| >> Read all Stella's reviews. | |
 | The Magician by Colm Tóibín {Reviewed by STELLA} It takes a certain kind of writer to lift a famous historical figure from the mundanity of the facts to a riveting character in a fictional work. In The Magician, Tóibín reveals the inner workings of the Nobel prize-winning writer Thomas Mann against the backdrop of the first half of the 20th century. We meet Mann as a youngster standing on the landing with his siblings watching their exotic Brazilian mother preparing to descend the stairs to a social gathering at their home in the conservative town of Lübeck. It is a clear image of a close family structure shaped by his rational, business-focused father and effusive mother. The siblings, Thomas and his older brother Heinrich — locked in a close, yet competitive relationship which lasts their lifetimes — and their younger sisters, Lula and Clara — whose lives both end in tragedy — and the baby of the family, Viktor, are arranged as if time stood still for a moment as we the reader walk into their lives. And from here we follow Thomas Mann into adolescence, his growing passions for writing and beautiful boys, and his awareness of the fascinating Katia (his future wife) and her twin Klaus. The twins are from the well-regarded, wealthy and culturally sophisticated Jewish Pringsheim family. Surprisingly, Katia accepts Thomas’s proposal and the couple set up home in Munich. The early part of the book looks at Mann’s time in Italy with his brother Heinrich, as they both set out to be writers, and Thomas’s success in doing just that. His first novels are published to acclaim and he is well on his way to a successful career by the time he marries and starts a family. He is a man of routine, he writes in the morning and can not be disturbed in his study. Katia manages the household and the children, as well as her husband’s business dealings, often advising him on matters that could have sticky unforeseen problems. While it would seem by Mann’s work patterns that his life would not intrude into his literature, the opposite, as Tóibín cleverly navigates us through, is so. Mann’s homosexual desires are hinted at in many of his novels, and the familial, as well as specific situations (eg. Katia’s stay at a TB hospital) are well entrenched in his work. As his family grows and his oldest children enter adulthood, Germany is changing also. Hitler’s brand of fascism is on the rise and the writer Thomas Mann is part of this maelstrom. As Germany changes, it is difficult for Mann to accept that this was not the country he wished to belong to. The idea of Germany as a culturally rich European nation was eroding in front of his eyes. With his socialist brother, and his own unconventional and outspoken twins — Erika and Klaus — along with more radical writers and artists goading his resistance to speaking out he is undoubtedly facing his own demons, as well as the impending political ones. Protected by those who respect him as a writer during the Munich uprising, it is not long until he sees the need to not only speak up, but leave. After a short time in Switzerland, and with other German exiles in France, the announcement of war plunges the family into disarray, and their ability to leave Europe for America provides a welcome, if sometimes confusing, retreat. While Princeton happily embraces the Mann family into their midst, they are not always at home in their refuge. There are confusing demands or expectations on Mann. He at times must speak out against Germany, while at other times, he must stay silent. He is both welcomed as a famous writer, but also, especially as the war presses on, suspect as a German exile. With successive family members to rescue from the oppressive fascist realm and an increasingly dangerous Europe, he is often at a loss to navigate the political machinations of American society. In all this the writing continues, and a move to California, where a new house is built and the Manns live in a bourgeois manner cognisant of their status, gives them a sense of normality. But things are far from smooth. It all runs counter to the chaos of their homeland, the tragedies their own adult children encounter — who, each in their own way, are reflections of a father whose writing comes first — and the despair that haunts many of his friends and family. Thomas Mann’s repression of his inner world and his increasing disengagement with those closest to him reveal a man at sea in the world, yet sure in his literature. Colm Tóibín's The Magician is a masterpiece, deft and perceptive. |
It is overwhelmingly, facetiously tempting to call Gaudy Bauble a detective novel, principally because it is one (a fake detective novel is just as much a detective novel as a non-fake one, if there can be such a thing as a non-fake detective novel). In Gaudy Bauble the detectives, so to call them, never actually detect anything, they never leave their flats (except for dental repairs, &c), they are effectively ineffectual, placebos, and, when the lost budgerigar that triggered the investigation, so to call it, returns, it is not due to any detecting on their part. “Is not detective work labelling work?” states a voice, presumably that of P.I. Belahg, a writer mainly not writing the script for a television series seemingly entitled Querbird, being filmed by Blulip, Belahg’s lesbian Gilbert-and-George-like double, a film-maker whose ideas change faster than they can be realised. The investigation gains no traction not because there is a lack of evidence but because there is too much. Everything is evidence of something (or of everything). The investigation gains no traction because it is too thorough. The details are too much evidence to amount to anything in particular, only to everything. Every detail, every association, every etymological permutation, every taxonomy, every history, every identity is interrogated and dissolved, every distinction is ruptured, the narrative, so to call it, constantly derailed by detail and by the refusal of detail to retain a fixed identity. In total flux, attributions and prescribed identities function as little more than costumes (clothes have more stable identities than persons), everything mentioned becomes activated by that mentioning, becomes a protagonist, pulls the plot, so to call it, towards it, off course, if it could be said ever to have had a course, or to be a plot. The world, after all, consists not of plot, which is always a fictive result of arbitrary interpretation of an unjustifiably normative kind, but of details, details about which little of certainty can be said without making similarly normative transgressions against their true nature, which lies not in identity but in momentum. In flux, which is the natural state of all entities and from which entities become exiled at the moment they become entities, the state to which all entities long to return, the only certainty that can be maintained is that of momentum, if a certainty can be maintained at all. Gaudy Bauble retains all the excitement and pace and rigour of a detective novel. More and more characters appear, change names, blur their distinctions, overwhelm the narrative from locations in its margins or beyond: “There can never be too many crackpot agents. There could never be too much hyperactive riffraff interfering with events.” The dichotomy between the performative and the authentic is constantly ruptured, as if this dichotomy were a wall set to measure and constrain us, against which it is our nature to rebel, to seek release into illimitable inclusivity. The conflation of the performative and the authentic manifests in a doubling of entities, not only of P.I. Belahg and Blulip, but of the actual and the representation: budgerigar and statuette, tooth and denture, the characters and their appearances on the TV show Querbird. All categories are in flux. There may be a lost budgerigar, a broken tooth, statuettes, and so forth, but these categories are not exclusive of other categories, and tend always, by ontological clinamen, towards these categories. This ontology, since something must be said, or since the author, in choosing to write the novel, has put it about that something must be said in order for the novel to be written, makes language the territory in which this clinamen, this queerness in the nature of the particles, will in this instance be traced. All presences, all absences, all substances, all entities, all dissolutions, all metamorphoses, all wounds and all healing of wounds, are exercises of language, are both problems of language and solutions to these problems of language. Waidner, with nothing more constrained than hyperactive brilliance, somehow combines the register of Janet & John or the Teletubbies with that of specialist academic obscurantism without being anywhere between these poles, for only the extremes are worth conflating. At times there are similarities of rhythm with texts written under lipogrammatic or other artificial constraints, or with the lyric style of Mark E. Smith, or with impromptu dramatic performances using only the text of foreign-language phrasebooks (recommended). “Might sea urchin odontogenesis, fully understood, provide the biochemical tools to transform mainstream prosthodontics?” But, really, the book is quite unlike anything else, and is an exemplar of the sort of enjoyable and uncompromising queering experiment at the edge of literature and with the substance of literature itself that literature so desperately needs if it is to open new potentials within itself. When the novel comes to a (sort-of) end, new, more fluid entities have been achieved in a game of ‘real-life’ Exquisite Corpse, the budgerigar has returned, the momentum of the investigation has been expended. “The truth is the only thing left now. The truth ate everyone else alive.”
