new novel about neo-Nazis, particle physics, and Johann Sebastian Bach. The gentle giant Florian Herscht has a problem: having faithfully attended Herr Köhler's adult education classes in physics, he is convinced that disaster is imminent. And so, he embarks upon a one-sided correspondence with Chancellor Angela Merkel, to convince her of the danger of the complete destruction of all physical matter. Otherwise, he works for the Boss (the head of a local neo-Nazi gang), who has taken him under his wing and gotten him work as a graffiti cleaner and also a one-room apartment in the small eastern German town of Kana. The Boss is enraged by a graffiti artist who, with wolf emblems, is defacing all the various monuments to Johann Sebastian Bach in Thuringia. A Bach fanatic and director of an amateur orchestra, he is determined to catch the culprit with the help of his gang, and Florian has no choice but to join the chase. The situation becomes even more frightening, and havoc ensues, when real wolves are sighted in the area. Written in one cascading sentence with the power of atomic particles colliding, Krasznahorkai's novel is a tour de force, a morality play, a blistering satire, a devastating encapsulation of our helplessness when confronted with the moral and environmental dilemmas we face. [Paperback]
"Krasznahorkai's work offers, to a degree rare in contemporary life, one of the central pleasures of fiction: an encounter with the otherness of other people. He's a universalist cut loose from the shibboleths of humanism." —Garth Risk Hallberg, The New York Times
"The best new novel I have read this year is written in a single sentence that sprawls over 400 pages. Herscht 07769 by the Hungarian genius Laszlo Krasznahorkai is an urgent depiction of our global social and political crises, rendering our impotent slide into authoritarianism with compassionate clarity. It is also a book whose timeliness derives precisely from the way its unusual style disrupts the ordinary literary mechanics of time. A masterful study in what it means to keep trudging through a world that is always ending but will not end." —Jacob Brogan, The Washington Post

Q&A by Adrian Tomine $30
Adrian Tomine began his professional career at the age of sixteen, and in the decades since, has made a name for himself as a bestselling graphic novelist, screenwriter, and New Yorker cover artist. Now, for the first time, he's taking questions. Part personal history, part masterclass (illustrated throughout with photos, outtakes, and step-by-step process images), Q&A is an unprecedented look into Tomine's working methods and a trove of insight, guidance, and advice for aspiring and practising creatives alike. [Paperback]
”Adrian Tomine has more ideas in twenty panels than novelists have in a lifetime.” —Zadie Smith

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Cactus Pear for My Beloved: A family story from Gaza by Samah Sabawi $40
The story of a family over the past 100 years, starting in Palestine under British rule and ending in Redland Bay in Queensland. Samah Sabawi shares the story of her parents and many like them who were born as their parents were being forced to leave their homelands. Filled with love for land, history, peoples it is more than anything else a family story and a love story told with enormous humanity and feeling. How the son (one of six), born at the height of the displacements to a disabled father and illiterate mother, a believer in peaceful resistance, became a leading poet and writer in Palestine, before being forced, with his own young family in tow, to flee and start a new life in Australia. [Paperback]

Young Hag by Isabel Greenberg $45
Once there was magic in Britain. There were dragons and wizards and green knights and kings who pulled swords out of stones. But now, the doors to the Otherworld have closed. Young Hag has grown up believing her mother and grandmother are the last witches in the land. But when tragedy strikes, she turns her back on these tales. Where is their magic when they really need it? Then one day they find a changeling in the woods. Confronted with real magic at last, Young Hag has no choice but to believe. She sets off on the greatest quest of her life; but can Young Hag bring the magic back? Or will she become a footnote in the tale of famous kings and wizards? From the acclaimed creator of Glass Town and The One Hundred Nights of Hero comes a dazzlingly imaginative escape into the world of myth. Young Hag ingeniously reinvents the women in Arthurian legend, transforming the tales of old into a heart-warming coming-of-age story. [Paperback]

• Look inside!

• A glimpse at Greenberg’s work.

Hum by Helen Phillips $37
In a hot and gritty city populated by super-intelligent robots called 'Hums', May seeks some reprieve from recent hardships and from her family's addiction to their devices. She splurges on a weekend away at the Botanical Garden — a rare, green refuge in the heart of the city, where forests, streams and animals flourish. But when it becomes clear that the Garden is not the idyll she hoped it would be, and her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a Hum of uncertain motives in order to restore the life of her family. Gripping and unflinching, Hum is about our most cherished human relationships in a world compromised by climate change and dizzying technological revolution, a world with both dystopian and utopian possibilities. [Paperback]
”What's more intoxicating than a Helen Phillips novel? Her books have blown open the doors of what's possible with the art of storytelling — and her latest, Hum, is her best work yet: one that captures, with fire and grace, our future and what it means to love, to persist, and to be human. This is a hold-your-breath book. Buckle up and get ready to deeply feel the joy — the thrill, the magic — of reading.” —Paul Yoon
”An indelible family portrait and a narrative tour de force, Hum generates almost unbearable tension and unease from start to end. Stunning, strangely beautiful, and written from a place of deep compassion but also with a clear and analytical eye. Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future. I loved it.” —Jeff VanderMeer

• Speculative fiction in the age of artificial intelligence.

Code Dependent: Living in the shadow of A.I. by Madhumita Murgia $40
What does it mean to be human in a world that is rapidly changing thanks to the development of artificial intelligence, of automated decision-making that both draws on and influences our behaviour? Through the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Madhumita Murgia, AI Editor at the FT, exposes how A.I. can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency - and shatter our illusion of free will. AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small. In this compelling work, Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity. [Paperback]
”Code Dependent is the intimate investigation of AI that we've been waiting for, and it arrives not a moment too soon.” —Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Clive and His Hats by Jessica Spanyol $18
Meet Clive — and his imagination! Clive loves his collection of hats, and each one suggests a different adventure. He enjoys playing with them, and sharing them with his friends. A gentle, affectionate book, celebrating diversity and challenging gender stereotypes. [Board book]

• Look inside!

• Also lovely: Clive and His Babies.

Mr Moon Wakes Up by Jemima Sharpe $20
Mr Moon always sleeps. He naps during hide-and-seek, passes out on puzzles and dozes during adventure stories. But what would happen if Mr Moon ever woke up? Would he lead us to hidden, dream-like worlds, filled with fantastic friends and exciting games? And if he did, would we remember in the morning? Beautifully illustrated. [Paperback]

• Look inside! (recommended)

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Mapmatics: How we navigate the world through numbers by Paulina Rowinska $40
How does a delivery driver distribute hundreds of packages in a single working day? Why does remote Alaska have such a large airport? Where should we look for elusive serial killers? The answers lie in the crucial connection between maps and maths.In Mapmatics, Dr Paulina Rowinska embarks on a fascinating journey to discover the mathematical foundations of cartography and cartographical influences on mathematics. From a sixteenth-century map that remains an indispensable navigation tool despite emphasizing the North-South divide, and maps of voting districts that can empower or silence whole communities, to public transport maps that both guide and mislead passengers, she reveals how maps and maths shape not only our sense of space and time but also our worldview. [Paperback]

Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren (translated from Norwegian by Agnes Broome) $30
Martin Berg is slowly falling into crisis. Decades ago, he was an aspiring writer who'd almost finished his novel, his girlfriend was the shockingly intelligent and beautiful Cecilia Wickner, and his best friend was the up-and-coming artist Gustav Becker. But Martin's manuscript has long been languishing in a desk drawer, Gustav has stopped answering his calls, and Cecilia has been missing for years. Not long after they were married, she vanished from his life and left him to raise their two young children alone. So who was Cecilia? Martin's eccentric wife, Gustav's enigmatic muse, an absent mother — a woman who was perhaps only true to herself. When Martin's daughter Rakel stumbles across a clue about what happened to her mother, she becomes determined to fill in the gaps in her family's story. [New paperback edition]
”Utterly gripping, like the films of Richard Linklater transmuted to the page. A magnificent doorstop of a novel.” —Guardian

• Human existence of full of misery.

• We don’t get endless opportunities.

• Love, power, and art.

Collected Short Fiction by Gerald Murnane $40
This volume brings together Gerald Murnane's shorter works of fiction, most of which have been out of print for the past twenty five years. They include such masterpieces as 'When the Mice Failed to Arrive', 'Stream System', 'First Love', 'Emerald Blue', and 'The Interior of Gaaldine', a story which holds the key to the long break in Murnane's career, and points the way towards his later works, from Barley Patch to Border Districts. Much is made of Murnane's distinctive and elaborate style as a writer, but there is no one to match him in his sensitive portraits of family members - parents, uncles and aunts, and particularly children — and in his probing of situations which contain anxiety and embarrassment, shame or delight.
’Murnane is without question both the most original and most significant Australian author of the last 50 years, and one of the best writers Australia has produced. This claim will be hotly contested by many — and perhaps most — Australian critics and readers, but I suspect it will become a commonplace sentiment internationally.” —Emmett Stinson, The Guardian

• An interview with Gerald Murnane.

• Other books by Gerald Murnane.

The Glutton by A.K. Blakemore $28
Sister Perpetue is not to move. She is not to fall asleep. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient's room. She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed. But it is hard to believe that this slender, frail man is the one they once called The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon. Before, he was just Tarare. Well-meaning and hopelessly curious, born into a world of brawling and sweet cider, to a bereaved mother and a life of slender means. The 18th Century is drawing to a close, unrest grips the heart of France and life in the village is soon shaken. When a sudden act of violence sees Tarare cast out and left for dead, his ferocious appetite is ignited, and it's not long before his extraordinary abilities to eat make him a marvel throughout the land. [New paperback edition]
”An embarrassment of riches. A sensory assault fit to slap any reader awake with its gorgeous glut of baroque prose and wise, poised lessons on life, pleasure, class, desire, and love.” —Kiran Millwood Hargrave

• Read Stella’s review.

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak, And other stories by Jamil Jan Kochai $33
Jamil Jan Kochai breathes life into his contemporary Afghan characters, moving between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in America. In these arresting stories verging on both comedy and tragedy, often starring young characters whose bravado is matched by their tenderness. In ‘Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain’, a young man's video game experience turns into a surreal exploration on his own father's memories of war and occupation. Set in Kabul, ‘Return to Sender’ follows two married doctors driven by guilt to leave the US and care for their fellow Afghans, even when their own son disappears. A college student in the US in ‘Hungry Ricky Daddy’ starves himself in protest of Israeli violence against Palestine. And in the title story, ‘The Haunting of Hajji Hotak’, we learn the story of a man codenamed Hajji, from the perspective of a government surveillance worker, who becomes entrenched in the immigrant family's life. The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories is a moving exploration of characters grappling with the ghosts of war and displacement — and one that speaks to the immediate political landscape we reckon with today. [Paperback]
”An endlessly inventive and moving collection from a thrilling and capacious young talent.” —Jess Walter

The Dictionary People: The unsung heroes who created The Oxford English Dictionary by Sarah Ogilvie $28
The Oxford English Dictionary has long been associated with elite institutions and Victorian men. But the Dictionary didn't just belong to the experts; it relied on contributions from members of the public. By 1928, its 414,825 entries had been crowdsourced from a surprising and diverse group of people, from astronomers to murderers, naturists, pornographers, suffragists and queer couples. Lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie dives deep into previously untapped archives to tell a people's history of the OED. Here, she reveals the full story of the making of one of the most famous books in the world. [Paperback]

Free and Equal: What would a fair society look like? by Daniel Chandler $30
Imagine: you are designing a society, but you don't know who you'll be within it — rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like? This is the revolutionary thought experiment proposed by the twentieth century's greatest political philosopher, John Rawls. As economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler argues in this hugely ambitious and exhilarating intervention, it is by rediscovering Rawls that we can find a way out of the escalating crises that are devastating our world today. Taking Rawls's humane and egalitarian liberalism as his starting point, Chandler builds a careful and ultimately irresistible case for a progressive agenda that would fundamentally reshape our societies for the better. He shows how we can protect free speech and transcend the culture wars; get money out of politics; and create an economy where everyone has the chance to fulfil their potential, where prosperity is widely shared, and which operates within the limits of our finite planet. This is a book brimming with hope and possibility — a galvanising alternative to the cynicism that pervades our politics. [Paperback]
”A brilliantly eloquent, incredibly insightful reimagining of liberalism.” —Owen Jones
”Inspiring. Impassioned. Full of hope.” —Zadie Smith
”This is a fantastic book.” —Thomas Piketty

World Without End by Jean-Marc Jancovici and Christophe Blain $65
an eminent climate expert takes a graphic novelist on a journey to understand the profound changes that our planet is experiencing. The scientist, Jean-Marc Jancovici, explains the workings of superpowers and history; oil and climate; ecology, economics and energy flows. He describes, in short, the world we live in today — a world whose future is deeply uncertain. The artist, Christophe Blain, intently listens and draws. As the pair come face to face with global warming, they — along with Mother Nature, Pop Eye and Jiminy Cricket, among others — create a picture of what the solution to our predicament actually looks like. It's not just about switching to renewable energy sources, they show. It's about rethinking everything: our energy supply, our economies, and our whole world. We're left with a vision of the future in which food, education, housing, transport and communities — in other words, all of us — work together and, with a few technological fixes, succeed in creating a world without end. [Large-format hardback]

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Portrait Activity Book by Kathryn Box and James Lambert $22
An engaging and insightful introduction to portraits in art, this fun-packed children's book includes activities inspired by fourteen modern and contemporary artworks. Experiment with abstract portraiture like Pablo Picasso, design your own mask with the Guerrilla Girls, and try your hand at creating a word-only portrait inspired by Lorna Simpson! With fascinating facts about each artist's life and work throughout, this book is guaranteed to encourage a deeper understanding of art styles, techniques, and ideas, and introduce young readers to artworks in a variety of media, including photography, mixed media, sculpture, conceptual art, installation art and painting. [Large-format paperback]

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What the Wild Sea Can Be: The future of the world’s ocean by Helen Scales $37
Beginning with its fascinating deep history, Scales links past to present to show how the prehistoric ocean ecology was already working in ways similar to the ocean of today. In elegant, evocative prose, she takes readers into the realms of animals that epitomise today's increasingly challenging conditions. Ocean life everywhere is on the move as seas warm, and warm waters are an existential threat to emperor penguins, whose mating grounds in Antarctica are collapsing. Shark populations — critical to balanced ecosystems — have shrunk by 71 per cent since the 1970s, largely the result of massive and unregulated industrial fishing. Orcas — the apex predators — have also drastically declined, victims of toxic chemicals and plastics with long half-lives that disrupt the immune system and the ability to breed. Yet despite these threats, many hopeful signs remain. Increasing numbers of no-fish zones around the world are restoring once-diminishing populations. Amazing seagrass meadows and giant kelp forests rivaling those on land are being regenerated and expanded. They may be our best defense against the storm surges caused by global warming, while efforts to reengineer coral reefs for a warmer world are growing. Offering innovative ideas for protecting coastlines and cleaning the toxic seas, Scales insists we need more ethical and sustainable fisheries and must prevent the other existential threat of deep-sea mining, which could significantly alter life on earth. Inspiring us all to maintain a sense of awe and wonder at the majesty beneath the waves, she urges us to fight for the better future that still exists for the Anthropocene ocean. [Paperback]

Ash’s Cabin by Jen Wang $38
Ash has always felt alone. Adults ignore the climate crisis. Other kids Ash's age are more interested in pop stars and popularity contests than in fighting for change. Even Ash's family seems to be sleepwalking through life. The only person who ever seemed to get Ash was their Grandpa Edwin. Before he died, he used to talk about building a secret cabin, deep in the California wilderness. Did he ever build it? What if it's still there, waiting for him to come back...or for Ash to find it?  To Ash, that maybe-mythical cabin is starting to feel like the perfect place for a fresh start and an escape from the miserable feeling of alienation that haunts their daily life. But making the wilds your home isn't easy. And as much as Ash wants to be alone...can they really be happy alone? Can they survive alone? A superb graphic novel from New York Times-bestselling author and illustrator Jen Wang — a singularly affecting story about self-discovery, self-reliance, and the choice to live when it feels like you have no place in the world.

