VOLUME FLYERS (26.9.26)

Catch these five books!

Let this week’s flyers land on the top of your reading pile.

THE SHADOW OF THE OBJECT by Chloe Aridjis $38
'Chloe Aridjis is a revolutionary who is quietly changing the whole novel form. She is mining the richest seam in the vast field of fiction and coming up with gold. Her radiantly lyrical and intelligent writing is thrilling to read.' —Neel Mukherjee

DIRTY WORK by Nicky Hager $35
An exposé of the Taxpayers' Union and the wider spiderweb of lobby groups and astroturf organisations that have been working to push political discourse in New Zealand to the right, to use race politics to create division, and to smear and discredit those who oppose them. "I do not care and New Zealanders do not care about this topic." —Christopher Luxon

PRIMEVAL AND OTHER TIMES by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) $40
‘The novel’s kaleidoscopic structure combines with its chronological sweep to create a portrait of a community that is at once epic and intimate, precise and universal. At times it has the feel of a dark fairy tale, with elements of magical realism and echoes of Hasidic folk legends; at others, we are unmistakably in the realm of historical reality.’ —Rebecca Abrams, Financial Times

U.X.O. by Brannavan Gnanalingam $30
“Brannavan Gnanalingam has become well known for gripping, occasionally gristly, writing about New Zealand society. From the first page U.X.O. he ups the stakes by writing about the Sri Lankan Civil War. And yet, somehow, the book is a page tuner.” —Murdoch Stephens

LIFE OF M by Rachel Cusk $37
Rachel Cusk’s new novel continues her project of applying stress to the conventions of the novel in order to make fiction reveal truths about life that we are conditioned to avoid. In Life of M a character who observes and writes describes or defines the life of a character who performs and is observed, a film star who finds no more autonomy in the role of herself than she does when she is acting.