Megan Dunn could never go placidly. All her life she has rubbed up against contemporary society, popular culture, family, art, and her own obsessions in ways that, as she candidly recalls them, are both very funny and strangely moving. These uniquely personal but highly relatable essays tell of Dunn's early life and coming-of-age in New Zealand in the '70s, '80s and '90s.
Chapters include: The Ballad of Western Barbie; A Comprehensive List of All the Girls Who Teased Me at Western Heights High School, What They Looked Like and Why They Did It; On Being a Redhead; Life Begins at Forty: That Time My Uncle Killed Himself; Good Girls Write Memoirs, Bad Girls Don’t Have Time; Videos I Watched with My Father; Things I Learned at Art School; CV of a Fat Waitress; Nine Months in a Massage Parlour Called Belle de Jour; Various Uses for a Low Self-esteem; Art in the Waiting Room; and Submerging Artist.
NEW RELEASES
Workplace bullying, online relationships and stoned friendships — with a good dose of Wonderland added in.
“Aljce in Therapy Land is both hilarious and distressing. It captures workplace relationships and power imbalances like few novels from Aotearoa do. Tawhai was already one of the best short story writers around, but she has written a one-of-a-kind novel.” —Brannavan Gnanalingam
“This book will sneak up on you. Aljce in Therapy Land is as much about the way small towns wax and wane as it is about how workplaces can take what ought to be good practice into some very bad places. Tawhai’s skill is in ignoring the three-act structure but still making the reader ultimately side with the titular character.” —Murdoch Stephens
When life gets hard, what will you do to the Other to protect yourself? Boats are sinking in the Mediterranean, and Siobhan begins work at a night shelter for asylum seekers. At the same time she is coping with the fallout of her relationships with an identical twin sister, an ex-girlfriend, and a boyfriend with whom she can no longer have sex. As political conflicts escalate she begins to recognise the destructive, zero-sum dynamic she learned in childhood and is forced to acknowledge her own violent logic of self-preservation. Drawing on cinematic montage, the narrative renders fragments of memory, experience and observation in a pattern of shifting analogies that work to illuminate the possibility of a less binary world.
"In its intimate and dazzling constellation of anecdote and memory, Seesaw’s form seems to be exquisitely composed by the very alliances of correspondence, analogy and sympathetic magic that its narrator dare not believe in. Siobhan’s struggles speak to an existential and political urgency: how does anyone keep balance while seesawing between the personal and the collective, past and present, brutality and hope, the authentic and the algorithm? Seesaw’s brilliance is its refusal to settle easily on either side, all the while reminding us that the middle ground should be more than just an idea – it should be capable of sustaining life. I know that this novel, and its searching, unafraid narrator, will stay with me for a long time." —Daisy Lafarge
>>Read a sample.
>>Read a sample.
Today, someone in the wealthiest 1 per cent of adults — now a roughly 40,000-strong club — has a net worth 68 times that of the average New Zealander. Too Much Money is the story of how wealth inequality is changing Aotearoa New Zealand. Possessing wealth opens up opportunities to live in certain areas, get certain kinds of healthcare, make certain kinds of social connections, exert certain kinds of power. But when access to these opportunities becomes alarmingly uneven, the implications are profound. This new book by the country's leading chronicler of economic inequality provides a far-reaching and compelling account of the way that wealth — and its absence — is transforming our lives. Drawing on the latest academic research, personal interviews and previously unexplored data, Too Much Money reveals the way wealth is distributed across the peoples of Aotearoa. Having helped elevate the word 'inequality' into the political lexicon, Max Rashbrooke's widely-anticipated new book arrives at a time of heightened concern for the division of wealth and what this means for our country's future.
Voices from the New Zealand Wars | He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O'Malley $50
The New Zealand Wars of the mid-nineteenth century profoundly shaped the course and direction of our nation's history. This book takes us to the heart of these conflicts with a series of first-hand accounts from Maori and Pakeha who either fought in or witnessed the wars that ravaged New Zealand between 1845 and 1872. From Heni Te Kiri Karamu's narrative of her remarkable exploits as a wahine toa, through to accounts from the field by British soldiers and powerful reports by observers on both sides, we learn about the wars at a human level. The often fragmentary, sometimes hastily written accounts that make up Voices from the New Zealand Wars vividly evoke the extreme emotions — fear, horror, pity and courage — experienced during the most turbulent time in our country's history. Each account is expertly introduced and contextualised, so that the historical record speaks to us vividly through many voices.
>>What does this monument mean?
>>What does this monument mean?
"Darkness is not empty," writes Teju Cole in this book that meditates on what it means to sustain our humanity—and witness the humanity of others—in a time of darkness. Wide-ranging but thematically unified, the essays address ethical questions about what it means to be human and what it means to bear witness, recognising how our individual present is informed by a collective past. Cole's writings in Black Paper approach the fractured moment through a constellation of interrelated concerns: confrontation with unsettling art, elegies both public and private, the defense of writing in a time of political upheaval, the role of the colour black in the visual arts, the use of shadow in photography, and the links between literature and activism. Throughout, Cole gives us intriguing new ways of thinking about blackness and its numerous connotations. "Writing on the top white sheet would transfer the carbon from the black paper onto the bottom white sheet. Black transported the meaning."