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Slow Down: How degrowth communism can save the Earth Kohei Saito $40
The very logic of the capitalist system pits it against Earth's life support systems, and any ‘growth’ a system generates comes at an intolerable cost to our future. Drawing on cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines, Saito suggests that nothing but a transformation of our economic life can save us from climate collapse. Karl Marx himself reached this breakthrough at the end of his life, long before climate change had even begun. What few people realise is that it radically altered his vision of proletarian revolution. Now that we are entering our own end-game, we must grasp Marx's final lesson before it is too late. If we are to avoid the three terrible prospects of climate fascism, climate Maoism or mere anarchy, the future must belong to degrowth communism, a fair and humane existence within the limits of nature. There is no alternative: the endless acceleration of capital has run out of road. [Paperback]
”Slow Down has an almost magic ability to formulate complex thoughts in clear language, as well as to combine strict conceptual thinking with passionate personal engagement. What this means is that Saito's book is not just for anyone interested in ecology or in the problems of today's global capitalism, it is simply indispensable for those of us who want to SURVIVE in short, to all of us.” —Slavoj Zizek
”Philosopher Kohei Saito calls us to reject the logic of economic growth and embrace a different kind of plenty. The key insight, or provocation, of Slow Down is to give the lie to we-can-have-it-all green capitalism. In place of a command economy, Saito puts forth a model based on local experimentation.” —The New Yorker

Oil (‘Object Lessons’ series) by Michael Tondre $23
Oil remains the ur-commodity of our global era, having been distilled from ancient algae and marine life to turn modernity's wheels. Wars are fought over it. Some communities are displaced by its extraction, so that others may reap its benefits. But despite its heated history, few will ever see oil on the ground. Shrouded within a labyrinth of oil fields, pipelines, and manufacturies, it tends to be known only through its magical effects: the thrill of the road, the euphoria of flight, and the metamorphic allure of everything from vinyl records to celluloid film and synthetic clothing. Michael Tondre shows how hydrocarbon became today's pre-eminent power. How did oil come to structure selfhood and social relations? And to what extent is oil not only a commercial product but a cultural one--something shaped by widely imagined dreams and desires? Amid a warming world unleashed by fossil fuels, oil appears as a rich resource for thinking about histories of globalization and technology no less than the energetic underpinnings of literature, film, and art. [Paperback]

• Other books in the ‘Object Lessons’ series.

The New Classics: The Broadsheet Melbourne Cookbook, Recipes from the city’s best restaurants, cafes, and bars $60
Recipes from 80 of the city's most-ordered breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes, as selected by Broadsheet. Featured venues include Soi 38, Tedesca Osteria, Hope Street Radio, Manzé, Embla, Enter Via Laundry, France-Soir, Gimlet, Grill Americano, Nomad, Reine, Stokehouse, Florian, A1 Bakery, Pidapipó, Tarts Anon, and dozens more.

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The Serviceberry: An economy of gifts and abundance by Robin Wall Kimmerer $38
As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition and the hoarding of resources and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry's relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness and gratitude.  The tree distributes its wealth — its abundance of sweet, juicy berries — to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, "Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency." [Hardback]

New books for a new year! Start as you mean to go on.
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The Pets We Have Killed by Barbara Else $35
In 1959 a schoolgirl is caught in the rivalry between two male teachers. In 1982 a New Zealander in her thirties is introduced to a snake in San Diego. In 2075 a government official drafts a summary of the first stage in NZ’s new-style elections. These eighteen stories mark Barbara Else’s return to fiction for adults. They are notable for their range in genre and tone, from realism to science fiction and fantasy, from subversive humour and sharp satire to thoughtful and humane contemplation of the human condition. Many are about romantic relationships — fresh and new, would-be, or long gone. All the stories demonstrate how the problems women face change little as time passes.

Granta 168: Significant Other edited by Thomas Meaney $37
Granta's summer issue is devoted to fictions of the 'other'. ‘Significant other' calls up the anodyne invitation from a host who wishes to strip away presumption. But we insist it is a fertile concept. Some significant others we know for much of our lives; others are meteoric: we may see them only once. Fiction includes J.M. Coetzee's story, 'The Museum Guard’, Victor Heringer's 'Lígia’ , and ‘Armance’ by Fleur Jaeggy. Introducing new fiction from Sophie Collins, Kevin Brazil, and Alexandra Tanner. Non-fiction features Mary Gaitskill's 'The Pneuma Method', James Pogue on the mines of Mauritania, and Susan Pedersen on paranormal love in the Balfour family. Christian Lorentzen appraises Daniel Sinykin's Big Fiction. Snigdah Poonam follows a teenager who makes a pilgrimage to Ayodhya, where the BJP's Hindu nationalists have built their dream temple of Ram. Poetry by Najwan Darwish, Zoë Hitzig, Tamara Nassar and Bernadette Van-Huy. Photography by Rosalind Fox Solomon (introduced by Lynne Tillman), Jesse Glazzard (introduced by Anthony Vahni Capildeo) and Debmalya Ray Choudhuri (introduced by John-Baptiste Oduor). Cover art by Simon Casson.

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Bothy: In search of simple shelter by Kat Hill $45
Leading us on a gorgeous and erudite journey around the UK, Kat Hill reveals the history of these wild mountain shelters and the people who visit them. With a historian's insight and a rambler's imagination, she lends fresh consideration to the concepts of nature, wilderness and escape. All the while, Hill weaves together her story of heartbreak and new purpose with those of her fellow wanderers, past and present. Writing with warmth, wit and infectious wanderlust, Hill moves from a hut in an active military training area in the far-north of Scotland to a fairy-tale cottage in Wales. Along her travels, she explores the conflict between our desire to preserve isolated beauty and the urge to share it with others — embodied by the humble bothy. [Hardback]
”An intelligent and thoughtful book that will have you reaching for your boots. Hill offers learned and considered reflections on the consolations of retreat, simple living, of finding even temporary shelter when all outside is tempest. It is also a meditation on change: climate change, emotional growth, and the unquenchable nostalgia for a past slipping ever further from view.” — Cal Flyn

• The merry fellowship of bothies.

Hiroshima: The last witnesses by M.G. Sheftall $40
The stories of hibakusha - Japanese for atomic bomb survivors — lie at the heart of this compelling minute-by-minute account of 6 August 1945 — the day the world changed forever as the Enola Gay dropped its terrible payload over Hiroshima. These survivors and witnesses, now with an average age of over 90, are the last people alive who can still provide us with reliable and detailed testimony about life in Hiroshima before the bombings. In this heart-stopping account they relay what they experienced on the day the city was obliterated, and what it has been like to live with those memories and scars over the rest of their lives. M. G. Sheftall has spent years personally interviewing survivors who were just adolescents at the time but have lived well into their nineties, allowing him to construct portraits of what Hiroshima was like before the bomb, and how catastrophically its citizens' lives changed in the seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months and years afterwards. Fluent in spoken and written Japanese, his deep immersion in Japanese society has given him unprecedented access to the hibakusha in their waning years. Their trust in him is evident in the personal and traumatic depths they open up for him as he records their stories. [Paperback]
”M.G. Sheftall's Hiroshima presents as a master class in eyewitness storytelling. As poignant as it is powerful, this gripping narrative chronicles one of history's darkest nightmare moments-the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945-and the memories of its surviving eyewitnesses. As the events fade from living memory, Hiroshima is at once a brilliant tribute and a cautionary tale. “ —Annie Jacobsen

Fear: An alternative history of the world by Robert Peckham $33
Fear has long been a driving force — perhaps the driving force — of world history: a coercive tool of power and a catalyst for radical change. Here, Robert Peckham traces its transformative role over a millennium, from fears of famine and war to anxieties over God, disease, technology and financial crises. In a landmark global history that ranges from the Black Death to the terror of the French Revolution, the AIDS pandemic to climate change, Peckham reveals how fear made us who we are, and how understanding it can equip us to face the future. [Paperback]
”Brilliant and breathtakingly wide-ranging. As Peckham shows in gripping and beautifully written detail, fear isn't just the stock in trade of wicked despots; in some circumstances it can be turned to positive effect. Could it, now, be that fear is our friend? Read Peckham and judge for yourself.” —Simon Schama

The Lantern of Lost Memories by Sanaka Hiirage $25
In Mr Hirasaka's cosy photography studio in the mountains between this world and the next, someone is waking up as if from a dream. There is a stack of photos on their lap, one for every day of their life, and now they must choose the pictures that capture their most treasured memories, which will be placed in a beautiful lantern. Once completed, it will be set spinning, and their cherished moments will flash before their eyes, guiding them to another world. But, like our most thumbed-over photographs, our favourite memories fade with age. So each visitor to the studio has the chance to choose one day to return to and photograph afresh. Each has a treasured story to tell, from the old woman rebuilding a community in Tokyo after a disaster, to the flawed Yakuza man who remembers a time when he was kind, and a strong child who is fighting to survive. [Paperback]

Her Secret Service: The forgotten women of British intelligence by Claire Hubbard-Hall $40
Since the inception of the Secret Service Bureau back in 1909, women have worked at the very heart of British secret intelligence, yet their contributions have been all but written out of history. Now, drawing on private and previously-classified documents, historian Claire Hubbard-Hall brings their gripping true stories to life. From encoding orders and decrypting enemy messages to penning propaganda and infiltrating organisations, the women of British intelligence played a pivotal role in both the First and Second World Wars. Prepare to meet the true custodians of Britain's military secrets, from Kathleen Pettigrew, personal assistant to the Chief of MI6 Stewart Menzies, who late in life declared 'I was Miss Moneypenny, but with more power', to Jane Archer, the very first female MI5 officer who raised suspicions about the Soviet spy Kim Philby long before he was officially unmasked, and Winifred Spink, the first female officer ever sent to Russia in 1916. Hubbard-Hall rescues these silenced voices and those of many other fascinating women from obscurity to provide a definitive account of women's contributions to the history of the intelligence services.

The First Friend by Malcolm Knox $38
Even the worst person has a best friend. A chilling black comedy, The First Friend imagines a gangster mob in charge of a global superpower. The Soviet Union 1938: Lavrentiy Beria, 'The Boss' of the Georgian republic, nervously prepares a Black Sea resort for a visit from 'The Boss of Bosses', his fellow Georgian Josef Stalin. Under escalating pressure from enemies and allies alike, Beria slowly but surely descends into murderous paranoia. By his side is Vasil Murtov, Beria's closest friend since childhood. But to be a witness is dangerous; Murtov must protect his family and play his own game of survival while remaining outwardly loyal to an increasingly unstable Beria. The tension ramps up as Stalin's visit and the inevitable bloodbath approaches. Is Murtov playing Beria, or is he being played? The First Friend is a novel in a time of autocrats, where reality is a fiction created by those who rule. It is at once a satire and a thriller, a survivor's tale in which a father has to walk a tightrope every day to save his family from a monster and a monstrous society. Where safety lies in following official fictions, is a truthful life the ultimate risk?
”Crackling with energy, irony, wit and terror, The First Friend is a timely and cautionary reminder of the stifling, murderous logic of strong man politics.” —Tim Winton
“Razor-sharp, wildly imaginative, bold, brilliant and often as dark as the inside of a coffin. Another triumph from a truly extraordinary writer.” —Trent Dalton
“The First Friend is not just a cracking read, it's a masterclass in Machiavellian manoeuvres. This is a magnificent piece of gallows humour, bitingly funny and horrifyingly grim at the same time.” —Kate McClymont
”Bleak, intelligent and fearsomely well-researched — I kept telling myself I shouldn't laugh, but couldn't help it.” —Michael Robotham

War of the Worlds, A graphic novel by H.G. Wells and Chris Mould $45
In 1894, across space, this earth was being watched by envious eyes, and plans were being drawn up for an attack. What seems to be a meteorite falls to earth, but from the debris, unfolds terrifying alien life. A young man called Leon records his observations and sketches. “Those who have never seen Martian life can scarcely imagine the horror,” he tells us. “Even at this first glimpse, I was overcome with fear and dread. The earth stood still as we watched, almost unable to move.” As war descends, Leon and his scientist wife race against the clock to discover the science behind these Martians in the hopes of ending this war of all worlds. [Hardback]
”The exquisite, detailed illustrations convey as much emotion as do words in this remarkable re-imagining of War of the Worlds.” —Susan Price
”An absolute masterpiece.” —Kieran Larwood

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A bit on the Side: Reflections on what makes life delicious by Virginia Trioli $40
Virginia Trioli knows that enduring joy is often found not in the big moments but in the small. And as a dedicated, almost obsessive, foodie, she believes that food gives us the perfect metaphor for how to seek, recognise and devour the real flavour of life. When the main course is heavy going or unappetising, the 'bits on the side' make life really delicious. The sweet and the sour; the salty, the bitter - our small, meaningful selections are the ones that make life glorious. A Bit on the Side is an ode to joy, filled with wisdom, stories, memories and recipes. [Hardback]
”A warmly engaging epicurean masterclass on the pleasures of companionship and the table.” —Christos Tsiolkas

• Life’s little side dishes.

