NEW RELEASES
A few of the books that have arrived at VOLUME this week.

Red Clocks by Leni Zumas            $35
In an increasingly plausible dystopian future America, women's reproductive rights have been overturned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers.
"Leni Zumas here proves she can do almost anything. Red Clocks is funny, mordant, baroque, political, poetic, alarming, and inspiring -not to mention a way forward for fiction now." - Maggie Nelson
"A lyrical and beautifully observed reflection on women's lives." — Naomi Alderman, The New York Times
>> Read an extract. 
>> Keri Hulme is an object of her gratitude. 

Wait Till You See Me Dance by Deb Olin Unferth        $34
"Deb Olin Unferth's stories are so smart, fast, full of heart, and distinctive in voice - each an intense little thought-system going out earnestly in search of strange new truths. What an important and exciting talent." - George Saunders
"This book is an astonishment - strange, brainy and loaded with feeling. Deb Olin Unferth shows, with brilliant force, the startling vitality of the short story. She is a master." - Ben Marcus
" Wild, funny and wonderful." - Geoff Dyer

The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt         $32
Girls turning into women, women turning into deer, people becoming doubles of themselves and each other - Hunt's sharply written stories concern characters on the verge of becoming something else. From the author of Mr Splitfoot. 
"The Dark Dark reads like a feminist manifesto threaded through imaginative fiction; it's the most evocative, impressive collection I've read this year." - The Paris Review
>> A sample story. 

Out of Nothing by Daniel Locke and David Blandy         $33
A wonderful colourful graphic for children, covering the whole of history, from the Big Bang to an imagined future, showing how human progress is achieved through a combination of observation, imagination and communication. 

Birds, Art, Life, Death: A field guide to the small and significant by Kyo Maclear          $35
Meeting an urban musician with a passion for birds, Maclear became fascinated by the relationship between creativity and nature. In the year that they spent together, Maclear began to apply the principles and approaches of birdwatching to other areas of life, and made some gently profound discoveries. What is the gift that the small and the particular can give us that we are usually too busy and too 'big picture' focused to see? A lovely book. 
"Original, charming, a little eccentric even. The book is a delight." - Nigel Slater

My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs by Kazuo Ishiouro        $13
Ishiguro's Nobel Prize Lecture contains reflections on his own novels, reveals his sources of inspiration, explores his ambivalent relationship with his birthplace of Japan (which he left at age five), and emphasises the importance of literature to the world.

The Adulterants by Joe Dunthorne         $35
Ray mostly did not cheat on his pregnant wife. He only sometimes despises every one of his friends. And though his career as a freelance tech journalist is dismal and he spends his afternoons churning out third-rate listicles, he dreams of making a difference. But Ray is about to learn that his special talent is for making things worse. Joe Dunthorne dissects the urban millennial psyche of a man too old to be an actual millennial.

Black Edge: Inside information, dirty money, and the quest to bring down the most wanted man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar     $28
A revelatory look at the grey zone in which so much of Wall Street functions, and a window into the transformation of the worldwide economy. This is a true-life legal thriller that takes readers inside the US government's pursuit of hedge fund accumulator Steven Cohen and his employees, and raises urgent questions about power and wealth. 

Homesick for Another World by Otessa Moshfegh         $26
Moshfegh's stories expose the limitless range of self-deception that human beings can employ and, at the same time, infuse the grotesque and outrageous with tenderness and compassion. From the author of the Booker-short-listed Eileen. 
"Razor-sharp." - Zadie Smith

Geis 2: A Game Without Rules by Alexis Deacon          $33
The struggle for power continues in Alexis Deacon's excellent supernatural medieval graphic fantasy series. The contenders find themselves divided against their will and thrown into a mysterious game. Exciting and well-drawn. Start with Geis #1.

From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The evolution of minds by Daniel C. Dennett      $30
How and why did what we call consciousness evolve in what became humans? What does it mean to have a mind, and to what extent is individual consciousness a cultural (communal) phenomenon? 
"Required reading for anyone remotely curious about how they came to be remotely curious." - Observer

The Right to Have Rights by Alastair Hunt, Stephanie DeGooyer, Werner Hamacher, Samuel Moyn and Astra Taylor       $30
In the light of the refugee crisis, the relevance has never been greater for Hannah Arendt's observation that before people can enjoy any of the inalienable Rights of Man, and before there can be any specific rights to education, work, voting, there must first be such a thing as the right to have rights. This book is a thoughtful consideration of human vulnerability. 

This Idea is Brilliant: Lost, overlooked and underappreciated scientific concepts everyone should know edited by John Brockman       $35

206 leading thinkers answer the question, "What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?" Interesting. 

Supercommunity: Diabolical togetherness beyond contemporary art edited by Julieta Aranda, Anton Vidokle and Brian Kuan Wood        $37
 "I am the supercommunity, and you are only starting to recognize me. I grew out of something that used to be humanity. Some have compared me to angry crowds in public squares; others compare me to wind and atmosphere, or to software." A project by e-flux for the Venice Biennale, identifying the naked power that is revealed when the complex of art, the internet and globalisation shed their utopian guises. 

The Rise of Wolves by Kerr Thomson      $19
Innis Munro is walking home across the bleak wilderness of Nin Island when he hears the chilling howl of a wolf. But there are no wolves on the island - not since they were hunted to extinction, centuries ago. He decides to investigate the history of his Scottish island home and accepts an ancient challenge.

The Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers         $38
Mokhtar grew up in San Francisco, raised by Yemeni immigrant parents. As a young man he learned of the true origins of coffee making - an ancient art born in Yemen, the secret stolen by European colonisers - and became determined to resurrect the ancient art of Yemeni coffee. Mokhtar dedicated himself to coffee, quickly becoming one of the world's leading experts, the first Arab in the world to qualify as a 'Q Grader'. But while visiting Yemen on a research trip, he was caught in the maelstrom of sudden civil war. The US Embassy closed its doors, and so Mokhtar embarked on a nail-biting adventure - to escape the country with his precious coffee samples intact.

The Wizard and the Prophet: Two remarkable scientists and their conflicting visions of the future of our planet by Charles C. Mann        $40
In 40 years, the earth's population will exceed 10 billion. Will the planet be able to sustain us? Mann examines our attitudes towards this issue by contrasting the approaches of two twentieth century scientists: the Prophets are those like William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed we must change our lifestyle to live within the available resources; and the Wizards, who believe, like Norman Borlaug, that scientific advances will enable us to expand the capacity of the planet to deliver our demands upon it. 

The Book Jumper by Mechthild Gläser            $20
Amy Lennox doesn't know quite what to expect when she and her mother pick up and leave Germany for Scotland, heading to her mother's childhood home of Lennox House on the island of Stormsay. Amy's grandmother, Lady Mairead, insists that Amy must read while she resides at Lennox House—but not in the usual way. It turns out that Amy is a book jumper, able to leap into a story and interact with the world inside. As thrilling as Amy's new power is, it also brings danger: someone is stealing from the books she visits, and that person may be after her life.

Three Cheers for Women! by Marcia Williams       $30
The wonderfully idiosyncratic Marcia Williams illustrates the lives of over 70 inspirational women in comic-book style. 

I Am Thunder and I Won't Keep Quiet by Muhammad Khan       $20
Fifteen-year-old Muzna Saleem is passionate about writing and dreams of becoming a novelist. There's just one problem - her super-controlling parents have already planned her life out for her: Step 1) Get educated Step 2) Qualify as a doctor Step 3) Marry a cousin from Pakistan. Oh, and boyfriends are totally haram. No one is more surprised than shy Muzna when schoolmate Arif Malik takes an interest in her.