In this provocative, bitingly funny short story collection, people attempt to use technology to escape their uncontrollable feelings of grief, rage or despair, only to reveal their most flawed and human selves. An architect draws questionable inspiration from her daughter’s birth defect. A content moderator for ‘the world’s biggest search engine’, who spends her days culling videos of beheadings and suicides, turns from stalking her rapist online to following him in real life. At a camp for recovering internet trolls, a sensitive misfit goes missing. A wounded mother raises the second incarnation of her child. Formally inventive, darkly absurdist, savagely critical of the increasingly fraught cultural climates we inhabit, these ten stories also find hope in fleeting interactions and moments of tenderness. They reveal our grotesque selfishness and our intense need for love and acceptance, and the psychic pain that either shuts us off or allows us to discover the greatest depths of empathy.
Longer than a traditional short story and shorter than a novella, the long story is a form that both compresses and sprawls, expands and contracts, and which allows us to inhabit a world in one sitting. The emerging and established writers in this anthology break new territory in character, setting and storytelling.
Sport was conceived in the back of Damien Wilkins's yellow Ford Escort and born in spring 1988. A Game of Two Halves: The Best of Sport 2005–2019 chronicles the second half of the xciting literary magazine’s life. "It wasn’t going to have a manifesto," founding editor Fergus Barrowman remembers. "It was clear to all of us that experimental writing – or postmodern writing, call it what you like – was just as rulebound as literary realism, and no more likely to be any good; that experienced writers took as many risks as beginning writers; and that older beginning writers – Barbara Anderson! – were just as alive in the moment of self-discovery as young writers." This book looks back through the fifteen issues of Sport from 2005 to 2019. It presents fiction, poetry, essays and oddities by 100 of our best writers, from leading lights like Bill Manhire, Ashleigh Young and Elizabeth Knox, to emerging glow worms like Tayi Tibble, Ruby Solly and Eamonn Marra.
Bringing winter a variety of places and cultures to life in six beautifully written short stories, Llavina mixes personal experiences with fictional characters to blur the lines between fiction and reality.
Aotearoa is a land of extraordinary queer writers, many of whom have contributed to our rich literary history. But you wouldn’t know it. Decades of erasure and homophobia have rendered some of our most powerful writing invisible. Out Here will change that. This landmark book brings together and celebrates queer New Zealand writers from across the gender and LGBTQIA+ spectrum with a generous selection of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and much much more.
A short memoir whose main focus is unpacking a family story that was never told: that a farm in Taranaki on which the family's generations-long comfortable fortunes rested had been directly taken from the people of Parikaha and given to anancestor, a member of the Armed Constabulary following the invasion of the village during the New Zealand Wars.
Deep histories, both natural and human, have been woven together over hundreds of years in places across Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, forming potent sites of national significance. This stunning book unearths these histories in three iconic landscapes: Pukekawa/Auckland Domain, Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill and the Ōtuataua Stonefields at Ihumātao. Approaching landscapes as an archive, Lucy Mackintosh delves deeply into specific places, allowing us to understand histories that have not been written into books or inscribed upon memorials, but which still resonate through Auckland and beyond. Shifting Grounds provides a rare historical assessment of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland's past, with findings and stories that deepen understanding of New Zealand history.
>>"In a city that has forgotten and erased much of its history, there are still places where traces of the past can be found."
>>"In a city that has forgotten and erased much of its history, there are still places where traces of the past can be found."
Having triumphed in The Mapmakers' Race, Sal, Joe, Francie and Humphrey Santander are back, looking for their father, a famous explorer who disappeared on his last expedition. Their search takes them to Cruxcia, where the people are fighting to protect their land from the all-powerful Grania Trading Company. The Santanders’ mapping skills may just help Cruxcians save their ancient valley—and perhaps provide the key to reuniting their family.
>>Read Stella's review of the phenomenal first book.
>>Read Stella's review of the phenomenal first book.
"FEM is a protest novel, a feminist text written with the fervor of a true poet, a book that registers the pain of women in a still male-dominated world. Beyond its feminist radicalism, this novel's readers will discover an impressive quality of mind and artistic refinement that attract our empathy." —Mircea Cartarescu
"Profound, mysterious, emotional and gripping, FEM is a luminous and inspiring work of literature by one of the world's most valuable authors." —Deborah Levy
A memory-impaired time traveller attempts to correct a tragic mistake he made in 1977 when, panicked, he abandoned his brother on a frozen lake in Baltimore. Decades later, in 2011, a novelist researching at the Centre for Time in Sydney becomes romantically involved with a philosopher from New Zealand. A writer at a lake retreat in New Zealand in 2019 obsesses over the disintegration of his marriage following another tragedy. Are they separate stories, or are they one? Is the time traveller actually travelling? Can the past be changed? As the answers to these questions slowly emerge, the lives become entangled in a tale of love, desperation and physics.
“This is a book that makes you slow down your reading because you don’t want the experience to end. That calls to you when you’re going about your day. That makes you nudge your partner to say, Listen to this. Entanglement is erudite, romantic, deeply moving. I reached the end and turned straight back to page one, entangled.” —Gigi Fenster
Fought over by the Phoenicians and Greeks, the Romans, Goths and Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, Germans, Spanish and the French for thousands of year, Sicily became a unique melting pot where diverse traditions merged, producing a unique heritage and singular culture.
Perfectly poised between the Middle East and the Mediterranean, Lebanese cuisine is hugely popular -- famed for its varied and flavourful regional dishes that emphasise whole grains, fresh fruits, vegetables and seafood. Beirut's ever-changing, often turbulent, heritage means that its food has evolved an exciting character of its own. In this book, Hisham Assaad shows you the best the city has to offer, with accessible, delicious recipes, ranging from the classics to more modern fare. He tells the story of a city with energy and diversity, of multiple cultures and traditions, with ever-popular street food, a thriving restaurant and café scene, and traditional family favourites handed down through generations.
>>Have a look inside the book.
>>Have a look inside the book.
Ewa Majewska maps the creation of feminist counterpublics around the world: spaces of protest and ideas, community and common struggle, that can challenge the emergence of fascist states as well as Western democratic 'public spheres' populated by atomised, individual subjects. Drawing from Eastern Europe and the Global South, Majewska describes the mass labor movement of Poland's Solidarnosc in 1980 and contemporary feminist movements across Poland and South America, arguing that it is outside of the West that we can see the most promising left futures. Majewska argues for a feminist political theory that does not reproduce the same forms of domination it seeks to overcome.
The domestic outdoors of Aotearoa is filled with birds, both resident and visiting, both native and introduced. This pleasing book, with its clear illustrations and succinct text, is the perfect companion for every child.
Bill Gosden was at the forefront of Aotearoa film culture from 1980 to 2019. The Gosden Years is a record of his legacy as director of the New Zealand International Film Festival. Conceived by Gosden during the last months of his life, the book comprises his curated film notes, with praise for vital and overlooked New Zealand feature films included; programme introductions that illuminate the changing technologies and politics of film exhibition through the decades; and striking original poster art from every year of his tenure.