When the Bulbul Stopped Singing: A diary of Ramallah under siege by Raja Shehadeh $25
The Israeli army invaded Palestine in April 2002 and held many of the principal towns, including Ramallah, under siege. A tank stood at the end of Raja Shehadeh's road; there were Israeli soldiers on the rooftops; his mother was sick, and he couldn't cross town to help her. Shehadeh kept a diary. This is an account of what it is like to be under siege: the terror, the frustrations, as well as the moments of poignant relief and reflection on the crisis gripping both Palestine and Israel. [New paperback edition]
”In his moral clarity and baring of the heart, his self-questioning and insistence on focusing on the experience of the individual within the storms of nationalist myth and hubris, Shehadeh recalls writers such as Ghassan Kanafani and Primo Levi.” —New York Times
”A buoy in a sea of bleakness.” —Rachel Kushner

Scandinavian Design by Charlotte and Peter Fiell $55
Scandinavia is world famous for its inimitable, democratic designs which bridge the gap between craftsmanship and industrial production, organic forms and everyday functionality. This all-you-need guide includes a detailed look at Scandinavian furniture, glass, ceramics, textiles, jewelry, metalware, and product design from 1900 to the present day, with in-depth entries on 125 designers and design-led companies. Featured designers and designer-led companies include Verner Panton, Arne Jacobsen, Alvar Aalto, Timo Sarpaneva, Hans Wegner, Tapio Wirkkala, Stig Lindberg, Finn Juhl, Märta Måås-Fjetterström, Arnold Madsen, Barbro Nilsson, Fritz Hansen, Artek, Le Klint, Gustavsberg, Iittala, Fiskars, Orrefors, Royal Copenhagen, Holmegaard, Arabia, Marimekko, and Georg Jensen. [New hardback edition]

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Songlight by Moira Buffini $33
They are hunting those who shine. Don't be deceived by Northaven's prettiness, by its white-wash houses and its sea views. In truth, many of its townsfolk are ruthless hunters. They revile those who have developed songlight, the ability to connect telepathically with others. Anyone found with this sixth sense is caught, persecuted and denounced. Welcome to the future. Lark has lived in grave danger ever since her own songlight emerged. Then she encounters a young woman in peril, from a city far away. An extraordinary bond is forged. But who can they trust? The world is at war. Those with songlight are pawns in a dangerous game of politics. Friends, neighbours, family are quick to turn on each other. When power is everything, how will they survive? An impressive start to a new YA series. [Paperback]

New books for a new year! Start as you mean to go on.
These books have just arrived — we can have your copies ready to collect from our door or dispatched by overnight courier.

The Sleepers by Sophie Calle (translated from French by Emma Ramadan) $110
In one of Sophie Calle's first artistic experiments, she invited friends, acquaintances and strangers to sleep in her bed. Twenty-seven people agreed, among them a baker, a babysitter, an actor, a journalist, a seamstress, a trumpet player and three painters. Calle photographed them awake and asleep, secretly recording any private conversations once the door closed. She served each a meal, and, if they agreed, she subjected them to a questionnaire that probed their personal predilections, habits and dreams as well as their interpretations of the act of sleeping in her bed: a curiosity, a game, an artwork, or — as Calle intended it — a job. The result, comprising her first exhibition in 1979, was a grid of 198 photographs and short texts. Unlike the original installation, this artist's book version of The Sleepers contains not only all the photographs and captions but also her engrossing, novellalike narrative, untranslated until now. From the single, liminal mise-en-scène of her bedroom, Calle reports in text and photos, as if in real time, as sleepers arrive, talk, sleep, eat and leave. Their acute and sometimes startling, sometimes endearing particularities merge into something almost like an eight-day-long dream. Many seeds of Calle's subsequent works are embedded in The Sleepers: her exacting and transgressive methods of investigation, her cultivation of intimacy and remove, and her unrelenting curiosity. In this work, as she observes the sleepers, they observe her too — with reciprocal candour. [Clothbound]

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• The art of watching and the art of being watched.

• Fourth sleeper.

Rosarita by Anita Desai $30
A young student sits on a bench in a park in San Miguel, Mexico. Bonita is away from her home in India to learn Spanish. She is alone, somewhere she has no connection to. It is bliss. And then a woman approaches her. The woman claims to recognize Bonita because she is the spitting image of her mother, who made the same journey from India to Mexico as a young artist. No, says Bonita, my mother didn't paint. She never travelled to Mexico. But this strange woman insists, and so Bonita follows her. Into a story where Bonita and her mother will move apart and come together, and where the past threatens to flood the present, or re-write it.
”It's been over a decade since Anita Desai's last work of fiction. She's a writer I've loved since my adolescence, whose sharp observations and elegant sentences I admire increasingly as the years go on. Every new work from her is a gift.” —Kamila Shamsie
”To compare Anita Desai's fiction with that of Chekhov or the short stories of Tolstoy is not extravagant; it is entirely warranted.” —Irish Times
”Anita Desai is one of the most brilliant and subtle writers ever to have described the meeting of eastern and western culture.” —Alison Lurie

Maranga! Maranga! Maranga! The Call to Māori History: Essays From Te Pouhere Kōrero, 1999—2023 edited by Aroha Harris and Melissa Matutina Williams $50
Leading Māori scholars, researchers and writers of history come together in this landmark collection of essays celebrating three decades of Indigenous scholarship. Examining histories that span from moko kauae and reo Māori to the myth of Māori privilege, these essays explore subjects that include the teaching of iwi history, the role of memory and storytelling, and the integration of mātauranga within historical scholarship. Wide-ranging in both form and scope, Maranga! Maranga! Maranga! presents transformative approaches to history and makes a significant contribution to our contemporary understanding of Aotearoa’s past.
Contributors: Alice Te Punga Somerville, Arini Loader, Aroha Harris (editor), Basil Keane, Danny Keenan, Hirini Kaa, Kealani Cook, Megan Pōtiki, Melissa Matutina Williams (editor), Nēpia Mahuika, Pareputiputi Nuku, Peter Meihana, Rachel Buchanan, Rawinia Higgins, Rawiri Te Maire Tau, Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal, Tiopira McDowell.

Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zi (translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King) $48
May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She's been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear. Soon a Taiwanese woman — who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name — is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko's travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It's only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the ‘something’ is. Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan's highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.
Winner of the US 2024 National Book Award for Fiction in Translation.
”Reading the book is like peeling an onion: the smell is at first undetectable; but with each layer you peel, the smell gets more intoxicating, pungent, intense, and at the very end, it brings tears to your eyes." —Christina Ng

• Why this Taiwanese book is masquerading as a rediscovered Japanese novel.

Stranger in My Own Land: Palestine, Israel, and one family’s story of home by Fida Jiryis $40
After the 1993 Oslo Accords, a handful of Palestinians were allowed to return to their hometowns in Israel. Fida Jiryis and her family were among them. This beautifully written memoir tells the story of their journey, which is also the story of Palestine, from the Nakba to the present-a seventy-five-year tale of conflict, exodus, occupation, return and search for belonging, seen through the eyes of one writer and her family. Jiryis reveals how her father, Sabri, a PLO leader and advisor to Yasser Arafat, chose exile in 1970 because of his work. Her own childhood in Beirut was shaped by regional tensions, the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Israeli invasion, which led to her mother's death. Thirteen years later, the family made an unexpected return to Fassouta, their village of origin in the Galilee. But Fida, twenty-two years old and full of love for her country, had no idea what she was getting into. Stranger in My Own Land chronicles a desperate, at times surreal, search for a homeland between the Galilee, the West Bank and the diaspora, asking difficult questions about what the right of return would mean for the millions of Palestinians waiting to come 'home'.
”Fida Jiryis's story, which at times reads like a thriller, has a unique trajectory which she negotiates with intelligence and eloquence, simultaneously illuminating profound and painful subjects about home and belonging.” —Raja Shehadeh

• No place like home.

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller $38
December 1962, the West Country. In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills. In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage. Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He's been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that's already faltering. There is affection — if not always love — in both homes: these are marriages that still hold some promise. But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards — a true winter, the harshest in living memory — the two couples find their lives beginning to unravel. Where do you hide when you can't leave home? And where, in a frozen world, could you run to?
”Andrew Miller is known for acute and unnerving historical novels such as Pure and Ingenious Pain, but in The Land in Winter, a study of two young marriages during England's 1962-3 Big Freeze, he may have written his best book yet. The shadows of madness, and of the second world war, extend into a world on the cusp of enormous social change. Miller conjures his characters and their times with a subtle brilliance that is not to be missed.” —Guardian

Reinventing Love: How the Patriarchy sabotages heterosexual relations by Mona Chollet $53
As feminist principles have taken wider hold in society, and basic ideas about equality for women can seem a given, many women still struggle in one of the most important areas of life: love. Whether it's finding a partner, seeking a commitment from one, or struggling in a relationship that is unfulfilling or even potentially abusive, women still find that deeply-engrained notions of gender and behavior can be obstacles to a healthy, loving relationship. In her new book, acclaimed French feminist Mona Chollet tackles some of these long-held and pervasive ideas that remain stumbling blocks for many women in heterosexual relationships. Drawing from popular culture, politics, and literature, Reinventing Love provides a provocative, accessible look at how heterosexual relationships can improve and evolve under a feminist lens. [Hardback]
"In this invigorating study Chollet makes a bold case that love itself is warped by patriarchy and in need of correction. Chollet's prose is both easygoing and erudite, maintaining an effortless flow as she seamlessly folds new thinkers and examples (from bell hooks and Simone de Beauvoir to Sally Rooney and Princess Leia) into her ever-expanding analysis. It's a must-read." —Publishers Weekly

• Navigating romance.

Leaving the Twentieth Century: Situationist Revolutions by McKenzie Wark $47
The Situationist International, who came to the fore during the Paris tumults of 1968, were revolutionary thinkers who continue to influence movements and philosophy into the 21st century.  Mostly known for Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle as well as other key texts, the group was in fact hugely diverse and radical. In Leaving The 20th Century McKenzie Wark explores the full range of the movement.  At once an extraordinary counter history of radical praxis and a call to arms in the age of financial crisis and the resurgence of the streets,  Wark traces the group's development from the bohemian Paris of the '50s to the explosive days of May '68, Wark's take on the Situationists is biographically and historically rich, presenting the group as an ensemble creation, rather than the brainchild and dominion of its most famous member, Guy Debord. Roaming through Europe and the lives of those who made up the movement — including Constant, Asger Jorn, Michèle Bernstein, Alex Trocchi and Jacqueline De Jong — Wark uncovers an international movement riven with conflicting passions.  She also follows the narrative beyond 1968 to show what happened after the movement disintegration exploring the lives and ideas of T.J. Clark, the Fourierist utopia of Raoul Vaneigem, René Vienet's earthy situationist cinema, Gianfranco Sangunetti's pranking of the Italian ruling class, Alice-Becker Ho's account of the anonymous language of the Romany, Guy Debord's late films and his surprising work as a game designer.

Understanding Brecht by Walter Benjamin $30
The relationship between philosopher-critic Walter Benjamin and playwright-poet Bertolt Brecht was both a lasting friendship and a powerful intellectual partnership. Having met in the late 1920s in Germany, Benjamin and Brecht both independently minded Marxists with a deep understanding of and passionate commitment to the emancipatory potential of cultural practices continued to discuss, argue and correspond on topics as varied as Fascism and the work of Franz Kafka. Faced by the onset of the 'midnight of the century', with the Nazi subversion of the Weimar Republic in Germany and the Stalinist degeneration of the revolution in Russia, both men, in their own way, strove to keep alive the tradition of dialectical critique of the existing order and radical intervention in the world to transform it. In Understanding Brecht we find collected together Benjamin's most sensitive and probing writing on the dramatic and poetic work of his friend and tutor. Stimulated by Brecht's oeuvre and theorising his particular dramatic techniques such as the famous 'estrangement effect' Benjamin developed his own ideas about the role of art and the artist in crisis-ridden society. This volume contains Benjamin's introductions to Brecht's theory of epic theatre and close textual analyses of twelve poems by Brecht (printed in translation here) which exemplify Benjamin's insistence that literary form and content are indivisible. Elsewhere Benjamin discusses the plays The Mother, Terror and Misery of the Third Reich, and The Threepenny Opera, digressing for some general remarks on Marx and satire. Here we also find Benjamin's essay 'The Author as Producer' as well as an extract from his diaries that records the intense conversations held in the late 1930s in Denmark (Brecht's place of exile) between the two most important cultural theorists of the twentieth century. In these discussions, the two men talked of subjects as diverse as the work of Franz Kafka, the unfolding Soviet Trials, and the problems of literary work on the edge of international war.

• No idlers in the Garden of Chess.

Eileen: The making of George Orwell by Sylvia Topp $33
In 1934, Eileen O'Shaughnessy’s futuristic poem, ‘End of the Century, 1984’, was published. The next year, she would meet George Orwell, then known as Eric Blair, at a party. ‘Now that is the kind of girl I would like to marry!’ he remarked that night. Years later, Orwell would name his greatest work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, in homage to the memory of Eileen, the woman who shaped his life and his art in ways that have never been acknowledged by history, until now. From the time they spent in a tiny village tending goats and chickens, through the Spanish Civil War, to the couple’s narrow escape from the destruction of their London flat during a German bombing raid, and their adoption of a baby boy, Eileen is the first account of the Blairs’ nine-year marriage. It is also a vivid picture of bohemianism, political engagement, and sexual freedom in the 1930s and ‘40s. Through impressive depth of research, illustrated throughout with photos and images from the time, this captivating and inspiring biography offers a completely new perspective on Orwell himself, and most importantly tells the life story of an exceptional woman who has been unjustly overlooked.