The Colossus of New York by Colson Whitehead        $28
A channeling of sorts of the thoughts and experiences, hopes and disappointments of long-time and new residents of New York. From the author of The Underground Railroad. 
"A tour de force." - The New York Times

The One Inside by Sam Shepard       $35
When a man realises he is ayear older than his father was when he died, he is thrown into the fugue of memories and re-configured experience. Foreword by Patti Smith.
"The narrator seeks authenticity, even as he creates art and artifice as a metier. Masculinity and its perils, the primitive drama of sibling and father-son rivalry, are the wellsprings of Shepard's work." - The New York Times 

Dyschronia by Jennifer Mills          $35
One morning, the residents of a small coastal town somewhere in Australia wake to discover the sea has disappeared. One among them has been plagued by troubling visions of this cataclysm for years. Is she a prophet? Does she have a disorder that skews her perception of time? Or is she a gifted and compulsive liar? 
"This is a novel that is daring, original and ambitious. And in its near-apocalyptic vision, there’s an awful beauty but also a cautious hope." - The Australian

Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakama            $23
A boy is smitten with a woman who works at his local supermarket, but when he tells his friend of his crush his visits end and so, in some ways, does his childhood. 

The Secret Kingdom: Nek Chand, a changing India, and a hidden world of art by Barb Rosenstock and Claire Nivola        $28
A picture book telling the story of the man who built the astounding sculpture park and rock gardens in Chandigarh. 
>> A virtual tour. 

Potter's Boy by Tony Mitton         $22
Ryo witnesses a lone warrior scare bandits away from the village in which he has grown up, and sets his heart on training to become like the hero he saw. He has much to learn. 

Witchborn by Nicholas Bowling          $19
It's 1577. When her mother is burned at the stake for witchcraft, Alyce flees to London. But it isn't just witchfinders she has to worry about. Powerful political forces are also on her trail, dragging her into the feud between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. As Alyce struggles to understand her own powers, she is drawn into a web of secrets, lies and dark magic that will change the fate of England.

The Book of Seeds: A life-size guide to six hundred species from around the world by Paul Smith        $70
An awe-inspiring survey to the planet's botanical diversity, with both life-size and much-greater-than-life-size photographs. 

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver Sacks, and me by Bill Hayes       $22

A tender and insightful portrayal of neurologist Oliver Sacks, and of the grief his partner felt after his death. Now in paperback. 

What's Your Favourite Colour? by Eric Carle et al         $19
Leading children's illustrators use their favourite colour and tell us why they like it. 

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BOOKS @ VOLUME #59  (27.1.18)

Books read and to read. 

The Iron Age by Arja Kajermo  {Reviewed by STELLA} The Iron Age is a charming but needle-sharp novel exploring post-war Finland and the economic and emotional fallout which impacts a family through generations. The semi-autobiographical story takes us into the heart, often a cold heart, of a rural family and their struggle through poverty and migration. The third child, a girl, is our narrator. At three, she has learnt to keep clear of her father who easily rages, is isolated from her mother who is too busy working in the fields and keeping on the right side of her mother-in-law who rules the roost, and is ousted from the company of her two older brothers who are a team that doesn’t need or want a little sister - although they all stick together, hiding behind the stone oven or making themselves scarce when Father loses his temper. The story starts in a fairy-tale manner with woe and misfortune being visited upon the family through their own or others' misconduct. A witch comes a-calling, and when the young girl hides rather than offers her coffee, the error is noted by grandmother: “She sat down heavily.This is bad news, she said, wiping her hands on her apron, bad news indeed.” Grandmother is tough - she oversees the farm and family, brokering no dissent. There are constant fights, with Father announcing he knows best - he’s been to agricultural college - yet he constantly comes unstuck, through his arrogance, unrealistic plans and lack of luck. The solution to the altercations: migration to Sweden. Father travels to find work, leaving Mother with four children and strict instructions. Soon the family, minus the oldest son Tapio who is left with grandmother to keep his father's stake in the family farm, move to Sweden. The second part of the book lays out the life of a migrant family, isolated from wider family and community support, struggling with a different culture and a new language. Our child falls further into herself and the world of tales, hardly a speaker in either Finnish or Swedish. “There was a strange safety in not saying anything. It was like being very small inside a very big bomb shelter and looking out at a very angry man. And I was not afraid.” This is a novel about resilience, about three strong women who find their own ways to survive. Grandmother, widowed early in life, fiercely keeps her independence; mother, trying to keep on the right side of her erratic husband, finally and quietly triumphs; and the girl finds refuge in her imagination, words (her own silent ones) and stories. It's a story about a country that lost a war and was humiliated by history. A story about the far-reaching shadows of war that stretch beyond carnage on the battlefield into the hearts and daily lives of generations of families. Delightfully illustrated by the author's niece, Susanna Kajermo Törner, this novel is deceptively simple, insightful, and says more in its few pages than many award-winning magnum opuses about the impact of war and the resultant sense of disconnection, either personal or political. Published by the excellent small Irish publisher Tramp Press, it has been winning accolades and was recently long-listed for the prestigious Republic of Consciousness Prize.

This week's Book of the Week is Go Went, Gone, Jenny Erpenbeck's subtle and insightful novel exploring the ways in which a retired academic is changed by learning more about the refugees who have arrived in his city. 

>> Read Stella's review. 

>> "A powerful response to the refugee crisis."

>> "What happens when you're only seen [i.e.seen only] as a refugee?"

>> A quarterly interview.

>> At the Library of Congress.

>> Other Jenny Erpenbooks at VOLUME. 

A few other books on the refugee crisis:

Charges by Elfreide Jelinek (reviewed by Thomas)

Mediterranean by Armin Greder (a powerful wordless picture book)

Violent Borders: Refugees and the right to move by Reece Jones

Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbours by Slavoj Žižek

I Can Only Tell You What My Eyes See by Giles Duley

Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah

Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System by Alexander Betts and Paul Collier

The New Odyssey: A history of Europe's refugee crisis by Patrick Kingsley

Crossing the Sea: With the Syrians on the exodus to Europe by Wolfgang Bauer

The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon

Illegal by Eion Colfer, Andrew Donkin and Giovanni Rigano

The Right to Have Rights by Alastair Hunt, Stephanie DeGooyer, Werner Hamacher, Samuel Moyn and Astra Taylor 