Step inside the pages of Oceanarium to enjoy the experience of a museum from the comfort of your own home. This stunning large-format offering from the 'Welcome to the Museum' series guides readers around the world's oceans, from sandy shorelines to the deepest depths. Get up close and personal with giant whale sharks, tiny tropical fish, majestic manatees and so much more, travel the world from frozen Arctic seas to shimmering coral reefs, and learn why it is so important that we protect our oceans.
Another day! And then another and another and another. It seemed as if it would all go on forever in that exquisitely boring and beautiful way. But of course it wouldn't; everyone knows that.
Hilma Wolitzer invites us inside the private world of domestic bliss, seen mostly through the lens of Paulie and Howard's gloriously ordinary marriage. From hasty weddings to meddlesome neighbours, ex-wives who just won't leave, to sleepless nights spent worrying about unanswered chainmail, Wolitzer captures the tensions, contradictions and unexpected detours of daily life with wit, candour and an acutely observant eye. Including stories first published in magazines in the 1960s and 1970s alongside new writing from Wolitzer, now in her nineties, Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket reintroduces a beloved writer to be embraced by a new generation of readers.
"Electric — with wit, with rage, with grief, with the kind of prose that makes you both laugh and thrill to the darker, spikier emotions just barely visible under the bright surface. What a wonderful collection of stories." —Lauren Groff
Who Am I? is a question at the centre of what it is to be human and for artist Kelcy Taratoa (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Raukawa) it has formed the sub-ject of his painting for two decades. Kelcy Taratoa: Who Am I ?... Episode 001 is a bilingual English and Te Reo publication written by Warren Feeney and translated by Hēni Jacob (Ngāti Raukawa). It traverses the artist’s life from growing up in the suburbs of Levin to Te Haka a Te Tupere, the artist’s wharenui at Rangiwaea marae in Tauranga Harbour. Through his paintings he contends that contemporary technology’s virtual realities and appetite for destruction and distraction is undermining our humanity and experience of the world.
>>A few works.
>>A few works.
Filled with ennui, angst, and vivid dreams, Penny proves that being a cat is more profound than we once thought. Thebeautifully drawn book portrays one cat's struggles between her animal instincts, her philosophical reflections, and the lush creature comforts of a life with human servants.
List #1: FICTION
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"Anuk Arudpragasam's masterful novel is an attempt to come to terms with life in the wake of the devastation of Sri Lanka's 30-year civil war. As Krishan makes the long journey by train from Colombo into the war-torn Northern Province to attend a family funeral, so begins an astonishing passage into the innermost reaches of a country. At once a powerful meditation on absence and longing, and an unsparing account of the legacy of Sri Lanka’s 30-year civil war, this procession to a pyre ‘at the end of the earth’ lays bare the imprints of an island’s past, the unattainable distances between who we are and what we seek." —Judges' commendation on short-listing the book for the 2021 Booker Prize.
Troy has fallen and the Greek victors are primed to return home, loaded with spoils. All they need is a good wind to lift their sails. But the wind does not come. The gods are offended — the body of Priam lies desecrated, unburied — and so the victors remain in uneasy limbo, camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed. The coalition that held them together begins to fray, as old feuds resurface and new suspicions fester. Largely unnoticed by her squabbling captors, erstwhile queen Briseis remains in the Greek encampment. She forges alliances where she can — with young, rebellious Amina, with defiant, aged Hecuba, with Calchus, the disgraced priest — and she begins to see the path to revenge. The sequel to the acclaimed The Silence of the Girls.
Winner of the Jann Meddlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. On awarding the prize, the judges said, "Casting a devastating and witty eye on humanity at its most fallible and wonky, this is a tightly wound and remarkably assured collection. Atmospheric and refined, these stories evoke a strong sense of quiet unease, slow burning rage and the absurdly comic." We agree!
Written in 1954, five years after The Second Sex, the novel of the intense relationship between two girls who grow up together and then grow apart was never published in Simone de Beauvoir's lifetime. This first English edition includes an afterword by her adopted daughter, who discovered the manuscript hidden in a drawer, and photographs of the real-life friendship which inspired and tormented the author.
"Bernstein’s precise, cool, devastating prose takes on a Cuskian quality in highly memorable passages balancing dismissal, sympathy and unsparing humour. Her prose prickles." —Thomas
After leaving the man with whom she'd been living, an unnamed protagonist in an unnamed university city is working unspectacularly on the poet Paul Celan. The abiding feeling in the city is one of paranoia; the weather has been deteriorating and outside her office window she can hear police helicopters circling, looking for the women who have been disappearing. She is in self-imposed exile, hoping to find dignity in her loneliness. But when she meets Clara — a woman who is exactly her opposite — her plans begin to unravel.
"Bernstein’s pessimism evokes the likes of Arthur Schopenhauer and Thomas Bernhard, chiming all too well with the current discourse around issues of male privilege." –Spectator
"Enjoy this novel for the satire it is and the sheer hilarity of watching this highly unlikable family turn tighter and tighter circles to patch up their wrongs—until it all comes crashing down." —Stella
The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter-skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. The Cleverley family live a gilded life, little realising how precarious their privilege is, just one tweet away from disaster. George, the patriarch, is a stalwart of television interviewing, a 'national treasure' (his words), his wife Beverley, a celebrated novelist (although not as celebrated as she would like), and their children, Nelson, Elizabeth, Achilles, various degrees of catastrophe waiting to happen. Together they will go on a journey of discovery through the Hogarthian jungle of the modern living where past presumptions count for nothing and carefully curated reputations can be destroyed in an instant.
An unnamed woman in her late twenties navigates unemployment, boredom, chronic illness and online dating. Her activities are banal — applying for jobs, looking up horoscopes, managing depression, going on Tinder dates. ‘I want to tell someone I love them but there is no one to tell,’ she says. ‘Except my sister maybe. I want to pick blackberries on a farm and then die.’ She observes the ambiguities of social interactions, the absurd intimacies of sex and the indignity of everyday events, with a skepticism about the possibility of genuine emotion, or enlightenment. Like life, things are just unfolding, and sometimes, like life, they don’t actually get better.
"The writing is compelling, the prose poised and the content both farcical and unsettling. It will make you squirm." —Stella
From the author of the 'Outline' trilogy, a fable of human destiny and decline, enacted in a closed system of intimate, fractured relationships. A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. Over the course of one hot summer, his provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate and male privilege, of the geometries of human relationships, and of the struggle to live morally between our internal and external worlds. With its examination of the possibility that art can both save and destroy us, Second Place is both deeply affirming and deeply scathing of humanity.
>>Read our reviews.