• See also Anna Funder’s Wifedom.

Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany $25
Babel-17 is a language that can be used as a weapon by enemy invaders during an interstellar war. Chinese starship captain, linguist, poet, and telepath Rydra Wong begins to learn the language. After several attacks have been made by the invaders who speak Babel-17, she soon realizes the potential of the language to change one's thought process and provide speakers with certain powers, and she is recruited by her government to discover how the enemy is infiltrating and sabotaging strategic sites. As her understanding of the language increases, she is able to predict where the next attack will be and gathers a team to go to the predicted location of the attack. Initially Babel-17 is thought to be a code used by enemy agents. Rydra realizes it is a language in and of itself. During their mission, Rydra realizes there is a traitor aboard the ship. After escaping the predicted attack, Rydra and her crew are captured by a pirate ship called a shadow-ship. While on the ship, Rydra meets a man called "The Butcher" who does not use the word "I". After teaching The Butcher the word "I," Rydra, The Butcher, and her crew leave the ship during a battle. Rydra and The Butcher, who already unknowingly spoke Babel-17, are rescued but seem incredibly altered. While their bodies are present, their minds seem elsewhere. Their ability to speak Babel-17 has altered their minds and we learn that it was Rydra who was the traitor on board the ship. Babel-17 is discovered to be a language that not only helps you understand the enemy, but become the enemy. The novel deals with several issues related to the peculiarities of language, how conditions of life shape the formation of words and meaning, and how words themselves can shape the actions of people.

• A primer on linguistic relativity.

The Outsider by Albert Camus and Ryota Kurumado $40
A manga version of Camus’ existentialist classic. When his mother dies, Mersault refuses to show his emotions simply to satisfy the expectations of others. And when he commits a random act of violence on a sun-drenched beach near Algiers, his lack of remorse compounds his guilt in the eyes of society and the law. Yet he is as much a victim as a criminal.

• Look inside.

Darwin and the Art of Botany: Observations on the curious world of plants by James T. Costa and Bobbi Angell $65
Charles Darwin is best known for his work on the evolution of animals, but in fact a large part of his contribution to the natural sciences is focused on plants. His observations are crucial to our modern understanding of everything from the amazing pollination process of orchids to the way that vines climb. Darwin and the Art of Botany collects writings from six often overlooked texts devoted entirely to plants, and pairs each excerpt with beautiful botanical art from the library at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation. [Hardback]

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The Bridge Between Worlds: A brief history of connection by Gavin Francis $45
In The Bridge Between Worlds, Gavin Francis explores bridges old and new, human-made or natural, musing on the view from the bridge through history, geopolitics, psychology and literature. Against the ever-growing obsession with national borders in politics and the media, bridges — whether seen as functional, emblematic or aesthetical — both unite and divide us. From Ponte Sant'Angelo to Brooklyn Bridge, from Victoria Falls Bridge to Tavanasa Bridge, The Bridge Between Worlds reflects on the bridges between nations and individuals, how they act as frontiers and reflects on the lives of people either side of the border. [Hardback]
”Gavin Francis has written an exquisite book on a human structure we usually take for granted. This is a fascinating and delightful read.” —Alexander McCall Smith"
”It's rare and interesting to see bridges explored both as metaphors and as structures. The Bridge Between Worlds is a valuable reminder that the physical environment we build has immense social and cultural consequences.” —Sarah Moss

Yours from the Tower by Sally Nicholls $23
Three very different young women make their way through late Victorian England — can they each find true happiness? Tirzah, Sophia and Polly are best friends who’ve left boarding school and gone back to very different lives. Polly is teaching in an orphanage. Sophia is looking for a rich husband at the London Season. And Tirzah is stuck acting as an unpaid companion to her grandmother. In a series of letters, they share their hopes, their frustrations, their dramas, and their romances. Can these three very different young women find happiness?
"Building on her previous historical fiction exploring the restrictions on women in society, the award-winning, always-excellent Sally Nicholls moves to the late Victorian era. This immersive, uplifting book is an absolute delight" —Irish Times
"The novel is heart-warming, intelligent and exciting, and thoroughly recommended for girls (and boys) hovering on the cusp of adolescence. I loved it." —Philip Womack

Freedom: Memoirs, 1954—2021 by Angela Merkel $55
For sixteen years, Angela Merkel was Chancellor of Germany. She led the country through numerous crises, shaping both Germany and international politics with her actions and attitudes. In her memoirs, co-written with her long-time political advisor Beate Baumann, she reflects on her life in two German states — thirty-five years in the German Democratic Republic, thirty-five years in reunited Germany. More intimately than ever before, she talks about her childhood, youth, and studies in the GDR and the dramatic year of 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and her political life began. She also shares recollections and insights from her meetings and conversations with the world's most powerful people. Discussing significant national, European, and international turning points, she shows how the decisions were made that shaped our times. The book offers a unique insight into the inner workings of power.

An Uneasy Inheritance: My family and other radicals by Polly Toynbee $30
While for generations Polly Toynbee's ancestors have been committed left-wing rabble-rousers railing against injustice, they could never claim to be working class, settling instead for the prosperous life of academia or journalism enjoyed by their own forebears. So where does that leave their ideals of class equality? Through a colourful, entertaining examination of her own family — which in addition to her writer father Philip and her historian grandfather Arnold contains everyone from the Glenconners to Jessica Mitford to Bertrand Russell, and features ancestral home Castle Howard as a backdrop — Toynbee explores the myth of mobility, the guilt of privilege, and asks for a truly honest conversation about class in Britain.[Now in paperback]
”Fascinating. Toynbee has spent a lifetime highlighting the need for social change, and her book fizzes with that continuing purpose.” —Spectator

The Passenger: South Korea $40
Eighty years ago, at the end of a devastating fratricidal war, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world, completely dependent on the United States for security and development. Today it's the tenth economy in the world, dynamic and innovative, a lively participatory democracy that nevertheless simultaneously shows both its vulnerability and its strength (as recent news has demonstrated). "Hallyu" — the Korean wave of contemporary entertainment — has reached every corner of the world. This rapid, astonishing transformation inevitably brought with it rifts and contradictions. If global youth look at Korea as previous generations looked at Hollywood and New York, young Koreans, on the other hand, view it as "Hell Joseon": an aging country, an economic system dominated by powerful families, with a fiercely competitive education system, a wide generational gap, and, at the centre of it all, the role of women — one of the keys that The Passenger has chosen to decipher a complex, fascinating country, central to the dynamics of the contemporary world, het little understood. The Passenger’s mix of articles, reportage and photography give insight and background to contemporary issues.

• Look inside.

• Other places visited by The Passenger.

Get ready for the reading season! We can dispatch your books by overnight courier — or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

What Kingdom by Fine Gråbøl (translated from Danish by Martin Aitken) $42
Fine Gråbøl’s narrator dreams of furniture flickering to life. A chair that greets you, shiny tiles that follow a peculiar grammar, or a bookshelf that can be thrown on like an apron. Obsessed with the way items rise up out of their thingness, assuming personalities and private motives, the nameless narrator lives in a temporary psychiatric care unit for young people in Copenhagen. This is a place where you ‘wake up and realise that what’s going to happen has no name’, and days are spent practicing routines that take on the urgency of survival — peeling a carrot, drinking prune juice, listening through thin walls. In prose that demands that you slow down, expertly translated by Martin Aitken, What Kingdom charts a wisdom of its own.
”Gråbøl’s eye is unsparing and convincing, her prose vivid and alive. The narrator doesn’t deny that she needs help, but at the same time, she has questions: Why doesn’t anyone wonder about the line between trauma and treatment?... about the relationship between compulsion and compliance?... care and abuse?... between surrender and obliteration?”   —Kirkus
”It has been a privilege to read this extraordinary work. The unnamed narrator’s absolute vulnerability is transformed into compelling beauty by the authority and precision of her language. I love the pace of the writing. How, after a passage in which the raw pain and hurt break through into anger, a sentence of clear transcendent poetry can follow. The perfect emotional control is astonishing. It is a very exposing, brave book. It lays open the narrator’s frustration at her inability to be heard, to be considered, within the cold strictures of the institution where she passes her days: ‘the basis of our lives is powerlessness plus capitulation.’ I was riveted by the attention to detail – it demands our attention, in return; the objective way the narrator perceives the confined world she lives in, without a trace of self-pity, compels us to know she is speaking the truth. There is an urgent need for the system to be changed, for an individual to be listened to, not just dealt with. This book makes us listen.   —Celia Paul
”In this striking novel, Gråbøl documents daily life in a psychiatric ward for young people in Denmark. Alternately lucid and ecstatic, the novel touches on the welfare system’s focus on bottom lines — ‘benefit rates and supplementary payments, diagnoses and deductibles’ — and challenges the perception of mental illness as an invisible affliction. Gråbøl’s portrait of the residents’ and caretakers’ interconnected lives constructs a communal existence out of individual pain.” —The New Yorker

• United in torment.

The White Flower by Charlotte Beeston $40
In contemporary and Edwardian London, two women are grieving the loss of a loved one. Stella, turning thirty, is increasingly isolated after her mother died of cancer; Julia, surrounded by friends, is longing for solitude as she mourns her daughter, a young photographer who died after her return from an expedition in the jungle of Sri Lanka. Mysteriously connected across time and space by a haunting image, each explores, in her own voice, the complexities of the mother-daughter bond and family estrangement. From the banks of the Thames in present-day south-east London to the coast of East Devon and the Sri Lankan rainforest a hundred years earlier, Charlotte Beeston's delicate debut novel moves with aching lucidity between tenderness and raw emotion. Charting the ebb and flow of the grieving process, The White Flower captures the impact of loneliness on the psyche and the permanence of love, art and friendship.
”Sensitively and tenderly written, The White Flower performs the mother-daughter bond as a loving tug-of-war between present and past, forgetting and remembering, loss and joyful reparation.” —Michèle Roberts
”Charlotte Beeston's gorgeous debut novel, The White Flower, is a wonderfully intelligent and sensitively handled portrait of grief, how it leaves us obsessively circling the same moments, scenes and images. Literary in the best sense (language matters) the novel is full of incidental pleasures and deserves to be widely read.” —Andrew Miller

• Beauty out of grief.

The Book Against Death by Elias Canetti (translated from German by Peter Filkins) $30
In 1937, Elias Canetti began collecting notes for the project that “by definition, he could never live to complete”, as translator Peter Filkins writes in his afterword. The Book Against Death is the work of a lifetime: a collection of Canetti's aphorisms, diatribes, musings and commentaries on and against death — published in English for the first time — interposed with material from philosophers and writers including Goethe, Walter Benjamin and Robert Walser. This major work by the 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature Laureate who dies in 1994 is a reckoning with the inevitability of death and with its politicisation, evoking despair at the loss of loved ones and the impossibility of facing one's own death, while considering death as a force exerting itself upon culture and fiercely protesting the mass deaths incurred during war and the willingness of the despot to wield death as power.
”Rarely has anyone been so at home in the mind, with so little ambivalence. Far from being a source of complacency, this attitude is Canetti's great strength. He is someone who has felt in a profound way the responsibility of words. His work eloquently and nobly defends tension, exertion, moral and amoral seriousness.” —Susan Sontag

• Those who end life and those whose lives end.

• A metaphysical mistake.

Bound: A memoir of making and remaking by Maddie Ballard, illustrated by Emma Dai'an Wright $34
In a new home, relationships shift, and ties fray. Bound: A Memoir of Making and Remaking is a collection of essays about sewing and knowing who you are. Each chapter in this sewist's diary charts the crafting of a different garment. From a lining embroidered with the Cantonese names of her female ancestors to a dressing gown holding the body of a beloved friend, Maddie Ballard navigates love, personal connections, and self-care, drafting her own patterns for ways of living.
“I cut more carefully than usual, bothering to iron first, and lay the fabric out on the flat tiles of the bathroom rather than just the carpet. I trace the pattern off my own shop-bought dressing gown, then add a back pleat so it will float behind her and shorten the sleeves a little so they won’t trail when she’s making her coffee. I cut tiny rectangles of fabric to make belt loops and a loop for hanging. I cut vast pockets, for holding snacks and notebooks and her phone when she needs to flip the pancakes. I remember all the little details I would skim past if I were making this for myself. I stitch care into every seam.”
Maddie Ballard is a writer and editor of mixed Chinese heritage. Born in Syracuse, New York, she grew up in Aotearoa New Zealand and currently lives in Wellington.

The Missing Thread: A new history of the Ancient World through the women who shaped it by Daisy Dunn $40
Spanning 3,000 years, from the birth of Minoan Crete to the death of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in Rome, this new history of the ancient world is told through the lives of women. These pages present Enheduanna, the earliest named author; the poet Sappho; and Telesilla, who defended her city from attack. Here is Artemisia, sole female commander in the Graeco-Persian Wars, and Cynisca, the first female victor at the Olympic Games. Cleopatra may be the more famous, but Fulvia, Mark Antony's wife, fought a war on his behalf. Many other women remain nameless but integral. Through new examination of the sources combined with vivid storytelling Daisy Dunn shows us the ancient world through fresh eyes, and introduces us to an incredible cast of ancient women, weavers of an entire world.
”A brilliant concept, executed with enviable elegance.” —Lucy Worsley
”I loved this radical new take on the familiar stories of the ancient world we all think we know but clearly only know the half. Dunn succeeds magnificently not in erasing men but in bringing out of the shadows some extraordinary women and giving them much more than merely reflected glory. The book sparkles with fresh ideas.” —Anne Sebba

Butter by Asako Yuzuki $43
Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation's imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can't resist writing back. Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night and survives on cheap, convenience store fare, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought? Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, ‘The Konkatsu Killer’, Asako Yuzuki's Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.
”An unputdownable, breathtakingly original novel. I will be spoon-feeding Butter to every woman I know.'“ —Erin Kelly
”Exuberant, indulgent romp of a novel. Butter is a full-fat, Michelin-starred treat that moves seamlessly between an Angry Young Woman narrative and an engrossing detective drama and back again. Yuzuki has crafted an almost Dickensian cast of fleshy characters, with just as many surprise connections. Let this book bring you under its spell.” —The Sunday Times

The Enemy Within: The Human cost of state surveillance in Aotearoa/New Zealand by Maire Leadbeater $40
Like so many others involved in social justice movements, author Maire Leadbeater was subjected to state surveillance during a long life of activism. With the help of archival material, released SIS files, and other formerly secret material, she has been able to examine the depth of state intrusion into the lives of individuals and movements that challenged the social order. An adverse security record not only harmed those directly affected but also denied the community the valuable contributions of highly talented individuals, many of whose stories feature here. This book explodes the myth that our major intelligence agencies, the SIS and the GCSB, work in our interests. They were set up to work closely with our traditional allies and the ‘Five Eyes’ network. Instead of protecting us from foreign interference, they have compromised our sovereignty and our ability to pursue an independent foreign and defence policy. Tellingly, on the few occasions when New Zealand has experienced terrorist crime, it has been the police working openly and accountably who have taken the key role. The Enemy Within mounts the argument that unaccountable intelligence agencies harm our democracy and should be disbanded, and their work left to the police.