Robinson by Jack Robinson   {Reviewed by THOMAS} When Robinson Crusoe in Daniel Defoe’s novel of the same name discovers the footprint of a stranger on the margins of the island he considers his domain, he builds defences and prepares violence. He wants to keep for himself his table, made with his own hands, his rude bowl, likewise, and his parasol - which publication of the his eponymous novel would create a fashion for in England - but even more he wants to keep for himself the puritanical practices of useful labour, useful thought and self-restraint - he made a very small amount of rum last for ten years! - that are both the expression and the perpetuation of his isolation. He remains sealed to all that is not him. When given the opportunity, upon a suitably disadvantaged other, he shows himself prepared to teach but not to learn. The propagation of Defoe’s novel as an English classic over the centuries has both epitomised and contributed to a particularly noxious strand of Anglo-Saxon masculinity compounded of an arrogance and a superiority complex on the one hand and a concomitant deep insecurity and fear on the other, resulting in an instinct to build defences and prepare violence. Jack Robinson, in this quick and subtle little book, not only sketches the deleterious effect upon English society of this thread of Englishness, leading to the Brexit vote resulting from the projection of threat onto difference (“Robinson’s question: why are there not more crazy people running amok with machetes or second-hand Kalashnikovs?”), but also traces the literary offspring of Ur-Crusoe, so to call him: Robinsons in books by Franz Kafka, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Muriel Spark and others, and in the films of Patrick Keillor, each either or both perpetuating or degrading the character with whom they are inescapably associated, and ultimately, collectively, dissolving and erasing the ethos he represents, or, in any rate, moving towards such dissolution or erasure. Jack Robinson, one of the last of the literary Robinsons, is the author of a number of quick and subtle little books, although in this one he appears more as a companion, or sidekick, albeit an enigmatic one, of the man he is the pseudonymous alter-ego of, Charles Boyle (responsible for, among other things, the eye-wateringly wonderful CB Editions (the publisher of, among other books, those of Jack Robinson)), evidently the narrator of this book, packed as it is, or seems to be, with slices of Boyle's fine-grained memoir, but curiously attributing authorship to another version of himself who appears in it, almost grudgingly, in the third person (or is Boyle ventriloquising Robinson ventriloquising Boyle writing of Robinson? (Well, yes, but where do you stop?)). The literary bloodlines, or bloodlesslines, or inklines, or whatever, of double-yolked identities are also examined, from Defoe’s Crusoe and Friday through Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon to Lars Iyer’s W. and Lars, and, of course, ultimately, to the bastard doubles Robinson and the (here-unnamed) Boyle. What is the relationship between these pairs of men (and between them and their authors), and why are they so concerned with what we might, without, these days, descending to an exclusively religious connotation, term the End Times? Given the cultural pedigree manifesting as the collective paranoia of Brexit and Trump, it is no wonder that there are people running amok (with machetes or whatever), but Robinson’s question pertains: it is a wonder there are not more.

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck  {Reviewed by THOMAS} Erpenbeck's writing is spare, subtle and evocative. By building intricate webs of sensed and particularised detail, she conjures the presences of the sequence of residents of a lakeside country house near Berlin, each carried there and borne away by the impersonal (or are they personal?) forces of twentieth century German history. By narrowing her focus in this way and eschewing grand action and encounter, she manages to reground history in the personal and the quotidian, which is, after all, where it is experienced as it happens. These accounts of lives clutched at and dissolved are alternated with descriptions of an unnamed gardener patiently working with the seasons in the garden or on the house until the whole place falls apart with nature and dry rot. Erpenbeck’s writing is like a memory so intense it casts off from the time it is remembered in and gains the immediacy of actual experience. >> Jenny Erpenbeck is the author of Go, Went, Gone, this week's Book of the Week.

NEW RELEASES
Reasons to keep reading.

The Cage by Lloyd Jones         $38
Two mysterious strangers turn up at a hotel in a small country town. Where have they come from? Who are they? What catastrophe are they fleeing? The townspeople want answers, but the strangers are unable to speak of their trauma. Before long, wary hospitality shifts to suspicion and fear, and the care of the men slides into appalling cruelty. 
"Jones is a daring writer who can relied upon to ignore expectation." - The Guardian

The Only Story by Julian Barnes         $35
Is it preferable to love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn’t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he’s proud of the fact his relationship with an older woman flies in the face of social convention. As he himself grows older, however, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.

Feel Free by Zadie Smith         $40
A new collection of essays. No subject is too fringe or too mainstream to be made fascinating. How much joy can a person tolerate? How many kinds of boredom make up a life? Should Justin Bieber be more like Socrates? 
>> "I have a very messy and chaotic mind." 

Man With a Seagull on His Head by Harriet Paige        $30
Under the summer sun on the Essex coast a gull falls from the sky and strikes an unassuming local council worker sitting on the beach below. From that moment on he is obsessed, a crazed visionary repeatedly depicting the scene and the unknown figure within in it which filled his view at the moment of impact. Can he reach the object of his obsession through his art?
"A precious and strange thing. A bona fide gem. A book that would be a credit to any short list." - The Guardian

Speak Gigantular by Irenosen Okojie           $28
A startling short story collection, riffing surreally on everyday realities of London life, using difference as a point of access into wholly new ways of thinking and feeling. 
"Okojie has a sharp eye for the twisting stories of the city, and a turn of phrase that switches from elegance to brutality in a single line. Lovely stuff." - Stella Duffy

A Most Elegant Equation: Euler's formula and the beauty of mathematics by David Stipp         $45

e^iπ + 1 = 0 is regarded as the most beautiful equation in mathematics, and describes the connection between fundamental numbers in terms of basic operations. Leonhard Euler, the eighteenth century Swiss mathematician who devised it, was also responsible for other formulae of great elegance and usefulness (in mathematics, elegance = usefulness), and for the exploring the applications of π. 

Free Hand: New typography sketchbooks by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico         $60
Browse the workbooks of leading contemporary typographer and hand-letterers. Plenty of inspiration here. 

The Invisible Rider by Kirsten McDougall          $25
Philip Fetch is a lawyer with an office in a suburban shopping mall, a husband and father, and a cyclist on Wellington’s narrow and winding streets. He is also a man who increasingly finds simple things in life baffling. As he moves through the sometimes alarming and sometimes comical episodes of this novel, a break in the hurtling flow of events looms ahead. Is it safe for Philip to pull out and pass? The first book from the author of the wonderful Tess.
"Charming, heart-wrenching and funny. McDougall imbues her book with a lovely optimism and an infectious affection for her characters; this is a writer to watch."  – Louise O’Brien, NZ Listener
"Quirky, playful and finally moving."  – Lawrence Jones, Otago Daily Times
"Fetch has the ability to grapple with the borders of his life with a melancholy that belongs to us all, with a deceptive simplicity that sounds as if it is coming from his wisest self. The stories capture the delicacy of human feelings and relationships." – Takahē

The Lost Pages by Marija Peričić       $23
In the margins of his definitive 3-volume biography of Franz Kafka, Reiner Stach assembled and wrote Is That Kafka?, a compilation of 99 'finds' that demonstrate a Kafka different from the general sterotype. In her novel The Lost Pages, Peričić goes further, pulling Kafka and his friend and executor Max Brod well over the threshhold into fiction. Hers is a Kafka and a Brod liberated from the burdens of biographical fact and therefore able to play out the metaphorical dramas that have always been within their potential. 
>> On writing The Lost Pages. 

The Mediterranean by Armin Greder       $33
A moving and powerful wordless picture book from the author of The Island, challenging us to consider our attitudes towards refugees. 

Lullaby by Leila Slimani            $33
When a seemingly perfect nanny commits a horrendous crime, the lives and choices of a high-flying lawyer and her husband come under scrutiny. 
Winner of the Prix Goncourt. 
"A truly horrific, sublime thriller, this tense, deftly written novel about a perfect nanny’s transition into a monster will take your breath away." - The Guardian

T is For Tumbling by Julie Morstad              $25
Delightful alphabet cards, with a whimsy with great appeal for a thoughtful child. 

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders        $22
Two childhood friends are thrown back together as adults under an imminent apocalypse: one as part of a group of cutting-edge scientists, the other as part of a group of magicians working to repair the world's ailments. Together, will they save the world or destroy it? Anders has been compared with David Mitchell and Ursula Le Guin. 
"Dazzling... Profound... Wondrous. Charlie Jane Anders darts and soars, with dazzling aplomb, throwing lightning bolts of literary style that shimmer with enchantment or electrons." - Michael Chabon
"All the Birds in the Sky has the hallmarks of an instant classic. It's a beautifully written, funny, tremendously moving tale that explodes the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy, YA and 'mainstream' fiction." - Los Angeles Times

Seeing Ourselves: Women's self-portraits by Frances Borzello       $40

Blowfish's Oceanopedia: 291 extraordinary things you didn't know about the sea by Blowfish       $37
But soon will.