>>Read our reviews.
Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can't let go of their idol; an entire neighbourhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.
"The stories walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror, but with a resounding tenderness toward those in pain, in fear and in limbo. As terrifying as they are socially conscious, the stories press into the unspoken - fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history - with bracing urgency." —Judges' citation on the book's short-listing for the 2021 International Booker Prize
When Olga's friend Lara becomes a grandmother, Olga helps out whenever she can. After all, it's a big imposition on Lara, looking after her bereaved daughter and the baby. And the new mother is not exactly considerate. But smoldering beneath Olga's sensible support and loving generosity is a deep jealous need to be the centre of Lara's attention and affection-a need that soon becomes a consuming, dangerous and ultimately tragic obsession. Winner of the 2020 Michael Gifkins Prize.
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen $35
Franzen's acute and often hilarious observations on the dynamics and dysfunctions of family life reach a sort of apogee in this unsparing but strangely warm and nuanced novel, set in 1971 as the family of American suburban pastor Russ Hildebrandt feels the pressure of change and starts to lose its acceptable veneer.
>>Read Stella's review.
"Warm, expansive and funny – a pure pleasure to read." —Guardian
"Crossroads is Franzen's finest novel yet. He has arrived at last as an artist whose first language, faced with the society of greed, is not ideological but emotional, and whose emotions, fused with his characters, tend more toward sorrow and compassion than rage and self-contempt. —BookForum
Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Their rented cottage is simultaneously their armour against the world and their sanctuary. Inside its walls they make music, in its garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need for sustenance. But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. At risk of losing everything, Jeanie and her brother must fight to survive in an increasingly dangerous world as their mother's secrets unfold, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake. This is a thrilling novel of resilience and hope, of love and survival, that explores with dazzling emotional power how the truths closest to us are often hardest to see.
1618, in the German duchy of Württemberg. Plague is spreading. The Thirty Years' War has begun, and fear and suspicion are in the air throughout the Holy Roman Empire. In the small town of Leonberg, Katharina Kepler is accused of being a witch. Katharina is an illiterate widow, known by her neighbors for her herbal remedies and the success of her children, including her eldest, Johannes, who is the Imperial Mathematician and renowned author of the laws of planetary motion. It's enough to make anyone jealous, and Katharina has done herself no favors by being out and about and in everyone's business. So when the deranged and insipid Ursula Reinbold (or as Katharina calls her, the Werewolf) accuses Katharina of offering her a bitter, witchy drink that has made her ill, Katharina is in trouble. Her scientist son must turn his attention from the music of the spheres to the job of defending his mother. Facing the threat of financial ruin, torture, and even execution, Katharina tells her side of the story to her friend and next-door neighbor Simon, a reclusive widower imperiled by his own secrets. Drawing on actual historical documents but infused with the intensity of imagination, sly humor, and intellectual fire for which Rivka Galchen is known, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch is the story of how a community becomes implicated in collective aggression and hysterical fear. It is a tale for our time.
Winner of the 2021 Booker Prize.
Galgut won the 2021 Booker Prize for this superb novel exploring the relationships between members of a decaying Afrikaans family in South Africa’s transition from Apartheid. Distilled into accounts of four funerals, each a decade apart, Galgut provides deep insights into the complexities of ethical and personal failings, and the unfortunate resilience of injustice notwithstanding social change and notwithstanding stated intentions — in this case a promise of land owed to a former servant, a promise that is always deferred and never fulfilled.
"The Promise is fully rooted in contemporary South Africa, but the novel's weather moves into the elemental while attending also to the daily, the detailed and the personal. The book is close to a folktale or the retelling of a myth about fate and loss, about three siblings and land, a promise made and broken. The story has an astonishing sense of depth, as though the characters were imagined over time, with slow tender care." —Colm Toibin
Longer than a traditional short story and shorter than a novella, the long story is a form that both compresses and sprawls, expands and contracts, and which allows us to inhabit a world in one sitting. The emerging and established writers in this anthology break new territory in character, setting and storytelling.
"Endlessly curious and achingly beautiful." —Stella
This remarkably fluid combination of essay and autofiction splices together the stories of an Irish noblewoman who wrote a remarkable poem on finding her husband murdered by English soldiers in 1773, and a young mother today who narrowly avoids tragedy in her own life and feels spoken to directly across the centuries through the poem.
"An extraordinary book that braids the past and present, self and other into a new kind of poetry. Doireann Ní Gríofa writes with a magical kind of knowledge of herself and the world, and of the remembered and imagined, Eibhlín Dubh. This is a book about life, its wonder and its pain, written with hunger and grace, every line a charm." —Emilie Pine
>>Read Stella's review.
>>Read Stella's review.
"What would Beethoven have done with another seven years of life, and where, in the 1830s, might he have gone? The answer, in this audacious but exacting extension of the composer’s late period, is America, where an oratorio, Job, is completed (and performed) in Boston. Suffering and revelation are the subject-matter, but in Paul Griffiths’ hands, the Biblical sorrow undergoes a lasting modulation into a new key of delight in friendship, communication, and creativity." —Judges' citation shortlisting the novel for the Goldsmiths Prize
Matrix by Lauren Groff $35
Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. A historical novel from the author of the outstanding (and very contemporary) Fates and Furies.
Restless, ambitious Ilyas was stolen from his parents by the Schutzruppe askari, the German colonial troops in East Africa. After years away, he returns to his village to find his parents gone, and his sister Afiya given away. Hamza was not stolen, but was sold; he has come of age in the army, at the right hand of an officer whose control has ensured his protection but marked him for life. Hamza does not have words for how the war ended for him. Returning to the town of his childhood, all he wants is work, however humble, and security and the beautiful Afiya.
"A remarkable novel, by a wondrous writer, deeply compelling, a thread that links our humanity with the colonial legacy that lies beneath, in ways that cut deep." —Philippe Sands
"A remarkable novel, by a wondrous writer, deeply compelling, a thread that links our humanity with the colonial legacy that lies beneath, in ways that cut deep." —Philippe Sands
"To read Afterlives is to be returned to the joy of storytelling. The story of Hamza and Afiya is one of simple lives buffeted by colonial ambitions, of the courage it takes to endure, to hold oneself with dignity, and to live with hope in the heart." —Aminatta Forna
In the dying days of the American Civil War, newly freed brothers Landry and Prentiss find themselves cast into the world without a penny to their names. Forced to hide out in the woods near their former Georgia plantation, they're soon discovered by the land's owner, George Walker, a man still reeling from the loss of his son in the war. When the brothers begin to live and work on George's farm, the tentative bonds of trust and union begin to blossom between the strangers. But this sanctuary survives on a knife's edge, and it isn't long before the inhabitants of the nearby town of Old Ox react with fury at the alliances being formed only a few miles away.