Tropical Modernism: Architecture and independence by Christopher Turner $66
Emerging in the death throes of colonial rule, the story of Tropical Modernism is one of politics and power, decolonisation and defiance.  Its leading proponents, British architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, adapted a utopian Bauhaus-derived Modernist aesthetic to hot and humid conditions.  After Independence, Tropical Modernism was championed by leaders including Jawaharlal Nehru and Kwame Nkrumah as a symbol of freedom, progressiveness and internationalism in monumental projects such as Chandigarh in Punjab planned by Le Corbusier and Black Star Square in Accra designed by Victor Adegbite. Scrutinising the colonial narratives surrounding Tropical Modernism, and foregrounding the experience of African and Indian practitioners, this book reassesses an architectural style which has increasing relevance in today's changing climate.

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The Burrow by Melanie Cheng $38
Amy, Jin and Lucie are leading isolated lives in their partially renovated, inner city home. They are not happy, but they are also terrified of change. When they buy a pet rabbit for Lucie, and then Amy's mother, Pauline, comes to stay, the family is forced to confront long-buried secrets. Will opening their hearts to the rabbit help them to heal or only invite further tragedy?
”How rare, this delicacy-this calm, sweet, desolated wisdom.” —Helen Garner
”Melanie Cheng's The Burrow is stupendously good. This is a novel that deals with the crucial elements of our lives — love and family and grief and guilt and responsibility — and does so without a whiff of sentimentality and does so fearlessly. As in real life, the characters keep surprising us. The power of The Burrow is in the unflinching yet empathetic command of the novelist, in the candid beauty of the language. It's a remarkable work, nuanced and human and adult.” —Christos Tsiolkas

In a Flight of Starlings: The wonder of complex systems by Giorgio Parisi $30
The world is shaped by complexity. In this enlightening book, Nobel Prize winner Giorgio Parisi guides us through his unorthodox yet exhilarating work to show us how. It all starts with investigating the principles of physics by observing the sophisticated flight patterns of starlings. Studying the movements of these birds, he has realised, proves an illuminating way into understanding complex systems of all kinds — collections of everything from atoms to planets to other animals like ourselves. Along the way, Parisi reflects on the lessons he's taken from a life in pursuit of scientific truth — the importance of serendipity to the discovery of new ideas, the surprising kinship between physics and other fields of study and the value of science to a thriving society. In so doing, he removes the practice of science from the confines of the laboratory and brings it into the real world. Complexity is all around us — from climate to finance to biology, it offers a unique way of finding order in chaos.

The Forbidden Garden of Leningrad: A true story of science and sacrifice in a city under siege by Simon Parkin $40
In the summer of 1941, German troops surrounded the Russian city of Leningrad and began the longest blockade in recorded history. By the most conservative estimates, the siege would claim the lives of three-quarters of a million people. Most died of starvation. At the centre of the embattled city stood a converted palace that housed the greatest living plant library ever amassed — the world's first seed bank. After attempts to evacuate the collection failed, and as supplies dwindled, the scientists responsible faced a terrible decision: should they distribute the specimens to the starving population, or preserve them in the hope that they held the key to ending global famine? Drawing on previously unseen sources, The Forbidden Garden tells the remarkable and moving story of the botanists who remained at the Plant Institute during the darkest days of the siege, risking their lives in the name of science.

• Risking lives.

National Dish: Around the world in search of food, history, and the meaning of home by Anya von Bremzen $28
Anya von Bremzen sets out to investigate the eternal cliche that 'we are what we eat'. Her journey takes her from Paris to Tokyo, from Seville, Oaxaca and Naples to Istanbul. She probes the decline of France's pot-au-feu in the age of globalisation, the stratospheric rise of ramen, the legend of pizza, the postcolonial paradoxes of Mexico's mole, the community essence of tapas, and the complex legacy of multiculturalism in a meze feast. Finally she returns to her home in Queens, New York, for a bowl of Ukrainian borsch - a dish which has never felt more loaded, or more precious. As each nation's social and political identity is explored, so too is its palate.
 “A fast-paced, entertaining travelogue, peppered with compact history lessons that reveal the surprising ways dishes become iconic.” New York Times
”This voyage into culinary myth-making and identity is essential reading. Its breadth of scope and scholarship is conveyed with such engaging wit. I couldn't love it more.” —Nigella Lawson
”This dazzlingly intelligent examination of how foods become national symbols is so enlightening as well as so much fun to read. Von Bremzen is a superb describer of flavours and textures — but she also understands that food is never just about food.” —Bee Wilson
”For all its dry wit and vivid descriptions of puttanesca and tortillas, this is a serious book - a skilful blend of academic research and lived experience. It's a sparklingly intelligent examination of, and a meditation on, the interplay of cooking and identity.” —Spectator

Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki $28
In this melancholy and delicately written Japanese classic, a student befriends a reclusive elder at a beach resort, who he calls Sensei. As the two grow closer, Sensei remains unwilling to share the inner pain that has consumed his life and the shameful secret behind his monthly pilgrimages to a Tokyo cemetery. But when the student writes to Sensei after his graduation to seek out advice, the past rushes unbidden to the surface, and Sensei at last reveals the tale of romantic betrayal and unresolved guilt that led to his withdrawal from the world. Set at the end of the Meiji era and rife with subtle, psychological insight, Kokoro is one of Japan's bestselling novels of all time and a meditation on the essence of loneliness.
”Sōseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature.” —Haruki Murukami
”Kokoro is exactly what you would ask a novel to be. Sōseki manipulates every detail with the same thrilling mastery'' - Spectator

Every Man for Himself and God Against All by Werner Herzog $28
Werner Herzog is the undisputed master of extreme cinema — building an opera house in the middle of the jungle; walking from Munich to Paris in the dead of winter; descending into an active volcano; living in the wilderness among grizzly bears — he has always been intrigued by the extremes of human experience.  From his early movies to his later documentaries, he has made a career out of exploring the boundaries of human endurance — what we are capable of in exceptional circumstances and what these situations reveal about who we really are. But these are not just great cinematic themes. During the making of his films, Herzog pushed himself and others to the limits, often putting himself in life-threatening situations. As a child in rural Bavaria, a single loaf of bread had to last his family all week. The hunger and deprivation he experienced during his early years perhaps explain his fascination with the limits of physical endurance. All his life, Herzog would embrace risk and danger, constantly looking for challenges and adventures. Now in paperback.

Thunderhead by Sophie Beer $20
Meet Thunderhead: awkward, music-obsessed and a magnet for bad luck. Their favourite things in life are listening to records and hanging out with their best (and only) friend Moonflower. But Thunderhead has a big secret. And when Moonflower moves schools, they're faced with the reality of surviving the wilderness of high school alone. Make new friends? NOTHANKYOUVERYMUCH. As two big life events approach, Thunderhead posts playlists and heartfelt diary entries as an outlet to try to make sense of their changing world, to try to calm the storm brewing in their brain and to try to find the courage to unfurl their heart. Drawing on Sophie Beer's own experience of hearing loss, this indelible illustrated novel about music, disability, friendship and fandom is immediately engaging and authentic. 
”Thunderhead is my new hero: so smart, funny and true. What a good soul. This beautiful and important story deals with so much and is so heartfelt. An absolute cracker of a story.” —Karen Foxlee

Build your reading pile, and the reading piles of others!
We can have anything gift-wrapped and dispatched by overnight courier — or ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

Unfinished and Far Far Away: The architecture of Irving Smith Architects edited by Aaron Betsky $75

The Whakatū-based architectural practice built by Andrew Irving and Jeremy Smith has created numerous remarkable buildings locally, throughout Aotearoa, and around the world, from private dwellings to public and institutional buildings. Their practice, research and teaching examines and rethinks architectural approaches, seeking to build with the land, not on it. Their projects open up, condense, focus, and interpret both natural and human-made settings. Unfinished and Far Far Away traces their internationally-awarded approach of participating with existing landscapes before generating new contexts. Ten projects across a range of scales, typologies and landscapes show how these architects articulate wood and other local materials to create beautiful homes, places to work, and sites to play. Irving Smith see their work as never finished, but always opening itself up to new ways to question how we can continue to live and thrive in these sites. Ten essays by architects, critics and educators then further a discussion on global peripheries and to how architecture benefits from the continued study and interpretation of multiple contexts. Editor Aaron Betsky, Irving Smith’s Andrew Irving and Jeremy Smith, Marlon Blackwell and Jonathan Boelkins, Neelkanth Chhaya, Shane O’Toole, Peter Rich, and Aotearoa New Zealand’s Julie Stout, Chris Barton, Andrew Barrie and Julia Gatley add their contributions, offering perspectives from the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa and Oceania. The projects are shown in multiple photographs by Patrick Reynolds, which are accompanied by drawings, process models, and other material that exhibit Irving Smith’s particular ability to work with their communities and surroundings. 

• The book was runner-up in the international Architecture Book of the Year awards this year.

• Loosely garbed and lightly shod.

Counterfutures 16 edited by Neil Vallelly $25
Māori Marx, Māori Modernism: Hone Tuwhare — Dougal McNeill. A study of Ngāpuhi poet Hone Tuwhare’s body of poetry in the context of his Communist Party activities and reading of Marxist and socialist thought, illustrating how Tuwhare makes audible collective forms of working-class agency and subjectivity. 
The Neck and the Sword — Rashid Khalidi. An interview with the prominent historian of Palestine, who discusses the history of the Palestinian national movement, the importance of understanding the Arab
Revolt of 1936–39, the evolution of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the emergence of Hamas, and Palestine’s complicated relationship with neighbouring Arab regimes.
A Real Piece of Work — Lydia Le Gros. A review of Louise Wallace’s first novel Ash, focusing on motherhood, reproductive labour, and the gender politics of workplaces.
Whakapapa of a Prison Riot: Prison Censorship, Free Speech, and the Fight against Fascism — Emmy Rākete and Ti Lamusse. An analysis of the Waikeria Prison Uprising of 2020–21, focusing on the suppression of prisoners’ free speech, the authors’ censorship at the hands of the Crown, and the need for mass struggle in the face of liberal ‘safetyism’.
At the Edges of Islands — Emma Powell and Emalani Case. A conversational reflection on the legacy of the influential scholar, teacher, poet, and activist Teresia Teaiwa’s thought and practice, exploring Teaiwa’s use of the ‘edge’ as a conceptual device, her insistence on reflective and reflexive thinking, and her understanding of the island as a verb.
Towards a Counter-Nihilistic Politics — Wendy Brown. An interview with the renowned political theorist, who discusses the recent pro-Palestinian encampments at US universities, considers the relationship between her work on nihilism and melancholia, and reflects on her contribution to critical studies of neoliberalism and sovereignty.
The Politics of Infrastructure and Anti-Roads Campaigns in Australasia — Morgan Hamlin. A review of James C. Murphy’s The Making and Unmaking of the East-West Link, which reflects on the planning, and eventual cancellation, of the East-West Link motorway in Melbourne, providing lessons for anti-road campaigners.
China and Its Discontents — Toby Boraman. A review of Ralf Ruckus’s The Communist Road to Capitalism—a study of political, economic, and social transformations in China since 1949. 
Counterfutures is a journal of Left thought and practice, seeking connections with the work of labour, trade union, Māori, Pasifika, global indigenous, anti-racist, feminist, queer, environmental, and other social movements in Aotearoa and internationally – with an especial focus on the Pacific. [Paperback]

Everest by Ashani Lewis $38
A dying woman dedicates her life to Antarctic ice; an All-American star longs for a romance that defies convention — to the detriment of his carefully curated reputation; a woman seeking her exes' opinions on a breast augmentation takes us on a whirlwind tour of the complicated, intertwined lives of urbanites; a singer prepares for her film debut, pushing her humanity to its limits at an unusual acting school; a newlywed couple put their marriage to the ultimate test: Everest. In these twenty-one striking stories, Lewis creates a stark world of fleeting infatuations, violent compulsions, unexpected solace and the sombre ghost of memories. [Paperback]

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates $45
Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories — our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking — expose and distort our realities. The first of the book's three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist — and named for Nubian pharaoh — Coates had never set foot on the African continent until finally he travelled to the coast where the enslaved were transported to a new world. Everywhere he goes he feels as if he's in two places at once — a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind, the pan-African homeland he was raised to believe was the origin and destiny for all black people. In Palestine, he discovers the devastating gap between the stories we tell ourselves and the vivid reality on the ground. He travels the singular landscape and meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians — the old, who remember their dispossession, and the young who dream of revolution. The final essay takes place in the USA — in Columbia, South Carolina, where Coates visits a school district in the process of banning one of his books. He enters the world of the teacher whose job is threatened and her community of mostly white supporters who were transformed and even radicalised by the ‘racial reckoning’ of 2020. Written at a dramatic moment in global life, this work eloquently expresses the need to interrogate our myths and liberate our truths. [Paperback]

Wild Thing: A life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux $65
Paul Gauguin is chiefly known as the giant of post-Impressionist painting whose bold colours and compositions rocked the Western art world. It is less well known that he was a stockbroker in Paris and that after the 1882 financial crash he struggled to sustain his artistry, and worked as a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen, a canal digger in Panama City, and a journalist exposing the injustices of French colonial rule in Tahiti. In Wild Thing, the award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux re-examines the adventurous and complicated life of the artist. She illuminates the people, places and ideas that shaped his vision: his privileged upbringing in Peru and rebellious youth in France; the galvanising energy of the Paris art scene; meeting Mette, the woman who he would marry; formative encounters with Vincent van Gogh and August Strindberg; and the ceaseless draw of French Polynesia. Prideaux conjures Gauguin's visual exuberance, his creative epiphanies, his fierce words and his flaws with acuity and sensitivity. Includes 70 colour images. [Hardback]

• Look inside!