The Story of Shit by Midas Dekkers          $38
With all our efforts at discretion and hygiene have we lost touch with our important natural function of excretion? An interesting history of faeces, from its time in the bowel to the great diversity of customs and etiquettes that humans have devised to address it. 

House of Snow: An anthology of the greatest writing about Nepal by Ranulph Fiennes et al       $40
50 excerpts from fiction and non-fiction, assembled to raise funds to rebuild after the 2015 earthquake. 

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown         $17
A castaway robot learns to get on with the animal inhabitants of a small island. What happens when nature and technology collide? 

The Feather by Margaret Wild and Freya Blackwood       $28
When a great feather drifts from the leaden sky, two children recognise its extraordinariness and take it to the village for its protection. The villagers, however, want to encase it, upon which the feather loses its radiance. The children take it home and care for it through the night. In the morning it is again radiant, and when they set it free it leaves behind the first signs of blue sky and colour. 

Significant Others: Creativity and intimate partnership by Whitney Chadwick and Isabelle de Courtivron         $22
What trace of an artist's relationships can be found within their work? To what extent can a partner be a creative intermediary between the isolated self and the wider world? In what ways could artists' works have been different if their private lives had been differently structured?

Little Nothing by Marisa Silver        $22
A child is scorned for her physical deformity but has the ability to transform those around her and to cross the border between the human and animal worlds in this inventive novel drawing on folktale motifs. Now in paperback. 
"Little Nothing celebrates not only the unruly and lost parts of all our lives but also the possibility of their reordering and comprehension." - Los Angeles Times

Collusion: How Russia helped Trump win the White House by Luke Harding        $33
Back in stock.

Bygone Badass Broads: 52 forgotten women who changed the world by Mackenzi Li and Petra Eriksson         $35
Women from ancient times to the present (most of whom you haven't heard of) who went further than most to confront and overthrow the limitations placed upon them due to their gender. 
>> The illustrator's website. 

When I Was Small by Sara O'Leary and Julie Morstad          $30
When Henry asks his mother to tell him about when she was small, she tells him that when she was small she used to sleep in a mitten, wear a daisy as a sunhat, and feast upon a single raspberry. 

Where's Jane? Find Jane Austen hidden in her stories by Rebecca Smith        $23
An enjoyable introduction to the works and times of Jane Austen, in the form of a literary Where's Wally?

The Very Short Story Starter: 101 flash fiction prompts for creative writing by John Gillard         $35
Useful and fun, this workbook will help you think about your writing in different ways, and find ways to incorporate it into your daily routines. 

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert           $23
When Alice's grandmother, the author of some books of very dark fairy tales, dies, her mother is kidnapped by someone seemingly from a world where those stories are true. What is Alice to do? 

"Terrifying, magical, and surprisingly funny, The Hazel Wood is one of the very best books I've read in years." - Jennifer Niven 

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones           $37
An unjust imprisonment destabilises an ostensibly exemplary relationship. 
"Tayari Jones is blessed with vision to see through to the surprising and devastating truths at the heart of ordinary lives, strength to wrest those truths free, and a gift of language to lay it all out, compelling and clear." - Michael Chabon

Clash of the Titians: Old Masters trump cards by Mikkel Sommer Christensen       $22
Pit 32 Old Masters against each other in a trump card battle encompassing hundreds of years of art history.

A Far Away Magic by Amy Wilson        $18
When Angel moves to a new school after the death of her parents, she isn't interested in making friends. Until she meets Bavar - a strange boy, tall, awkward and desperate to remain unseen, but who seems to have a kind of magic about him. Everyone and everything within Bavar's enchanted house is urging him to step up and protect the world from a magical rift through which monsters are travelling, the same monsters that killed Angel's parents. But Bavar doesn't want to follow the path that's been chosen for him - he wants to be normal, to disappear. From the author of A Girl Called Owl. 

Mice in the City: New York and London by Ami Shin      $30 each
The landmarks of the cities turn out to be crammed with tiny busy mice (and the odd cat). Large format. Lots of fun. 

The Mystery Mansion: Storytelling card game by Lucille Clerc       $30
A beautifully presented myriorama - arrange the elements of the story in any of a vast number of permutations, each a different story.

A Maori Word a Day: 365 words to kick-start your reo by Hemi Kelly           $30
Build real familiarity with key words and their usage. 

Mezza (Card game) by Thomas Michael        $25
Quirky and fun, this variation of 'Shithead' is made even more exciting by the addition of mathematically very powerful '1/2' cards.

26.1.19

Books read and books to read.
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BOOKS @ VOLUME #58  (20.1.18)

This week's Book of the Week might help you understand what is wrong with the world, and possibly even help you think of ways in which it could be better. Yanis Varoufakis, author of Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, A brief history of capitalism, was the Greek Finance Minister who led negotiations with Greece's creditors (chiefly the IMF and the German-dominated Eurogroup) and decided to stand down rather than continue in a compromised position against their intransigence. He is currently Professor of Economics at the University of Athens. This book was written to answer his fourteen-year-old daughter's question, "Why is there so much inequality?"

>> Varoufakis is a co-founder of the Democracy in Europe (DiEM25) movement. 

>> Varoufakis is a tireless speaker and campaigner for a more equal society. 

>> Varoufakis and his daughter Xenia. 

>> A potted history of Varoufakis and the Syriza government. 

>> "Capitalism is ending because it has made itself obsolete."

>> On Brexit, the rise of nationalism, and other ills. 

>> "Capitalism will eat democracy."

{Review by STELLA}

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible is a fascinating account of the surreal world of modern-day Russia. Peter Pomerantsev, the son of Russian emigres, lived in Moscow working in television throughout the first decade of the 2000s. It was a time of oil, mega-wealth for the few, the politics of Putin, and opportunities for those who were not averse to corruption and bribes. In the light of today’s political landscape of fake news and generated media, it comes as no surprise that Russia under is a dab hand at this and has been for a while, and has no qualms about making this obvious. Pomerantsev takes us on a journey into the heart of the strangely real Moscow through his eyes and the people he meets. It’s a society where a gangster can create a hit crime series (Vitali Dyomochka, a Siberian hoodlum, dissatisfied with the crime dramas on Russian television made his own series, starring his henchmen, real bullets and blood). It’s a place where young women either seek rich husbands at the clubs (if they can bribe someone to let them in) or 'mistress' status, which comes with a flat and 24-hour availability. The clubs are flashy and the men are members of the elite who have profited from the downfall of the Soviet Union. It’s a society in which laws change on a whim, where one moment you can be a successful businesswoman and the next in prison for illegally trading in a chemical now labelled as a ‘drug’. It is a society where you want to avoid conscription: young men are rounded up for military service training - an exercise in power, violence and extortion. It's a society in which buildings are torn down to make way for new glittering high-rises that no one can afford: architecture that serves as a symbol of this new crass wealth and a means of money laundering. The lives of these Muscovites are so bizarre you know they must be true. Told in an anecdotal style, Pomerantsev adds integrity and insight with his knowledge of Russian politics and economics, making Nothing is True and Everything is Possible a captivating and frightening study of corruption, fake news and the post-modern dictatorship à la Putin and Trump.

Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz    {Reviewed by THOMAS} If a thought is thought it must be thought through to its end. This formula is productive both of great misery and of great literature, but, for most people, either consequence is fairly easily avoided through a simple lack of tenacity or focus, or through fear. Unfortunately, we are not all so easily saved from ourselves by such shortcomings. The narrator of Ariana Harwicz’s razor-fine novel Die, My Love finds herself living in the French countryside with a husband and young child, incapable of feeling anything other than displaced in every aspect of her life, both trapped by and excluded from the circumstances that have come to define her. She both longs for and is revolted by family life with her husband and child, the violence of her ambivalences make her incapable of either accepting or changing a situation about which there is nothing ostensibly wrong, she withdraws into herself, and, as the gap separating herself from the rest of existence widens, her attempts to bridge it become both more desperate and more doomed, further widening the gap. Every detail of everything around her causes her pain and harms her ability to feel anything other than the opposite of the way she feels she should feel. This negative electrostatic charge, so to call it, builds and builds but she is unable to discharge it, to return her situation to ‘normal’, to relieve the torment. In some ways, the support and love of her husband make it harder to regain a grip on ‘reality’ - if her husband had been a monster, her battles could have been played out in their home rather than inside her (it is for this reason, perhaps, that people subconsciously choose partners who will justify the negative feelings towards which they are inclined). The narrator feels more affinity with animals than with humans, she behaves erratically or not at all, she becomes obsessed with a neighbour but the encounters with him that she describes, and the moments of self-obliterative release they provide, are, I would say, entirely fantasised. Between these fantasies and ‘objective reality’, however, falls a wide area about which we and she must remain uncertain whether her perceptions, understandings and reactions are accurate or appropriate. At times the narrator’s love for her child creates small oases of anxiety in her depression, but these become rarer. Harwicz’s writing is exquisite, both sensitive and brutal, both lucid and claustrophobic, her observations both subtle and overwhelming (Sample #1 / Sample #2). As the narrator loses her footing, the writer ensures that we are borne with her on through the novel, an experience not dissimilar to gathering speed downhill in a runaway pram*.  * Not a spoiler.

NEW RELEASES
Books either anticipated or surprising - just out of the carton.

We That Are Young by Preti Taneja        $38
A sprawling but incisive retelling of King Lear, set against a backdrop of tradition, misogyny and corruption in modern India.
Long-listed for the Republic of Consciousness Prize.  
>> Modern rewritings of King Lear tend to have Lear the CEO of a corporation. See also Dunbar by Edward St. Aubyn. 

Peach by Emma Glass      $27
"Slip the pin through the skin. Start stitching. It doesn't sting. It does bleed. White thread turns red. Red string. Going in. Going out. I pull. Tug. Tug the pin. In. Out. Out. Out. Blackout. Something has happened to Peach. It hurts to walk but she staggers home to parents that don't seem to notice. They can't keep their hands off each other and, besides, they have a new infant, sweet and wobbly as a jelly baby. Peach must patch herself up alone so she can go to college and see her boyfriend, Green. But sleeping is hard when she is haunted by the gaping memory of a mouth, and working is hard when burning sausage fat fills her nostrils, and eating is impossible when her stomach is swollen tight as a drum."
"An immensely talented young writer. Her fearlessness renews one's faith in the power of literature. Peach is a strange and original work of art that manages to be both genuinely terrifying and undeniably joyful" - George Saunders

Letters to the Lady Upstairs by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis         $28
Letters written between 1909 and 1919 to Madame Marie Williams, the upstairs neighbour to his elegant apartment at 102 Boulevard Haussmann, revealing his concerns with his health and with noise (that harp!), in a mix of elegance and haste, refinement and convolution, gravity and self-mockery.
>> Lydia Davis on translating Proust's letters. 

The Blind Owl, And other stories by Sadeq Hedayat           $17
One of the foremost works of modern Iranian literature, The Blind Owl tells the story of an unnamed pen case painter, the narrator, who sees in his macabre, feverish nightmares that "the presence of death annihilates all that is imaginary. We are the offspring of death and death delivers us from the tantalizing, fraudulent attractions of life; it is death that beckons us from the depths of life. If at times we come to a halt, we do so to hear the call of death. Throughout our lives, the finger of death points at us." The narrator addresses his murderous confessions to the shadow on his wall resembling an owl. His confessions do not follow a linear progression of events and often repeat and layer themselves thematically, allowing for an open-ended interpretation of the story.

Risography: Loving imperfections by Carolina Amell      $65
An excellent selection of works demonstrating the scope, characteristics and quirks of this printmaking process.
>> Risography explained and demonstrated. 

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin           $17
Fear (as opposed to anxiety, terror, horror, angst and its other cousins) clarifies perception and heightens the significance of details, much as does good writing, building an electrostatic charge which almost craves, yet ultimately resists, the release offered by the revelation of the feared. Schweblin’s short novel is like a Van de Graaff generator, building a textual charge that can be felt up the spine long after the book is finished. Now in paperback. 
Shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. 

Classic Food of Northern Italy by Anna Del Conte         $45
Recipes for dishes both familiar and surprising, both rustic and sophisticated, from restaurants and farmsteads, from city and country; all authentic and delicious. 
"Beyond doubt, the best writer on Italian food." - Nigella Lawson
"Anna is a purist. She will not countenance anything that isn't in the strictest sense authentic." - Delia Smith

The Medici by Mary Hollingsworth         $65
Argues that, far from being benign protocapitalist patrons of culture, the Medici were as devious and immoral as the Borgias, that they in fact despised the Florentines and beggared the city in their lust for power and wealth. 
"Vividly told." - The Times

China: A history in objects by Jessica Harrison-Hall        $65
A stunning visual history told in 6000 artefacts and objects. 

Massive, Expressive, Sculptural: Brutalism now and then by Chris van Uffelen      $85
An overview of post-war and contemporary brutalist buildings and of the relationship - in appearance and design, in the grand concepts and the smallest details - between brutalism today and its ancestors.

Barbara Hepworth: The sculptor in the studio by Sophie Bowness       $35
Trewyn Studio in St Ives, and especially the garden that Hepworth shaped there, was the primary and ideal context in which her sculptures were viewed. Following Hepworth's death in 1975, the studio was opened as the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Mister Monkey by Francine Prose        $33
An engaging comedy about Mister Monkey, a screwball children's musical about a playfully larcenous pet chimpanzee (and not a monkey), the kind of 'family favorite' that has certainly seen better days. The novel is told from the viewpoints of wildly unreliable, seemingly disparate characters whose lives become deeply connected as the madcap narrative unfolds. 
"Beautifully crafted, incisively written. What elevates this novel is Prose's ability to let us see into the heart of each character, to render each so vulnerably human, so achingly real in just a few short paragraphs." - Minneapolis Star Tribune 

Inside Madeleine by Paula Bomer       $32
A collection of raw but unflinching stories, all examining the complexities of women's relationships with and through their bodies.
"Bomer offers her characters no outs only the creeping sense that they're doomed to swing forever between futile attempts at self-determination." - The New York Times
 "Reading Paula Bomer is like being attacked by a rabid dog - and feeling grateful for it. This is some of the rawest and most urgent writing I can remember encountering." - Jonathan Franzen

The Leveller Revolution: Radical political organisation in England, 1640-1650 by John Rees          $25
The Levellers comprised one of the earliest modern social movements, agitating for equality first against the Monarchy and then against Cromwell. An interesting and well-written study of one of the roots of modern democracy. Now in paperback. 
"A scrupulously researched, carefully told narrative and a work of impressive scholarship." - Spectator

A Hero for High Times: A young reader's guide to the Beats, Hippies, Freaks, Punks, Ravers, New-Age Travellers and Dog-on-a-Rope Brew Crew Crusties of the British Isles, 1956-1994 by Ian Marchant        $40
A personal and enlightening guide to subculture history. 