"Better than any debut novel has a right to be." —Richard Russo
Something is drawing Jena Benedict's family to darkness. Her mother, father, brother and baby sister are killed in a barn fire, and Grandmother Rose banishes Jena from the farm. Now, twenty years on Rose is dying, and Jena returns home with her boyfriend Cade in tow. Jena wants answers about why she was sent away and about what really happened the night of the fire. Will, Rose's live-in caregiver, has similar questions. He hunts for the supernatural, and he knows something sinister lurks in the Benedict homestead. Like Rose, Will has experienced childhood tragedy. Soon, Jena and Will unearth mysteries: a skull, a pocket-watch, a tale of the Dark Man and a tiding of magpies. The duo learn Rose's secrets and confront an evil entity that has been set loose.
Kurangaituku is the story of Hatupatu told from the perspective of the traditional ‘monster’, Kurangaituku, the bird woman. In the traditional story, told from the view of Hatupatu, he is out hunting and is captured by a creature that is part bird and part woman. The bird woman imprisons him in her cave in the mountains. Hatupatu eventually escapes and is pursued by Kurangaituku. He evades her when he leaps over hot springs, but Kurangaituku goes into them and dies. In this version of the story, Kurangaituku takes us on the journey of her extraordinary life – from the birds who sang her into being, to the arrival of the Song Makers and the change they brought to her world, and her life with Hatupatu and her death. Through the eyes of Kurangaituku, we come to see how being with Hatupatu changed Kurangaituku, emotionally and in her thoughts and actions, and how devastating his betrayal of her was.
A hugely empathic AI, Klara is bought as an Artificial Friend for a girl suffering from an undefined illness. As the full extent of the girl's predicament becomes apparent, Klara, with her wonderful mixture of naivety and capacity, does all she can for the girl, and makes us question what it is to be human. Ishiguro's first novel since being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017.
"People will absolutely love this book, in part because it enacts the way we learn how to love." —Anne Enright
>>Read Stella's review.
>>Read Stella's review.
Short-listed for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction, this well written multi-generational novel coils its way through issues of race, class and gender in a Barbados where poverty and misogyny lurk under the surface and where a cautionary folk tale takes on multiple meanings for three very different women.
Chasing Homer by László Krasznahorkai (translated by John Batki), illustrated by Max Neumann, with music by Szilveszter Miklós $45
A hunted being escapes certain death at breakneck speed. Faster and faster, escaping the assassins, the protagonist flies forward, blending into crowds, adjusting to terrains, hopping on and off ferries, always desperately trying to stay a step ahead of certain death—the past did not exist, only what was current existed—a prisoner of the instant, rushing into this instant, an instant that has no continuation. Krasznahorkai's mesmeric prose is accompanied by unsettling paintings by Neumann, and Miklós's percussive accompaniment is accessed via QR codes in each section. Remarkable.
"Allusive and acerbic: a brilliant work that proves the adage that even paranoiacs have enemies." —Kirkus
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut $23
The great mathematician Alexander Grothendieck tunnels so deeply into abstraction that he tries to cut all ties with the world, terrified of the horror his discoveries might cause. Erwin Schrodinger and Werner Heisenberg battle over the soul of physics after creating two equivalent yet opposed versions of quantum mechanics. Their fight will tear the very fabric of reality, revealing a world stranger than they could have ever imagined. Using extraordinary, epoch-defining moments from the history of science, Benjamin Labatut plunges us into exhilarating territory between fact and fiction, progress and destruction, genius and madness.
"A monstrous and brilliant book." —Philip Pullman
"Wholly mesmerising and revelatory. Completely fascinating." —William Boyd
Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the City for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian's evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian's family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise. When a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak, the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea... What happens when public duty and private morals are irreconcilable? This is the last novel from this master of intrigue, whose insider knowledge of the secret service gave his novels a powerful veracity.
"Both clever and moving, both piercingly funny and reassuringly sad, the book is is both about the bodilessness of the internet and about bodies in the world, about both isolation and intimacy, and about the burden that language bears—and the possibilities language offers—connecting or attempting to connect all these." —Thomas
Lockwood's remarkable novel is both clever and moving, both painfully funny and deeply sad, it is about the bodilessness of the internet and about bodies in the world, about both isolation and intimacy, and about the burden that language bears connecting all these.
>>Read Thomas's review.
>>Read Thomas's review.
The world’s climate is in crisis and New Zealand is being divided and reshaped by privileged immigrant wealthugees. Thirty-something Alice has a near-genius IQ and lives at home with her mother with whom she communicates by Morse code. Alice’s imaginary friend, Simp, has shown up, with a running commentary on her failings. The last time Simp was here was when Alice was seven, on the night a fire burned down the family home. Now Simp seems to be plotting something. When Alice meets a wealthugee named Pablo, she thinks she’s found a way out of her dull existence. But then she meets Pablo’s teenage daughter, Erika – an actual genius full of terrifying ambition.
"A claustrophobic eco-thriller with a gloriously unreliable narrator, She’s a Killer is tense and sharp, and feels unnervingly prescient." –Brannavan Gnanalingam
"Equipped with an exhilaratingly badly-behaved protagonist, She’s a Killer builds from a slice of very strange life into a thriller by way of a succession of stunning comic set pieces. You’ll laugh—a lot. And then you’ll cry and be really surprised about it since you were laughing so much." —Elizabeth Knox
Marshall's own selection from the many collections of short stories that have established him as a master of the portrayal of the complexities of small lives, the workings of small minds, and the insularity of small towns (no matter how large).
"I very much envy Marshall's ability to lay things down in such a way that each one has its natural weight and place, without any straining and heaving." —Maurice Gee
Maxwell's remarkably raw and direct stories and spare, effective style evoke a childhood in a whānau marked by deprivation, misfortune and strength.
"I write because my stories bruise my brain until they’re written. They fell out of my fingers one day after I had been nostalgic remembering my childhood and my aunties, my nanny and my koro, and all my cousins."
“Kat Maxwell writes vividly and with raw emotion. She’s inside her world, she knows how it works, her stories are brave and bare.”—Maurice Gee
Mahmood Mattan is a father, a chancer, a petty thief. Many things, in fact, but he is not a murderer. So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn’t too worried — secure in his innocence in a country where justice is served. But as the trial nears, it starts to dawn on him that he is in a fight for his life — against conspiracy, prejudice and the ultimate punishment. In the shadow of the hangman’s noose, he realises that the truth may not be enough to save him. Short-listed for the 2021 Booker Prize.