The Party by Tessa Hadley $32
Evelyn had the surprising thought that bodies were sometimes wiser than the people inside them. She'd have liked to impress somebody with this idea, but couldn't explain it. On a winter Saturday night in post-war Bristol, sisters Moira and Evelyn, on the cusp of adulthood, go to an art students' party in a dockside pub; there they meet two men, Paul and Sinden, whose air of worldliness and sophistication both intrigues and repels them. Sinden calls a few days later to invite them over to the grand suburban mansion Paul shares with his brother and sister, and Moira accepts despite Evelyn's misgivings.  As the night unfolds in this unfamiliar, glamorous new setting, the sisters learn things about themselves and each other that shock them, and release them into a new phase of their lives. [Hardback]
”The Party is a coming-of-age story humming with all the tightly packed resonances of a poem. Tessa Hadley is one of our finest chroniclers, and this novella is a glimmering, sensuous addition to her supremely elegant oeuvre.” —Financial Times

The New Sustainable House: Planet-friendly home design by Penny Craswell $80
Designing with the environment in mind is not 'new'. What is new is the increasing number of ways houses can be more sustainably built. With a fresh focus on design ingenuity, new technologies and materials, The New Sustainable House demonstrates that there is more to ecologically motivated construction than solar panels and water tanks. From a mud-brick single-storey box built in the Texas desert to an all-timber Swedish cabin that is completely petrochemical-free, what unites this diverse collection of houses is the shared motivation of the architects and clients to do as little damage as possible to the planet, without compromising on comfort or aesthetics. This compelling survey shows that the environmental impact of every home, no matter the size or location, can be greatly reduced with creative and responsible design. Well illustrated. [Hardback]

• Look inside!

• The list of projects featured in the book includes The Anawhata House by Paul Davidson.

I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti (translated from Palestinian Arabic by Ahdaf Soueif) $28
The first narrative work of the well-known Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti is an autobiographical memoir about the ironies of homecoming. The bridge that Barghouti crosses as a young man leaving his country in 1966 to pursue university studies in Cairo is the same bridge that he uses to cross back in 1996 after thirty long years in the Diaspora. I Saw Ramallah is about home and homelessness. The harrowing experience of a Palestinian, denied the most elementary human rights in his occupied country and in exile alike, is transformed into a humanist work. Palestine has been appropriated, dispossessed, renamed, changed beyond recognition by the usurpers, yet from the heap of broken images and shattered homes, Barghouti repossesses his homeland. [Paperback]
”As powerful, moving and vital as it was twenty years ago.” —Andrew McMillan
”Barghouti manages to be temperate, fair-minded, resilient and uniquely sad. This is an impressive addition to the literature of exile.” —Independent

• Other books giving insight into Palestine/Israel.

Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj $38
With humour and poignancy, Behind You Is the Sea delves into the intimate lives of three primary Palestinian immigrant families in America — the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars — whose destinies and struggles electrify the community dynamics, occasionally sparking tension and turmoil. Through shifting perspectives, it intricately weaves a rich social tapestry filled with weddings, funerals, shattered hearts, and closely-guarded secrets. This captivating narrative amplifies the voices of a diverse Palestinian community, capturing the struggles of young activists pushing against tradition and the marginalised labouring for survival. Lives intersect across class, generation, and religion, painting a vivid portrait of resilience and complexity. [Hardback]
”We desperately need more books like this in which Palestinian people are presented as beautiful, richly complex human beings, not consigned to insulting, diminishing references. Gratitude to Susan Muaddi Darraj for her very necessary, beautiful work.” —Naomi Shihab Nye

A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East by László Krasznahorkai (translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet) $28
”In the fiction of László Krasznahorkai, man struggles to achieve infinity only to find madness as his consolation prize. In A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East, the pretty grandson of a prince seeks a mythical garden that haunts his every waking moment. His search leads him through a labyrinthine and seemingly abandoned monastery, whose astonishing beauty and inevitable decay the author painstakingly details. His work details a deeply deterministic worldview, in which suffering and sublimity are equally arbitrary conditions of existence. His prodigious sentences (translated from the Hungarian by faithful collaborator Ottilie Mulzet) are burdened with an accumulation of constitutive detail; they fold in, double back, and refract upon themselves, ever more quickly accelerating our attentions toward the anxieties of oblivion, which rapidly approaches but never seems to arrive.” — Alex Watkins, Vulture [New paperback edition]

• A garden in this wretched world.

The Book of Wild Flowers by Angie Lewin and Christopher Stocks $40
A particularly lovely book. Illustrator Angie Lewin and author Christopher Stocks celebrate wild flowers and their place in the landscape with The Book of Wild Flowers. Christopher Stocks reveals the interesting and unusual history and science of British wildflowers, including guidance on where they can be found and tips for identification. The book features twenty-one of Lewin's favorite wildflowers, and include reproductions of her paintings and illustrations, many created specifically for the book.[Hardback]

• Look inside!

Innerland: A journey through the everyday landscape of New Zealand by Matt Vance $40
Amongst the hard, physical landscape, the rational landscape of the geologist, ecologist, and cartographer, there lies the more elusive, but no less real, soft landscape of the poet, psychologist, and artist. This soft landscape is, for the most part, a fabrication of our minds; a fabrication so ingrained in us that it has become a language we understand without ever appearing to have formally learned it. Combining essay and memoir, Matt Vance takes us on a sharp-eyed and poignant journey through our everyday places, places that have been shaped in our minds by the unseen influences of words, images, and memories. It is a journey that takes us from park benches, malls, and mudflats to the modest suburbs of New Zealand. Innerland reveals a fresh way of seeing and understanding the ordinary landscapes around us.

First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite politics and the decline of great powers by Richard Lachman $45
The extent and irreversibility of US decline is becoming ever more obvious as America loses war after war and as one industry after another loses its technological edge. Lachmann explains why the United States will not be able to sustain its global dominance. He contrasts America's relatively brief period of hegemony with the Netherlands' similarly short primacy and Britain's far longer era of leadership. Decline in all those cases was not inevitable and did not respond to global capitalist cycles. Rather, decline is the product of elites' success in grabbing control of resources and governmental powers. Not only are ordinary people harmed, but also capitalists become increasingly unable to coordinate their interests and adopt policies and make investments necessary to counter economic and geopolitical competitors elsewhere in the world. Conflicts among elites and challenges by non-elites determine the timing and mould the contours of decline. Lachmann traces the transformation of US politics from an era of elite consensus to present-day paralysis combined with neoliberal plunder, explains the paradox of an American military with an unprecedented technological edge unable to subdue even the weakest enemies, and the consequences of finance's cannibalisation of the US economy. [Paperback]
”Masterful. Lachmann shows us that, far from being unique to the period of British denouement, the destructive pursuit of such narrow self-interest by elites has repeatedly caused the decline of great powers throughout historical capitalism.” —Journal of World-Systems Research

The Book at War: Libraries and readers in an age of conflict by Andrew Pettegree $40
Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited. Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline. In The Book at War, Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture — from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank — has shaped, and been shaped, by the vast conflicts of the modern age. From the American Civil War to the invasion of Ukraine, books, authors and readers have gone to war — and in the process become both deadly weapons and our most persuasive arguments for peace. [Paperback]
”Rich, authoritative and highly readable, Andrew Pettegree's tour de force will appeal to anyone for whom, whatever the circumstances, books are an abiding, indispensable part of life.” —David Kynaston

Fire by John Boyne $35
On the face of it, Freya lives a gilded existence, dancing solely to her own tune. She has all the trappings of wealth and privilege, a responsible job as a surgeon specialising in skin grafts, a beautiful flat in a sought-after development, and a flash car. But it wasn't always like this. Hers is a life founded on darkness. Did what happened to Freya as a child one fateful summer influence the adult she would become — or was she always destined to be that person? Was she born with cruelty in her heart or did something force it into being? [Hardback]

Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik $40
Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin and filth of her apartment was a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. Inside was a lost world, centred on a two-storey rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood in the sixties and seventies. 7406 Franklin Avenue, where writers and artists mixed with movie stars, rock 'n' rollers and drugs. Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American writer: Joan Didion, a mystery behind her dark glasses and cool expression, her marriage to John Gregory Dunne as tortured as it was enduring. It was also the breaking and then the remaking — and thus the true making — of another great American writer: Eve Babitz, goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky, nude of Marcel Duchamp, consort of Jim Morrison (and many others). Didion and Babitz formed a complicated alliance, a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity. Anolik uses Babitz, Babitz's brilliance of observation, Babitz's incisive intelligence and, most of all, Babitz's diary-like letters as the key to unlocking Didion. [Paperback]

We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord by Garth Nix $20
All Kim wants to do is play Dungeons & Dragons with his friends and ride his bike around the local lake. But he has always lived in the shadow of his younger sister. Eila is a prodigy, and everyone talks about how smart she is, though in Kim's eyes, she has no common sense. So when Eila finds an enigmatic, otherworldly globe which gives her astonishing powers, Kim not only has to save his sister from herself, he might also have to save the world from his sister!

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Click through for your copies. We can dispatch them by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

On the Calculation of Volume, Book I and Book II by Solvej Balle (translated from Danish by Barbara J, Haveland) $40 each
”What is a day? It is a cell of time that can be subdivided into smaller units: 24 hours; 1,440 minutes; 86,400 seconds. It is a human fiction, a means of imposing order on an unfathomable duration called life. It is an embodied experience that can feel long or short, interesting or boring, each a unique confluence of meteorological, physiological, and sociological variables. Billions of us go through one at a time. Afterward, we expect the next to come, punctually and without fail. But what if it doesn’t? What would we do?” Tara Selter has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly. We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18th: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months, or seasons. She finds herself in a lonely new reality without being able to explain why: how is it that she wakes every morning into the same day, knowing to the exact second when the blackbird will burst into song and when the rain will begin? Will she ever be able to share her new life with her beloved and now chronically befuddled husband? And on top of her profound isolation and confusion, Tara takes in with pain how slight a difference she makes in the world. (As she puts it: "That's how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November.") Balle is hypnotic in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs. The first volume's gravitational pull — a force inverse to its constriction — has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating. Book II beautifully expands on the speculative premise of Book I, drawing us further into the maze of time, where space yawns open, as if suddenly gaining a new dimension, extending into ever more fined-grained textures. Within this new reality, our senses and the tactility of things grows heightened: sounds, smells, sights, objects come suddenly alive, as if the world had begun whispering to us in a new language. And yet as the world announces itself anew, Tara's own sense of self is eroding, making her wonder just which bits of her are really left intact? [Paperbacks]
”A total explosion; Solvej Balle has blown through to a new dimension of literary exploration." —Nicole Krauss
"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 Knausgård
"Existential questions about the core and functioning of human relationships are raised here in a virtuosic and seemingly incidental manner. On the Calculation of Volume is a dazzling, poetic, tremendously multi-layered novel. Temporal anomalies and great literature have never been so successfully combined. Fascinating, extraordinary." —Horazio
"A steady, careful, and deeply disquieting estrangement of a single day, it is impossible to put down." —Kate Briggs

• Day 121.

• Here there be monsters.

Concerning the Future of Souls: 99 stories of Azrael by Joy Williams $30
Joy Williams offers ninety-nine illuminations on mortality as she brings her powers of observation to Azrael, the Angel of Death and transporter of souls. Balancing the extraordinary and the humble, the bizarre and the beatific, the book presents Azrael as a thoughtful and troubled protagonist as he confronts the holy impossibility of his task, his uneasy relationship with Death and his friendship with the Devil. In this follow-up to Williams's 99 Stories of God, a collection of connected beings - ranging from ordinary people to great artists such as Kafka, Nietzsche, Bach and Rilke to dogs, birds, horses and butterflies - experience the varying fate of the soul, transient yet everlasting. Profound, sorrowful, witty and ecstatic, Concerning the Future of Souls will leave readers awestruck in their confrontation of life in the face of death. [Paperback with French flaps]

• Some reservations.

• Read an extract.

• Unloosed, unstoppable intelligence.

• Read Thomas’s review of 99 Stories of God.

• Uncanny the singing that comes from certain husks.

Memories of Distant Mountains by Orhan Pamuk $45
For many years, Orhan Pamuk kept a record of his daily thoughts and observations, entering them in small notebooks and illustrating them with his own paintings. This book combines those notebooks into one volume. He writes about his travels around the world, his family, his writing process, and his complex relationship with his home country of Turkey. He charts the seeds of his novels and the things that inspired his characters and the plots of his stories. Intertwined in his writings are the vibrant paintings of the landscapes that surround and inspire him. A beautiful object in its own right, in Memories of Distant Mountains readers can explore Pamuk’s inner world and have an intimate encounter with the art, culture, and charged political currents that have shaped an outstanding literary voice. A very pleasing volume. [Paperback]

• Look inside this beautiful book.

The Watermark by Sam Mills $40
Rachel and Jaime: their story isn't simple. It might not even be their story. Augustus Fate, a once-lauded novelist and now renowned recluse, is struggling with his latest creation. But when Jaime and Rachel stumble into his remote cottage, he spies opportunity, imprisoning them inside his novel-in-progress. Now, the fledgling couple must try to find their way back home through a labyrinthine network of novels. And as they move from Victorian Oxford to a utopian Manchester, a harsh Russian winter to an AI-dominated near-future, so too does the narrative of their relationship change time and again. Together, they must figure out if this relationship of so many presents can have any future at all. The Watermark is a heart-stopping exploration of the narratives we cling to in the course of a life, and the tendency of the world to unravel them. Kaleidoscopic and wildly imaginative, it asks: how can we truly be ourselves, when Fate is pulling the strings? [Hardback]
”Playful, romantic and very, very clever. Like Inception for booklovers. Sam Mills packs more ideas into one work of metafiction than most writers would manage in several lifetimes.” —Clare Pollard
”A thrilling and original novel: an existential mystery, a love story, an absurdist quest.... A playful enquiry into ideas about freedom, fate, utopias, dystopias, AI, ethics and where truth might reside in a world of fakes. Richly imagined, wild and wise.” —Joanna Kavenna

• Who is controlling the plot?