Red Star Over Russia: A revolution in visual culture by Natalia Sidlina and Matthew Gale       $22
A good introduction to the correlation between political change and visual media, well illustrated with photomontage, photographs, paintings, handwritten notes, books, enclosures and ephemera.
>> Draws on the 250000 pieces of art and ephemera from the David King Collection. 
>> And inside the collector's home (he also collected Sunmaid Raisin packets). 

Counting on Snow by Maxwell Newhouse        $16
A lovely Arctic counting book in which the animals are gradually obscured by snow. 

Oneida: From free love Utopia to the well-set table by Ellen Wayland-Smith        $28
How did a radical religious community practising open sexual relations become a manufacturer of silver cutlery and a bastion of  conservative American values? Bizarre. 

The Future Won't Be Long by Jarett Kobek         $37
New York in the late 80s and early 90s: a city of club kids, drag queens, artists and junkies; the urban laboratory where identities are being reinvented for the new millennium.
"The Great New York City Novel has been loudly attempted and proclaimed so many times, one is tempted to assume it simply couldn't exist. Yet, with piercing intelligence, vitality, hilarity, and a rather startling sweetness, Jarett Kobek has done it. Staggering." - Matthew Specktor 
"A novel that not only dissects with consummate skill the cultural life of fin-de-siecle New York, but finds there the early symptoms of our contemporary malignancy." - James Purdon, Observer
"An inspired evocation of the last days of the underground empire, before the fall." - Chris Kraus 

Little Mouse and the Red Wall by Britta Teckentrup        $30
Sometimes we find that the walls that keep us from freedom are not as substantial as we had thought. Little Mouse and his animal friends have something to learn about the wall between them and the outside world. 

Hello World: A celebration of languages and curiosities by Jonathan Litton        $33
Make friends around the world with this lift-the-flap board book. 

White Trash: The 400-year untold history of class in America by Nancy Isenberg       $28
The United Sates' treatment of poor whites has been almost as shameful as its treatment of Blacks and Hispanics. This book, now in paperback, traces the roots of the disaffection that has manifest itself in the US's current woes. 

Reinventing the Wheel: Milk, microbes and the fight for real cheese by Bronwen and Francis Percival           $35
In little more than a century, the drive towards industrial and intensive farming has altered every aspect of the cheesemaking process, from the bodies of the animals that provide the milk to the science behind the microbial strains that ferment it. This book explores what has been lost, but is also enthusiastic for what can be reclaimed: artisanal processes and the associated microbial structures that provide flavours not otherwise achievable. 

Radical Happiness: Moments of collective joy by Lynne Segal          $27
Is it possible to overthrow the mindset that makes happiness an individualised commodity and make it instead a collective mode of action? 

Fables by Arnold Lobel            $22
A crocodile admires the orderly pattern of flowers on his bedroom wallpaper. When confronted with the riot of flowers in Mrs. Crocodile's garden he retreats to his bed in distress, where he is comforted by the neat floral rows of the wallpaper. After that he seldom leaves his bed, becoming a sickly shade of green. The moral: "Without a doubt, there is such a thing as too much order." 

An instant favourite: twenty cheerful fables, wonderfully illustrated. 

Animation Studio by Helen Piercy          $33
Everything (including the film set!) a child needs to create stop-motion videos on a mobile phone or digital camera.

Feed the Resistance: Recipes + ideas for getting involved by Julia Turshen      $30
When people search for ways to resist injustice and express support for civil rights, environmental protections, and more, they begin by gathering around the table to talk and plan. What should you give them to eat? Useful. 

A Note of Explanation: A little tale of secrets and enchantment from Queen Mary's dolls' house by Vita Sackville-West, illustrated by Kate Baylay            $35
A hitherto unpublished work commissioned in 1924 for the library of Queen Mary's Dolls' House, beautifully illustrated in period style. 

>> Visit the dolls' house. 

A LIST OF LISTS
Browse some of the themed booklists issued by VOLUME in 2017.

The Booker 6

The Booker dozen

Books on the Brain

Featured publisher: CB Editions

Cultivate your mind with 10 gardening books

Featured publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions

Featured publisher: Les Fugitives

Featured publisher: Hard Press

How Jewish is that?

Lions have all the best books!

Literary Horses

Long Suffrage

Featured publisher: Maungatua Press

Novels retelling legends from Ancient Greece

Object Lessons

Ockham Book Awards

Quirky Books for Dull Days

Rebel Girls

Recent books on Russian history

School holiday wolves

Short Short Short Short Short

Ten Trees

Understanding America

Unstopped Text

VOLUME EDITIONS

The Wellcome Prize


From the VOLUME GIFT SELECTOR:

 >> List #1: COOKBOOKS

>> List #2: POLITICS

>> List #3: BIOGRAPHY

>> List #4: SCIENCE

>> List #5: POETRY

>> List #6: FICTION

>> List #7: HISTORY

>> List #8: CHILDREN'S NON-FICTION

>> List #9: CHILDREN'S AND YOUNG ADULTS' FICTION

>> List #10 VISUAL CULTURE

BOOKS @ VOLUME #57 (13.1.18)

Find out what we've been reading and recommending. 

The stories in László Krasnahorkai's The World Goes On, this week's Book of the Week at VOLUME, convey the simultaneous striving and resignation of lives lived as a sort of ongoing eventless apocalypse (so to call it).

>> Read Thomas's Review.

>> "The narrators in The World Goes On find themselves wandering in a world of forgotten revelations and corrupted messages, blindly groping toward ineffable essences that forever remain out of reach."

>> "This collection – a masterpiece of invention, utterly different from everything else – is hugely unsettling and affecting: to meet Krasznahorkai’s characters, to read his breathless, twisting sentences, is to feel altered."

>> "It's as though there's a black hole hiding behind the pages."

>> Read a sample story, 'Downhill on a Forest Road'.

>> Read another, 'Chasing Waterfalls'. 

>> Krasznahorkai was awarded the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. 

>> What are the advantages, disadvantages and dangers of translation?

>> "Reality examined to the point of madness." 

>> Between theatre and reality (recommended interview).

>> Krasznahorkai's novel Satantango was made into a 7-hour film by Hungarian master Bela Tarr. Tarr and Krasznahorkai have worked together on a number of occasions. 

>> The whale scene from The Melancholy of Resistance (filmed as The Werckmeister Harmonies by Bela Tarr) is revisited in one of the stories in The World Goes On. 

>> "The deepest loss is the loss of a culture of poverty. Nowadays we only have people who don't have money, but everyone has the same dream." 

>> The author's website. 

>> FaceBook, even. 

>> Is avoiding madness like avoiding a heart attack? 

>> "The sublimely startled appearance of a corpse reanimated with electric shocks." Warning: content may disturb. 

>> Krasznahorkai at VOLUME. 