This collection of poetry, fiction and essays by emerging writers is the first-ever anthology of Asian New Zealand creative writing. A Clear Dawn presents a new wave of creative talent. With roots stretching from Indonesia to Japan, from China to the Philippines to the Indian subcontinent, the authors in this anthology range from high school students to retirees, from recent immigrants to writers whose families have lived in New Zealand for generations. Some of the writers – including Gregory Kan, Sharon Lam, Rose Lu and Chris Tse – have published books; some, like Mustaq Missouri, Aiwa Pooamorn and Gemishka Chetty, are better known for their work in theatre and performance. The introduction outlines New Zealand's long yet under-recognised history of immigration from Asia.
Desperate for some respite from her teenage son during a period of quarantine in England's Peak District, a woman goes for a short walk on the moors. When she falls and injures herself, this triggers a mountain rescue effort and a recalibration of the participants' relationships with nature and with each other, during which the myriad anxieties of contemporary life are brought to the fore. A document of the inner life of our times from the author of Summerwater.
"Memoir-ish pieces maybe, but more another realm to explore writing, where it takes us and how far, and how it happens. Simple and complex in equal measure." —Stella
The eight stories in this new book are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball, to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator may or may not be Murakami himself.
>>Read Stella's review.
>>Read Stella's review.
"If we want to understand what has been lost to time, there is no way other than through the exercise of imagination—imagination applied with delicate rather than broad strokes." Nakajima portrays men and women beset by cultural amnesia and unaware of how haunted they are—by fragmented memories of war and occupation, by fading traditions, by buildings lost to firestorms and bulldozers, by the spirits of their recent past.
"These impressive stories bridge past and present, the familiar and the otherworldly, the lost and the found." —David Mitchell
"A perfect introduction to the quiet, subtle brilliance of Kyoko Nakajima." —David Peace
"A magical book — a charming fable about the pleasures of literature and books." —Stella
Bookish high school student Rintaro Natsuki is about to close the secondhand bookshop he inherited from his beloved grandfather. Then, a talking cat named Tiger appears with an unusual request. The cat needs Rintaro’s help to save books that have been imprisoned, destroyed and unloved. Their mission sends this odd couple on an amazing journey, where they enter different labyrinths to set books free. Through their travels, Tiger and Rintaro meet a man who locks up his books, an unwitting book torturer who cuts the pages of books into snippets to help people speed read, and a publisher who only wants to sell books like disposable products. Then, finally, there is a mission that Rintaro must complete alone...
>>Read Stella's review.
>>Read Stella's review.
A woman in a post-election tailspin discovers that her boyfriend is an anonymous online conspiracy theorist in this provocative and subversive novel that examines social media, sex, feminism, and fiction, the connection they've all promised, and the lies they help us tell.
"Fake Accounts is a novel about the enigmatical spectacle of our extremely online world that is itself both enigmatic and spectacular – a dark comedy about a dark time, and a prismatically intelligent work of art. Brilliant." —Guardian
In this strange, darkly playful and hugely inventive fantasy, the patriarchal Master draws his magical power from the body of God, buried beneath the city. When Nathan Treeves's mother sells him to the Master it becomes apparent that Nathan has a power of his own, one that could destroy all that the Master has wrought—if only Nathan can find out how to use it.
"Mordew is a darkly brilliant novel, extraordinary, absorbing and dream-haunting. That it succeeds as well as it does speaks to Pheby’s determination not to passively inhabit his Gormenghastly idiom but instead to lead it to its most extreme iteration, to force inventiveness and grotesqueness into every crevice of his work." —Guardian
The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter $17
"Porter is obsessed, splicing himself into the mind of the painter as he lies on his death-bed, the words worked wet on the page." —Thomas
"Mordew is a darkly brilliant novel, extraordinary, absorbing and dream-haunting. That it succeeds as well as it does speaks to Pheby’s determination not to passively inhabit his Gormenghastly idiom but instead to lead it to its most extreme iteration, to force inventiveness and grotesqueness into every crevice of his work." —Guardian
"Porter is obsessed, splicing himself into the mind of the painter as he lies on his death-bed, the words worked wet on the page." —Thomas
Madrid. Unfinished. Man Dying. A great painter lies on his deathbed. Max Porter (author of Lanny and Grief is the Thing With Feathers) translates into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist's mind.
"Reads like a private communion with the painter." —Guardian
Theo Byrne is an astrobiologist. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. Robin is loving, funny and full of plans to save the world. He is also about to be expelled, for smashing his friend’s face in with a metal thermos. What can a father do, when the only solution offered is to put his boy on psychoactive drugs? What can he say, when his boy asks why we are destroying the world? The only thing to do is to take the boy to other planets, while helping him to save this one.
"My favourite book of the year." —Thomas
The crew of the Six-Thousand Ship consists of those who were born, and those who were made; those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew is perplexed to find itself becoming deeply attached to them, and human and humanoid employees alike start aching for the same things: warmth and intimacy, loved ones who have dies, shopping and child-rearing; our shared, far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory. Gradually, the crew members come to see their work in a new light, and each employee is compelled to ask themselves whether they can carry on as before — and what it means to be truly living. Structured as a series of witness statements compiled by a workplace commission, Ravn's crackling prose is as chilling as it is moving, as exhilarating as it is foreboding. Wracked by all kinds of longing, The Employees probes into what it means to be human, emotionally and ontologically, while simultaneously delivering an overdue critique of a life governed by work and the logic of productivity.
Valdin is still in love with his ex-boyfriend Xabi, who used to drive around Auckland in a ute but now drives around Buenos Aires in one. Greta is in love with her fellow English tutor Holly, who doesn’t know how to pronounce Greta’s surname, Vladisavljevic, properly. From their Auckland apartment, brother and sister must navigate the intricate paths of modern romance as well as weather the small storms of their eccentric Māori–Russian–Catalonian family. This novel by Adam Foundation Prize winner Rebecca K Reilly owes as much to Shakespeare as it does to Tinder. Greta and Valdin will speak to anyone who has had their heart broken, or has decided that they don’t want to be a physicist anymore, or has wondered about all of the things they don’t know about their family.
"Riviere has a keen sense of the ridiculous, and a keen sense of how closely the ridiculous lies to the ordinary, a keen sense that in fact the ridiculous is only the ordinary logically extended." —Thomas
A glorious and hilarious rant against the pretensions of the 'poetry scene', so to call it, and against pretty much everything else that falls under the author's notice, Dead Souls is also a metaphysical mystery and an exploration of the dual pitfalls of plagiarism and invention — a novel with a similar palette of barbs and pleasures to those of Thomas Bernhard.