Landfall 248: Aotearoa New Zealand arts and letters edited by Lynley Edmeades $35
The Spring issue announces the winner of the 2024 Landfall Essay Competition, an annual essay competition that celebrates the art of essay writing in Aotearoa New Zealand. The winning essay is featured. Landfall 248 also includes essays from the 2024 collaboration with RMIT University's nonfiction/Lab. These trans-Tasman essays focus on the theme of 'making space,' and what it means to use writing as a tool to create space for different voices, perspectives and ideas. Landfall 248 also announces the winner of the 2024 Caselberg International Poetry Prize, judged by poet and writer, Alan Roddick, and includes the winning poems. [Paperback]

If Only by Vigdis Hjorth (translated from Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund) $27
”A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter. January and minus 14 C, white, frosty mist around the parked car, around the spruces, the mailbox on its post, but higher up the sky is blue, clear, the sun has come back. She has written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self. She has an impending sense of doom or possibly her own death.” So opens Vigids Hjorth's ground-breaking novel from 2001, which melds the yearning, doomed potency of Annie Ernaux's A Simple Passion with the scale and force of Anna Karenina. It asks, can passion be mistaken for love? — and proceeds to document the destruction a decade defined by such a misconstruction can yield on a life. [Paperback]
”The novel offers neither redemption nor transcendence as its resolution. And yet Hjorth makes this relationship and its aftermath legible to us as a part of the human experience — one that we can't extract from the type of love we do consider desirable or healthy. At the end of the book, we might find ourselves wondering, as Ida does: 'If only there was a cure, a cure for love.' And we might realize, even as we wish this, that we don't actually mean it at all.” —Sophie Haigney

Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind: In pursuit of remarkable mushrooms by Richard Fortey $70
They do not seem of this world, yet fungi underpin all the life around us: the 'wood wide web' links the trees by a subterranean telegraph; fungi eat the fallen trunks and leaves to recycle the nutrients that keep the wood alive; they feed a host of beetles and flies, which in turn feed birds and bats. Fungi produce the most expensive foods in the world but also offer the prospect of cheap protein for all; they cure disease, and they both cause disease and kill; they are the specialists to surpass all others; their diversity thrills and bewilders. Richard Fortey has been a devoted field mycologist all his life. He has rejoiced in the exuberant variety and profusion of mushrooms since reading as a boy of nuns driven mad by ergot (a fungus). Drawing on decades of experience doing science in the woods and fields, Fortey starts with the perfect 'fungus day' - eating ceps in Piedmont. He introduces brown rotters and the white, earthstars and death caps; fungal annuals and perennials, dung lovers and parasites, even fungi that move through the trees like mycelial monkeys. We learn that the giant puffball produces more spores than there are known stars in the universe and fetid stinkhorns begin looking like arrivals from the planet Tharg. He tells of the fungus that turns flies into zombies, the ones that clean up metallic waste the delicious subterranean fungi truffe de Perigord, the delight of gourmets. Amongst these and many other 'close encounters' of a fungal kind, the book attempts to answer the questions: what are fungi? Why did their means of reproduction escape discovery for so long? What role do they play in the development of life? Fascinating and well written. [Hardback]
”This is the way science should be written: so engagingly that it makes you forget that you're actually learning something (actually, you're learning a lot), and carrying you swiftly from page to page. Filled with insight, science, history, charm and wit.” —The Times

• Meet the mushrooms.

The Art of Not Eating: A doubtful history of appetite and desire by Jessica Hamel-Akré $40
The day Jessica Hamel-Akré discovered the ideas of George Cheyne - an eighteenth-century polymath and London society figure known as 'Dr Diet' — it sparked an intellectual obsession, a ten-year study of women's appetite and a personal unravelling. In this bold and radical book, Hamel-Akré follows Cheyne through the pages of medical studies, novels and historical scandals, meeting ash-eating mystics, wasting society girls, impoverished female fasters and early feminist philosophers, all of whom were once grappling with nascent ideas around food, longing and the body. In doing so, she uncovers the eighteenth-century origins of both today's diet culture and her own troubled relationship with wanting. Blending history and memoir, The Art of Not Eating will change the way we look at appetite, desire, rationality and oppression, and show how it all got tangled up with what we eat. [Paperback]

The Question of Palestine by Edward W. Said $42
A major work by one of the great public intellectuals of the twentieth century, The Question of Palestine was the first book to narrate the modern Palestinian experience in English. Edward Said’s project to ‘bring Palestine into history’ was unquestionably a success – there is no longer a question of whether Palestine had a history before colonization – and yet Palestinian self-determination is as distant as ever. With the rigorous scholarship he brought to his influential Orientalism and shaped by his own life in exile in New York, Said’s account of the traumatic national encounter of the Palestinian people with Zionism is still as pertinent and incisive today as it was on first publication in 1979. [Paperback with French flaps]
”This reissue of The Question of Palestine only lends more weight and value to Edward Said’s work, to his vision and analysis, to the enduring need for his core principles of justice and empathy. Principles that have perhaps never been as severely tested as they are today. Passionate and patient, the book displays all the features that made Said a great thinker and a powerful advocate, whose absence continues to be felt.” —Ahdaf Soueif
”In this seminal text, Edward W. Said stridently diagnoses western hypocrisy and makes the case for Palestinian liberation, paving the way for so many thinkers who came after him. I wish it were not so, but The Question of Palestine is just as relevant now as it was in 1979.” —Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost

A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Ilan Pappe $34
The devastation of 7 October 2023 and the horrors that followed astounded the world. But the Israel-Palestine conflict didn't start on 7 October. It didn't start in 1967 either, when Israel occupied the West Bank, or in 1948 when the state of Israel was declared. It started in 1882, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in what was then Ottoman Palestine. Ilan Pappe untangles the history of two peoples, now sharing one land. Going back to the founding fathers of Zionism, Pappe expertly takes us through the twists and turns of international policy towards Israel-Palestine, Palestinian resistance to occupation, and the changes taking place in Israel itself.
”A Very Short History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict is the best primer available on one of the world's most persistent settler-colonial tragedies. Amid the carnage of the Gaza genocide, it is essential to listen to Ilan Pappe, a preeminent historian of the Middle East, and a heroic scholar committed to justice and freedom.” —Abdel Razzaq Takriti
”Ilan Pappe clearly and concisely exposes the brutal history of Israeli occupation and apartheid over more than a century, providing some compelling insights into the origins of the current conflict.” —Grace Blakeley

Time of the Child by Niall Williams $37
The eagerly anticipated new novel from the author of This Is Happiness. Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in the little town of Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from his community. A visit from the doctor is always a sign of bad things to come. His youngest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father's shadow, and remains there, having missed her chance at real love and passed up an offer of marriage from an unsuitable man. But in the advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy's lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter's lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever. 
”There is something of Trollope's Barsetshire here, in the sense of an entire place rendered in fine detail. Williams's phrasing is immaculate and even the smallest characters are drawn with attention and detail. But Dr Troy is the heart of this slow, rich novel. The scene in which he dances with the baby in a quiet kitchen is one of the most affecting I've read.” —The Times

The Twisted Chain by Jason Gurney $35
In the winter of 1969, a 14-year-old Whangārei schoolboy called Keg went to a weekend rugby tournament and came home with a sore throat. Soon he was bedbound with a blazing fever, painful wrists, elbows and knees, and – most worrying of all – damage to his heart. He had been diagnosed with rheumatic fever, and his life was changed forever. Rheumatic fever is an inflammatory autoimmune disease, usually contracted in childhood. It starts with a sore throat; left untreated it can cause serious, life-long damage to the heart. Despite its status as a developed country, Aotearoa New Zealand has one of the highest rates of rheumatic fever in the world. More than 90 percent of the country’s cases occur in Māori and Pasifika communities. Author and researcher Jason Gurney knows Keg’s story intimately; he is Keg’s son. In The Twisted Chain, Gurney describes living in the long shadow cast by this disease. He writes of emergency night-time drives to Auckland’s Middlemore Hospital, of panicky hours waiting for medical help. He describes how these frighteningly vulnerable experiences sparked some of the questions that led him to a career in public health. ‘I wanted,’ he writes, ‘to research the causes and effects of rheumatic fever. It was my way of fighting back against the illness that had changed the trajectory of my family’s life.’ The Twisted Chain chronicles the profound impact of rheumatic fever on individuals and whānau and critiques the socio-political decisions (or lack thereof) that enable this preventable disease to thrive in modern-day Aotearoa New Zealand.

Order now. We can dispatch your books by overnight courier, or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.

Build your reading pile, and the reading piles of others!
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The Gavin Bishop Treasury: Ten favourite fairy stories and original tales by Gavin Bishop $45
Two hundred pages of fabulous storytelling and stunning artwork. This beautiful gift collection will entrance families of all ages and sizes and is the ideal inducement to snuggle up and read together. The 10 gorgeous stories included in this treasury are: ‘Mrs McGinty and the Bizarre Plant’; ‘Bidibidi’; ‘Mr Fox’; ‘Chicken Licken’; ‘A Apple Pie’; ‘The Three Little Pigs’; ‘Little Rabbit and the Sea’; ‘Stay Awake, Bear!’; ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’; and ‘Rats!’ — four of Bishop’s delightful original tales, featuring such characters as drab Mrs McGinty, who becomes a sensation when a fast-growing plant takes off in her yard, along with a rainbow-chasing sheep, a little rabbit who longs to visit the sea, and a bear who decides he can go without his winter sleep. There are also six humour-filled fairy tale retellings, including crafty Mr Fox with an empty food sack to fill, the gloriously illustrated ‘Three Little Pigs’, and ‘Rats!’, in which Mrs Polly Piper, vexed by an infestation of cheeky rodents, accepts help from the dashing, accordion-playing Rapscallion Claw. This is an exciting publication, as most of these favourites have been out of print and very hard to find. [Hardback]

• Look inside!

Giant by Mollie Ray $45
One morning, a teenage boy wakes to find that he has grown to the size of a giant… Inspired by the journey of the author's younger brother, this wordless wonder of a book follows the experience of a family as one of their own faces a life-threatening illness. As his health declines, can the family remain resilient on his long journey through treatment? Mollie Ray's debut graphic novel is a resonant story of empathy, healing and hope. [Hardback]
”Wonderful, moving, original book. It teaches us a new visual language for love, for worry and for family.” —Robert Macfarlane
”Mollie Ray's exquisitely rendered drawings guide us tenderly through this tale of family, courage, fear and joy.” —Katie Green

• Look inside!

• Creating Giant.

• Silent comics.

• On the cover.

French Cooking for One by Michèle Roberts $45
”Part of the beauty of the art of cooking is that it involves transience, making something delightful that then vanishes, and that in turn involves cherishing the time we spend on perfecting a dish. Cooking yourself something delicious is rewarding, satisfying, cheering. It makes us feel capable, creative, able to take care of ourselves. Cooking for yourself makes you feel spoiled and cherished.” - Michèle Roberts
A unique work of literary and culinary joie de vivre, part food memoir, part recipe book, French Cooking for One is Michèle Roberts' first cookbook, and a personal and quirky take on Édouard de Pomiane's ten-minute cooking classic. Once a food writer for the New Statesman, Roberts was born in 1949 and raised in a bilingual French-English household, learning to cook from her French grandparents in Normandy. Her love of food and cookery has always shone through in her novels and short stories. French cuisine, classic though it is, still holds delicious surprises. From quick bites for busy days to sumptuous main courses for those who enjoy spending more time in the kitchen, the focus throughout this book is on dishes that are simple and fun to prepare, and results that are mouthwatering to contemplate and, of course, to eat. With over 160 delicious recipes, the majority of which are vegetarian, combined with piquant storytelling and feminist wit, French Cooking for One is a working cook's book with French flair, bursting with life and illustrated with the author's original ink drawings, full of charm and humour. More than a handbook of classic French dishes, French Cooking for One also bears testimony to a singular literary life. Vignettes of Roberts' childhood in Normandy and of her years living in Pays de la Loire are peppered with anecdotes about intellectual and artistic luminaries: an omelette prepared by Gertrude Stein's cook for Picasso; a simple pasta dish calling to mind the French philosopher Julia Kristeva and the Scottish poet Alison Fell's images of female orgasm; and Emma Bovary's extraordinary wedding cake, among others. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Michèle Roberts’s enchanting book French Cooking for One proves la cuisine française can be enjoyed alone, when there is nothing to interrupt the joy of preparing good ingredients and turning them into enticing dishes. Her anecdotes and notes of wisdom that accompany the recipes make her the perfect companion in the kitchen.” —Carolyn Boyd

• The art of writing a cookbook.