{Review by STELLA}

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck is an insightful exploration of the refugee crisis seen through the eyes of Richard, a recently retired academic in Berlin. Adjusting to the end of work, widowhood and the days endlessly stretching in front of him, Richard finds himself contemplating his past more than his future. What was his purpose after all? A post-war child, he carries the stories of last century, the trauma of the war and the guilt of his parents' generation. Berlin, a city divided by a wall, has been his constant adult companion until 1990. He understands borders, and the impact they have when they exist and when they supposedly don’t. After a tent city at Alexanderplatz is demolished, Richard’s interest is piqued. Tracking down the African refugees at a temporary facility, he starts to record their stories, stories of poverty, violence and desperation. What the refugees want is to work, but until they are assessed and granted asylum they don’t qualify to work in Germany. In his attempts to help, he comes up against bureaucracy and legal loopholes, reminiscent of his own past in East Germany, which make him question the compassion of his contemporary homeland and meaning in his own life. In this exceptionally well-written and compelling novel, Erpenbeck explores race, identity and the notions of nationhood and ​borders, both personal and geographical.​

Review by STELLA

Aotearoa: The New Zealand story is an impressive illustrated history by children’s writer and illustrator Gavin Bishop. Beautiful to behold, each page contains a myriad of small details, snippets of information that build to give the reader a wealth of information and thoughtful consideration to how our history is told. Covering mythology, early migration, European exploration, the impact of colonisation, our flora and fauna, famous New Zealanders, what we ate and wore, how we lived and changed over time this is a book that simultaneously has great scope and an eye for microscopic detail. With such a broad scope and aimed at children, it’s not a definitive history, yet it successfully tells our story and gives us insights into areas that are often overlooked in more scholarly works. It’s heartening to see more than a cursory treatment of pre-European history, plenty of te reo Māori included seamlessly in the text (there’s a glossary at the back), to have the New Zealand Wars and its impact on Maori populations highlighted, alongside New Zealand’s place in the wider world during the two world wars of last century and the influence of post-war European migration on our ever-changing cultural landscape. And while there are some of the usual suspects on the 'famous people' pages, it’s great to see our best creative minds (writers, performers and artists) stepping out on their own pages. Running throughout the book is the importance of the land, its flora and fauna - and the responsibility we all have to ensure its environmental well-being. This is a delightful and informative book is for all ages - perfect as a family gift.

The World Goes On by László Krasnahorkai  {Reviewed by THOMAS} The mistake, or at least one of the mistakes, being made by each of the narrators of the stories that comprise Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s The World Goes On is thinking that the occurrences that constitute what they think of as their lives have anything to do with them, and, although they are themselves insufficient reason for these or any other occurrences, the narrators nevertheless find it impossible to extricate themselves, to absent themselves from the proceedings in which they find themselves caught up. The sentences that constitute their lives, for us at least, and what else have they got, are both a grasping for and, by the fact of this grasping, a separation from the circumstances of which they are aware, or that constitute their awareness, so to call it. The characters achieve neither fulfilment nor dissolution, wavering in their inclinations between the two impossibilities, they strive for the meaning of their situation, so to call it, the meaning each time withheld, or in any case ungrasped, the difference between withholding and nongrasping being irrelevant to the reader, as if meaning was something that could either be grasped or withheld, as if anything could signify anything other than itself. Krasznahorkai’s narrators are paralysed by their own ambivalences, they naturally incline, as we all do, both towards the partial, which can be sensed, which cannot be understood, and also towards the general, towards the totality, towards understanding but away from sense, towards the point at which those things that can be grasped are cancelled out by other things that are not grasped, the quest for understanding leading towards the point at which that which could be understood is extinguished, knowledge only becomes possible at the point at which there is no longer anything to know, the whole being not so much the sum of the parts as their nullification. There is no wisdom to be gained from this world. If you are leaving, there is nothing that you need to take, even if you could take anything, even if you could leave, but there is no such possible departure: “History has not ended, and nothing has ended; we can no longer delude ourselves by thinking that anything has ended with us. We merely continue something, maintaining it somehow; something continues, something survives.” The world goes on. “Nothing ever happens without antecedents, actually everything is just an antecedent, as if everything were just always preparing for something else that came before, as if it were preparing for something, but at the same time, an in an appalling manner, as if preparing without any final cumulative goal, so that everything is just a continually dying spark, everything is always striving towards a future that can never occur, what no longer exists strives towards what does not yet exist … nothing can be said beyond the fact that in addition to antecedents there are also consequences [a better translation might be ‘subsequences’], but not occurring in time.” Krasznahorkai, whose native medium is language, must express the paradoxical relationship between meaning and its impossibility through the failure of language to achieve the ends of language. Attempts to represent in language the incomprehensible events in which his narrators are immersed, and they exist only in language after all, result in the incomprehensibility of these events transferring to language itself. Agency becomes indeterminate, narrative position unstable, identity at once both overdefined and underdefined. Understanding is not gained, because it is impossible, but the usefulness of language for even its most straightforward functions is destabilised and suspicion is thrown upon it as an agent of estrangement and obfuscation that leaves us incapable of distinguishing reality from theatre. The virtuosity at which Krasznahorkai aims is almost unattainable. The closer language can be brought to resemble thought the more the shortcomings, or rather limitations, of both language and thought will be revealed. The thirty-page single sentence of ‘A Drop of Water’ is not so much linear, or even circular, as spherical, a thread of words looped endlessly over the surface of a droplet, always encountering itself and then moving on towards the next such encounter, never breaching the surface, and the fifty-three page sentence of ‘That Gargarin’, to my mind the best story in this collection, gradually reveals the insanity of its narrator, or leads him, and us, into this insanity. In his narratives and the tendencies of thought that they embody, Krasznahorkai frequently reaches into the general and towards the universal, presumably in order to demonstrate the futility of such an approach. Only the failure of the perfect, and therefore impossible, attempt can prove the impossibility of the task, but, in the struggle for better failures, is there a point at which the impossibility of the task begins to outweigh the shortcomings of the attempt, a point at which we begin to sense that our failures are existential rather than individual, a point at which we are released from personal into communal hopelessness?

THE NEWEST
NEW RELEASES

Robinson by Jack Robinson          $30
Written following the 2016 referendum in which the UK voted to quit the European Union, Robinson is in part a record of the disfiguring influence of Defoe’s novel on British education and culture. The latter-day Robinsons of Kafka, Céline, Patrick Keiller and others are surveyed, and Robinson himself as a fictional character – more ‘a sort of ghost’ – makes known his opinion of the author.
"Quirky and stylish, Robinson is Robinson’s witty and indefinable response to Brexit. Readers are taken on an erudite journey through the many different versions of Robinson Crusoe since the original 'father of all Crusoes' who 'built a wall and fortified it with guns'." - The Irish Times
"This is a very witty, quick-moving book. It has to be witty, because it is about the depressing, miserable condition of contemporary Britain. It has to be quick-moving, because it covers a lot of ground – vignettes, glimpses, quick recreations or summaries of many books, photographs, films. It's a book about literature (and much else) but free of the encumbering formalities of academic writing." - Christopher Palmer
>> Read an extract.

The Reservoir Tapes by Jon McGregor          $30
Eleven prequel stories of the characters appearing in the acclaimed Reservoir 13. 
"McGregor writes with such grace and precision, with love even, about who and where we are, that he leaves behind all other writers of his generation." - Sarah Hall

Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz           $30
A woman is beset by extreme ambivalences of every kind, particularly her longing for and revulsion by family life. If a thought is thought it must be thought until its end, and Harwicz maps the darkest (and most common) paths of thought sensitively in exquisite prose. 

Blue Land and City Noise: An Expressionist stroll through art and literature by Cathrin Klingsohr-Leroy      $60
A beautifully presented selections of Expressionist art and of the more-seldom-seen Expressionist literature, all claiming the value of a subjective response to the world. 

The Absence of Absalon by Simon Okotie        $28
An unnamed investigator investigates a series of disappearances: of his colleague, Marguerite; of Harold Absalon, the Mayor's transport advisor, whose disappearance Marguerite had been investigating prior to his own disappearance; of Richard Knox, the owner of the townhouse, who had fallen out with Absalon before disappearing; and of Absalon's wife Isobel. What is going on? How do objects stand in the way of understanding? A highly original approach to crime-fiction narrative. 
"This is literature as insanity, the mind stuck in an endless loop - focused, it would appear, too closely on the job at hand. The detective story as existential crisis took form with Beckett's Molloy more than 60 years ago; and the concept of the novel as crazed digression was first incarnated in Tristram Shandy, over 250 years ago. Okotie is in very good company - and has also set himself a high bar. He succeeds. Superbly. - Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian

Moving Kings by Joshua Cohen         $38
Twenty-one-year-olds Yoav and Uri, veterans of the last Gaza War, have just completed their compulsory military service in the Israel Defense Forces. In keeping with national tradition, they take a year off for rest, recovery, and travel. They come to New York City and begin working for Yoav’s distant cousin David King—a proud American patriot, Republican, and Jew, and the recently divorced proprietor of King’s Moving Inc, a heavyweight in the Tri-State area’s moving and storage industries. What starts off as a profitable if eerily familiar job—an “Occupation”—quickly turns violent when they encounter one homeowner seeking revenge.
"This is a book of brilliant sentences, brilliant paragraphs, brilliant chapters. There’s not a page without some vital charge — a flash of metaphor, an idiomatic originality, a bastard neologism born of nothing. Cohen is an extraordinary prose stylist." — James Wood, New Yorker

Do It the French Way by Daniel Gaujac       $45
As well as building the "hideous monstrosity" that has become France's foremost visual icon, Gustav Eiffel also build the Thuir Distillery in 1873, which was the origin of many of France's iconic aperitifs, including Pernod Absinthe, Byrrh, Lillet, Ricard and Suze. The first half of this book features photographs of the restored distillery, the second contains illustrated recipes from some of the world's foremost bartenders for cocktails based on these aperitifs. All in all a very pleasing book. 

Difficult Women by David Plante         $38
Pen portraits of the aged, alcoholic, Lear-like Jean Rhys; Sonia Orwell, George Orwell's widow, both exploiter and victim; and Germaine Greer, always ready to make a virtue of her difficulty. Plante writes revealingly throughout, revealingly often of himself.

A Wood of One's Own by Ruth Pavey         $33
What is the point of leaving London, seeking a piece of land upon which to plant a wood and then discovering the unromantic complexities of rural life if you do not also write a charming book about your experiences doing so? 

Ice by Anna Kavan          $33
A pleasing new hardback edition of Kavan's classic post-apocalyptic novel, described by Peter Owen as "a cross between Kafka and The Avengers". Inspired by the two years Kavan spent in New Zealand, which she constantly felt as close to the Antarctic, by the ice imagery common to heroin addiction (she overdosed in 1968, the year after Ice was published), and by a David Attenborough television documentary, Ice is a tale of obsession set in a world threatened by a vast ice sheet in the wake of a nuclear war. 
"There is nothing else like it. This ice is not psychological ice or metaphysical ice; here the loneliness of childhood has been magicked into a physical reality as hallucinatory as the Ancient Mariner's." - Doris Lessing

The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a global world by Maya Jasanoff        $70
Migration, terrorism, the tensions between global capitalism and nationalism, the promise and peril of a technological and communications revolution: these forces shaped the life and work of Joseph Conrad at the dawn of the twentieth century. 
"The Dawn Watch will win prizes, and if it doesn’t, there is something wrong with the prizes." - Guardian 

Revolutionary Yiddishland: A history of Jewish radicalism by Alain Brossat and Sylvie Klingberg        $23
Socialists, Communists, Bundists, Zionists, Trotskyists, manual workers and intellectuals: before the Holocaust decimated their numbers and laid waste to the land their radicalism addressed, the Jewish communities between Russia and the Baltic brought forth a swathe of new ideas compounded of idealism and doubt. The book examines what was lost, and what might have been. Now in paperback. 

Robot House by Peter Testa      $55
New applications and developments in robotics are transforming architectural practice (and theory too, for that matter). This book takes us to the forefront of design. 

Dawn of the New Everything: A journey through virtual reality by Jaron Lanier      $40
An account of the enormous paradigm shift implied by technological advances in the last three decades, advances that find us on the brink of wholly new ways of being and thinking. Written by one of the pioneers in the field. 
"A deeply human, highly personal and beautifully told story." - Dave Eggers

A Plea for the Animals by Matthieu Ricard        $40
The moral, philosophical and evolutionary imperatives for not only treating animals with compassion but also for recognising that they and we have common natures and concerns. 

Under the Knife: A history of surgery in 28 remarkable operations by Arnold van de Laar       $38
The history of surgery is one of conceptual revolutions as much as technical revolutions. 

Paladares: Recipes inspired by the private restaurants of Cuba by Anya von Bremzen and Megan Fawn Schlow     $60
Cuban cuisine is notable not only for the appreciation of 'ordinary' ingredients but for the inventiveness in their treatment. This book is meticulously researched and beautifully illustrated. 

I, Mammal: The story of what makes us mammals by Liam Drew       $27
What does it mean for us to have more in common with a horse and an elephant than we do with a parrot, snake or frog?

Extreme Cities: The peril and promise of urban life in the age of climate change by Ashley Dawson     $35
Cities are ground zero for climate change, contributing the lion's share of carbon to the atmosphere, while also lying on the frontlines of rising sea levels. Rethinking cities and the way we use them could make all the difference not only to the environment but to issues of inequality and social justice also. 

A Cat, a Man, and Two Women by Junichiro Tanizaki        $23
Shinako has been ousted from her marriage by her husband Shozo and his younger lover Fukuko. She's lost her home, status and respectability, but the only thing she longs for is Lily, the elegant tortoiseshell cat she shared with her husband. As Shinako pleads for Lily's return, Shozo's reluctance to part with the cat reveals his true affections, and the lengths he'll go to hold onto the one he loves most.

Perfect Simple: Inspired eating from a Nordic kitchen by Simon Bajada         $40
The clean, fresh flavours of modern Scandinavian cuisine are an expression of simple ingredients, traditional preparations and contemporary approaches. 

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio          $38
Compared with Donna Tartt's A Secret History, If We Were Villains is a riveting mix of love and murder set in an elite drama college specialising in Shakespeare (what else?). 

Gender Medicine by Marek Glezerman         $23
Recent research has suggested that both diagnosis and prescription are jeopardised by the assumption easy assumptions about the similarity of subjects, when the differences between subjects, for instance in gender, may be instrumental in achieving desired health outcomes (so to call them). This book examines more flexible approaches.

Eleanor and Hick: The love affair that shaped a First Lady by Susan Quinn        $37
In 1932, as her husband assumed the presidency, Eleanor Roosevelt entered the claustrophobic, duty-bound existence of the First Lady with dread. A lifeline came to her in the form of a campaign reporter for the Associated Press: Lorena Hickok. 

At War with War: 5000 years of conquests, invasions and terrorist attacks, An illustrated timeline by Seymour Chwast         $37
Balances anger and despair with wit and humanity. 
>> A video about design legend Seymour Chwast and about this book. 

BOOKS@VOLUME #56 (6.1.18)
Read our first newsletter for 2018.
Find out what we've been reading, and about some of the writing courses we are offering this year.