Time of the Flies by Claudia Piñeiro (translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle) $40
Fifteen years after killing her husband's lover, Inés is fresh out of prison and trying to put together a new life. Her old friend Manca is out now too, and they've started a business — FFF, or Females, Fumigation, and Flies — dedicated to pest control and private investigation, by women, for women. But Señora Bonar, one of their clients, wants Inés to do more than kill bugs — she wants her expertise, and her criminal past, to help her kill her husband's lover, too. Crimes against women versus crimes by women; culpability, fallibility, and our responsibilities to each other — this is Piñeiro at her wry, earthy best, alive to all the ways we shape ourselves to be understandable, to be understood, by family and love and other hostile forces. Includes an intermittent chorus of feminist voices: Rebecca Solnit, Rita Segato, Judith Butler, Vivian Gornick, Marguerite Duras! From the author of Elena Knows. [Paperback with French flaps]
"Time of the Flies is orchestral: a page turner that is also a crime novel, a thriller, a meditation on feminism, our choices, our lack of choices. As Piñeiro unpacks her Pandora’s box of stories, voices, preoccupations, characters, you wonder, how on earth will she weave them together? Not that you care — her ability to be everybody and everything, including flies, carries you along. An absorbing read, for sure, and oh what a satisfying pleasure to see all the pieces come together — painful satisfaction, because then, you know, the novel will soon be over." —Julia Alvarez

Taboon: Sweet and savoury delights from the Lebanese bakery by Hisham Assaad $60
"There is bread and salt between us." This phrase, symbolizing the act of breaking bread together, welcome, gratitude, friendship, and trust, epitomizes the spirit of the baking culture of the Middle East. And the oven is the beating heart of every community. This beautifully photographed cookbook explores the vibrant baking culture of Lebanon. Perfectly poised between the Middle East and the Mediterranean, Lebanese food draws influences from myriad cultures and offers a delicious collection of baking recipes to tempt the home baker seeking new taste adventures. Lebanon is a land of culinary richness and a vibrant spirit, and this book tells the story of its baking cuisine: exploring all its regional influences and traditions. Here you will find over 80 recipes for classic home-style breads, traditional family favorites that have been handed down through generations, alongside pastry-shop delicacies, classic cakes, and street-food treats. [Hardback]

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Palo Alto: A history of California, Capitalism, and the world by Malcolm Harris $30
The history of Silicon Valley, from railroads to microchips, is an extraordinary story of disruption and destruction, told for the first time in this comprehensive, jaw-dropping narrative. Palo Alto's weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually and materially ambitious and demonstrably world-changing. Palo Alto is also a haunted toxic waste dump built on stolen Indian burial grounds, and an integral part of the capitalist world system. In Palo Alto, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism, from IQ tests to the ‘tragedy of the commons’, racial genetics, and ‘broken windows’ theory. The Internet and computers, too. It's a story about how a small American suburb became a powerful engine for economic growth and war, and how it came to lead the world into a surprisingly disastrous 21st century. The book ends with a clear-eyed, radical proposition for how we might begin to change course.[New paperback edition]

Quarterlife by Devika Rege $38
The Bharat Party has come to power after an intensely divisive election. Naren, a jaded Wall Street consultant, is lured home to Mumbai by their promise of ' better days '. With him is Amanda, eager to escape her New England town by volunteering in a Muslim-majority slum. Inspired by them, Naren's charismatic brother Rohit sets out to explore his ancestral heritage in the countryside, where he falls in with the very young men who drive the Hindu nationalist machine. As they each come to grips with the new India, their journeys coalesce into a riveting milieu characterised by brutal debates and desires as fraught as they are compulsive. The result is an ever-widening chorus that feeds into a festive night when all of Mumbai is on the streets — and the simmering unrest erupts. [Paperback]
”What begins as a novel of ideas becomes the secret history of a nation. A superb read, both moving and inspiring.” —Jeet Thayil

Second Chances: Shakespeare and Freud by Adam Phillips and Stephen Greenblatt $48
In this fresh investigation, Stephen Greenblatt and Adam Phillips explore how the second chance has been an essential feature of the literary imagination and a promise so central to our existence that we try to reproduce it again and again. Innumerable stories, from the Homeric epics to the New Testament, and from Oedipus Rex to Hamlet, explore the realisation or failure of second chances — outcomes that depend on accident, acts of will, or fate. Such stories let us repeatedly rehearse the experience of loss and recovery: to know the joy that comes with a renewal of love and pleasure and to face the pain that comes with realizing that some damage can never be undone. The authors show how Shakespeare was the supreme virtuoso of the second chance and Freud was its supreme interpreter. Both Shakespeare and Freud believed that we can narrate our life stories as tales of transformation, of momentous shifts, constrained by time and place but often still possible. Ranging from The Comedy of Errors to The Winter's Tale, and from D. W. Winnicott to Marcel Proust, the authors challenge readers to imagine how, as Phillips writes, "it is the mending that matters." [Hardback]
"A fearless book. Greenblatt and Phillips speak to each other, and to us, with unflinching candor, wisdom, and tenderness about the possibility of renewing or remaking our lives. Second Chances stages a grand reckoning with fate and free will, fantasy and reality, and, above all, with the excitement and the terror of suddenly finding ourselves in a strange story, in a brave new world." —Merve Emre

• Redeeming time.

Walking Practice by Dolki Min (translated from Korean by Victoria Caudle) $35
After crashing their spacecraft in the middle of nowhere, a shapeshifting alien find themself stranded on an unfamiliar planet and disabled by Earth's gravity. To survive, they will need to practice walking. And what better way than to hunt for food As they discover, humans are delicious. Intelligent, clever, and adaptable, the alien shifts their gender, appearance, and conduct to suit a prey's sexual preference, then attacks at the pivotal moment of their encounter. They use a variety of hunting tools, including a popular dating app, to target the juiciest prey, and carry a backpack filled with torturous instruments and cleaning equipment. But the alien's existence begins to unravel one night when they fail to kill their latest meal. Thrust into an ill-fated chase across the city, the alien is confronted with the psychological and physical tolls their experience on Earth has taken. Questioning what they must do to sustain their own survival, they begin to understand why humans also fight to live. But their hunger is insatiable, and the alien once again targets a new prey, not knowing what awaits.  Dolki Min's haunting debut novel is part psychological thriller, part searing critique of the social structures that marginalize those who are different — the disabled, queer, and nonconformist. Walking Practice uncovers humanity in who we consider to be alien, and illuminates how alienation can shape the human experience.  [Paperback; 21 line drawings throughout]
"Walking Practice explores the burden of gender expectations, the struggle of having a flesh prison body, having to feed yourself and wanting to be loved, and even the awkwardness of dealing with other people on the subway. But what really makes this story sing is the uniqueness of the narrator's voice — both compelling and witty. It is moving and funny, critical and crass. This one is for anyone who is made to feel like an alien in their own body." —Tor

• A more elastic state.

• Drawn to aliens.

Myths of Geography: Eight ways we get the world wrong by Paul Richardson $40
Our maps may no longer be stalked by dragons and monsters, but our perceptions of the world are still shaped by geographic myths. Myths like Europe being the centre of the world. Or that border walls are the solution to migration. Or that Russia is predestined to threaten its neighbours. Richardson challenges recent popular accounts of geographical determinism and shows that how the world is represented often isn't how it really is — that the map is not the territory. Along the way we visit some remarkable places: Iceland's Thingvellir National Park, where you can swim between two continents, and Bir Tawil in North Africa, one of the world's only territories not claimed by any country. We follow the first train that ran across Eurasia between Yiwu in east China and Barking in east London, and scale the US-Mexico border wall to find out why such fortifications don't work. [Paperback]
”As continents, borders, nations, economic growth and sovereignty become the buzzwords of today's global conflicts, Paul Richardson's Myths of Geography skewers each one with elegant precision. His book places political geography at the heart of how we understand the challenges of the twenty-first century. A bracing and important book.” —Jerry Brotton

Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal (translated from Arabic by Robin Moger) $45
Cairo, 1963: Enayat al-Zayyat's suicide becomes a byword for talent tragically cut down, even as Love and Silence, her only novel, languishes unpublished. Four years after al-Zayyat's death, the novel will be brought out, adapted for film and radio, praised, and then, cursorily, forgotten. For the next three decades it's as if al-Zayyat never existed. Yet when poet Iman Mersal stumbles across Love and Silence in the nineties, she is immediately hooked. Who was Enayat? Did the thought of her novel's rejection really lead to her suicide? Where did this startling voice come from? And why did Love and Silence disappear from literary history? To answer these questions, Mersal traces Enayat's life, interviews family members and friends, reconstructs the afterlife of Enayat in the media, and tracks down the flats, schools, archaeological institutes, and sanatoriums among which Enayat divided her days. Touching on everything from dubious antidepressants to domestic abuse and divorce law, from rubbish-strewn squats in the City of the Dead to the glamour of golden-age Egyptian cinema, this wide-ranging, unclassifiable masterpiece gives us a remarkable portrait of a woman artist striving to live on her own terms. [Paperback]
”A brooding, atmospheric read charged with a singular magical beauty. Iman Mersal conjures up the zeitgeist of artistic Cairo after the July revolution and reveals a merciless and inflexible world behind the genteel, cultivated image.” —Leila Aboulela

• A nexus.

Black Village by Lutz Bassmann [Antoine Volodine] (translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman) $38
Tassili, Goodmann, and Myriam. Two men and a woman, dressed in rags — former poets, and former members of a dystopian military service — walk the bardo, the dark afterlife between death and rebirth. The road is monotonous and seemingly endless. To pass the time, they decide to tell each other stories: bizarre anecdotes set in a post-apocalyptic world, replete with mutant creatures, Buddhist monks, and ruthless killers. The result is a mysterious, dreamlike series of events, trapped outside of time as we know it, where all the rules of narrative are upended and remade. [Paperback]
"With Black Village, Lutz Bassmann, a heteronym of Antoine Volodine, pens a collection of rare intensity, carried by writing of staggering power. By breaking the codes of narrative, by upsetting genres, he offers, within the disaster that this book tells, a literature that reinvents and affirms the infinite potential of language." —Art Press

Land Is All That Matters: The struggle that shaped Irish history by Myles Dungan $39
In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe everyone lived 'off the land' in one way or another. In Ireland, however, almost everyone lived 'on the land' as well. Agriculture was the only economic resource for the vast majority of the population outside the north-east of the country. Land was vital. But most of it was owned by a class of Protestant, English, and often aristocratic landlords. The dream of having more control over their farms, even of owning them, drove many of the most explosive conflicts in Irish history. Rebellions against British rule were rare, but savage outbreaks of murder related to resentments over land ownership, and draconian state repression, were a regular feature of Irish rural life. The struggle for the land was also crucial in driving support for Irish nationalist demands for Home Rule and independence. Dungan examines two hundred years of agrarian conflict from the ruinous famine of 1741 to the eve of World War Two. It explores the pivotal moments that shaped Irish history: the rise of 'moonlighting', the infamous Whiteboys and Rightboys, the insurrection of Captain Rock, the Tithe War of 1831-36, the Great Famine of 1845 that devastated the country and drastically reduced the Irish population, and the Land War of 1878-1909, which ended by transferring almost all the landlords' holdings to their tenants. These events take place against the backdrop of prevailing British rule and stark class and wealth inequality. Land Is All that Matters tells the story of the agrarian revolution that fundamentally shaped modern Ireland. [Paperback]

Unreel: A life in review by Diana Wichtel $40
Born to a Polish Holocaust survivor father and a 1950s Kiwi tradwife too busy to police her viewing, Diana Wichtel cut her teeth on the Golden Age of television. But in the 1960s, things fell apart. Diana's fractured family left Canada and blew in to New Zealand, just missing the Beatles, and minus a father. Diana watched television being born again half a world away, and twenty years later walked into the smoky, clacking offices of the Listener where she became the country's foremost television critic — loved and loathed, with the hate mail in seething capital letters to prove it. Meanwhile, television's sometimes-pale imitation — real life — unreeled. This is a sharply funny, wise and profound memoir of growing up and becoming a writer, of parents and children, early marriage and divorce, finding love again — and of the box we gathered around in our living rooms that changed the world.

Other Rivers: A Chinese education by Peter Hessler $40
An account of two generations of students in China's heartland, chronicling a country in the midst of tumultuous change through the prism of its education system. More than twenty years after teaching English to China's first boom generation at a small college in Sichuan Province, Peter Hessler returned to teach the next generation. At the same time, Hessler's twin daughters became the only Westerners in a student body of about two thousand in their local primary school. Through reconnecting with his previous students now in their forties - members of China's "Reform generation" - and teaching his current undergraduates, Hessler is able to tell an intimately unique story about China's incredible transformation over the past quarter-century.In the late 1990s, almost all of Hessler's students were the first of their families to enrol in higher education, sons and daughters of subsistence farmers who could offer little guidance as their children entered a brand-new world. By 2019, when Hessler arrived at Sichuan University, he found a very different China and a new kind of student - an only child whose schooling was the object of intense focus from a much more ambitious and sophisticated cohort of parents. Hessler's new students have a sense of irony about the regime but mostly navigate its restrictions with equanimity, and embrace the astonishing new opportunities China's boom affords. But the pressures of this system of extreme 'meritocracy' at scale can be gruesome, even for much younger children, including his own daughters, who give him a first-hand view of raising a child in China.In Peter Hessler's hands, China's education system is the perfect vehicle for examining what's happened to the country, where it's going, and what we can learn from it. [Paperback]

Island (‘Object Lessons’ series) by Julian Hanna $23
Darwin called the Galápagos archipelago "a little world within itself," unaffected by humans and set on its own evolutionary path - strange, diverse, and unique. Islands are repositories of unique cultures and ways of living, seed banks built up in relative isolation. Island is an archipelago of ideas, drawing from research and first-hand experience living, working, and traveling to islands as far afield as Madeira and Cape Verde, Orkney and Svalbard, the Aran Islands and the Gulf Islands, Hong Kong and Manhattan. Islands have long been viewed as both paradise and prison - we project onto them our deepest desires for freedom and escape, but also our greatest fears of forced isolation. This book asks: what can islands teach us about living sustainably, being alone or coexisting with others, coping with uncertainty, and making do? [Paperback]

• Other ‘Object Lessons’.

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson $26
a volcanic journey into the soul of a winged red monster named Geryon. Tormented as a boy by his brother, Geryon escapes to a parallel world of photography. He falls deeply in love with Herakles, a golden young man, who deserts him at the peak of infatuation. So Geryon retreats ever further into the world created by his camera, fascinated by his wings, his redness and the fantastic accident of who he is. But all is suddenly and irrevocably shattered by Herakles's return. Autobiography of Red is a deceptively simple narrative filled with currents of meaning, emotion, and the truth about what it's like to be red. An extraordinary, modern epic poem — moving, disturbing and delightful. 
”This book is amazing — I haven't discovered any writing in years that's so marvellously disturbing.” —Alice Munro 
”Anne Carson has created, from fragments of the Greek poet Stesichoros, a profound love story told as forty-seven compulsively readable long-lined poems of intense cinematic detail.” —Ruth Padel, New York Times Book Review 
”Totally engrossing.’ —Ocean Vuong