>>Read an extract.
>>Read an extract.
A hugely successful young novelist is having trouble writing her third book. She meets Felix, who works in a distribution warehouse, and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Can these people find or remember or create what is supposed to be good about being alive in this world? The eagerly awaited third novel from the author of the hugely successful Conversations with Friends and Normal People.
In 1920s Montana, wild-hearted orphan Marian Graves spends her days roaming the rugged forests and mountains of her home. When she witnesses the roll, loop and dive of two barnstorming pilots, she promises herself that one day she too will take to the skies. Years later, after a series of reckless romances and a spell flying to aid the British war effort, Marian embarks on a treacherous flight around the globe in search of the freedom she has always craved. She is never seen again. More than half a century later, Hadley Baxter, a troubled Hollywood starlet beset by scandal, is irresistibly drawn to play Marian Graves in her biopic, a role that will lead her to probe the deepest mysteries of the vanished pilot's life. Short-listed for the 2021 Booker Prize.
"Thoroughly clever." —Guardian
When the stars were rhinestones. When your car was a blue Holden god. When kisses spread to your back teeth, marathons of sucking. When we pashed through jokes, through tunes, through homework, through the leftovers we shovelled out our schoolbags. When you let me tattoo you with talk. Thirty-one new stories from the author of Deleted Scenes for Lovers.
"If Slaughter is writing from the black block in her chest, she is also speaking directly into yours." —Charlotte Graham-McLay
A remarkable graphic novel,
"This brilliant debut collection explores the intensity of teenage ennui and female friendship, with a deft feel for its slights and tensions. Almost without exception, the gorgeous, clever short stories in Lizzy Stewart’s It’s Not What You Thought It Would Be are preoccupied with girlhood, as seen through the eyes of women who are now old enough and wise enough to understand all the stuff that was once beyond their comprehension. Several touch on place and the idea of escape, and at least one explores, quite brilliantly, how women are both seen, and not seen, out in the world. The very best of them, however, encompass both teenage boredom, the fretful ennui that we tend to mourn as adults even as we recall how we longed to escape it, and the special intensity of female friendships, particularly those that go all the way back to the awkward, geeky years before we reinvented ourselves." —Rachel Cooke, The Guardian
The first English-language publication of a legend of Japanese science fiction and a countercultural icon. In a future where men are contained in ghettoised isolation, women enjoy the fruits of a queer matriarchal utopia—until a boy escapes and a young woman’s perception of the world is violently interrupted. The last family in a desolate city struggles to approximate twentieth- century life on Earth, lifting what notions they can from 1960s popular culture. But beneath these badly learned behaviours lies an atavistic appetite for destruction. Two new friends enjoy drinks on a holiday resort planet where all is not as it seems, and the air itself seems to carry a treacherously potent nostalgia. Back on Earth, Emma’s not certain if her emotionally abusive, green-haired boyfriend is in fact an intergalactic alien spy, or if she’s been hitting the bottles and baggies too hard. And in the title story, the tyranny of enforced screen-time and the mechanisation of labour foster a cold-hearted and ultimately tragic disaffection among the youth of Tokyo. Nonchalantly hip and full of deranged prescience, Suzuki’s singular slant on speculative fiction would be echoed in countless later works, from Neuromancer to The Handmaid’s Tale. In these darkly playful and punky stories, the fantastical elements are always grounded in the universal pettiness of strife between the sexes, and the gritty reality of life on the lower rungs, whatever planet that ladder might be on.
Workplace bullying, online relationships and stoned friendships — with a good dose of Wonderland added in.
“Aljce in Therapy Land is both hilarious and distressing. It captures workplace relationships and power imbalances like few novels from Aotearoa do. Tawhai was already one of the best short story writers around, but she has written a one-of-a-kind novel.” —Brannavan Gnanalingam
“This book will sneak up on you. Aljce in Therapy Land is as much about the way small towns wax and wane as it is about how workplaces can take what ought to be good practice into some very bad places. Tawhai’s skill is in ignoring the three-act structure but still making the reader ultimately side with the titular character.” —Murdoch Stephens
Tóibín brings his immense sympathies and verbal prowess to bear upon the life of Thomas Mann, a writer forced to cope with the turmoil of both public and private life because of war, exile and suicide. Mann's re-evaluation of his relationship to his homeland and his family underlies his novels, and Tóibín reveals the many layers and contradictions of a complex genius.
"This is not just a whole life in a novel, it's a whole world." —Katharina Volckmer
"The Magician is a remarkable achievement. Mann himself, one feels certain, would approve." —John Banville
"The Magician is a remarkable achievement. Mann himself, one feels certain, would approve." —John Banville
In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas begin to sweep the continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumours of his sect’s secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs. The Nobel Prize in Literature laureate writes the story of Frank through the perspectives of his contemporaries, capturing Enlightenment Europe on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.
"A visionary novel. Tokarczuk is wrestling with the biggest philosophical themes: the purpose of life on earth, the nature of religion, the possibility of redemption, the fraught and terrible history of eastern European Jewry. With its formidable insistence on rendering an alien world with as much detail as possible, the novel reminded me at times of Paradise Lost. The vividness with which it’s done is amazing. At a micro-level, she sees things with a poetic freshness. The Books of Jacob, which is so demanding and yet has so much to say about the issues that rack our times, will be a landmark in the life of any reader with the appetite to tackle it." —Marcel Theroux, Guardian
Aotearoa is a land of extraordinary queer writers, many of whom have contributed to our rich literary history. But you wouldn’t know it. Decades of erasure and homophobia have rendered some of our most powerful writing invisible. Out Here will change that. This landmark book brings together and celebrates queer New Zealand writers from across the gender and LGBTQIA+ spectrum with a generous selection of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and much much more.
How can you save your friend's life if she doesn't want to be rescued? In a tranquil neighbourhood of Tokyo, seven teenagers wake to find their bedroom mirrors are shining. At a single touch, they are pulled from their lonely lives to a wondrous castle filled with winding stairways, watchful portraits and twinkling chandeliers. In this new sanctuary, they are confronted with a set of clues leading to a hidden room where one of them will be granted a wish. But there's a catch—if they don't leave the castle by five o'clock, they will be punished. As time passes, a devastating truth emerges—only those brave enough to share their stories will be saved.
He is a renowned Swedish filmmaker and has a plan for everything. She is his daughter, by the actress he directed and once loved. Each summer of her childhood, the daughter visits the father at his remote Faro island home on the edge of the Baltic Sea. Now that she's grown up — a writer, with children of her own — and he's in his eighties, they envision writing a book together, about old age, language, memory and loss. She will ask the questions. He will answer them. The tape recorder will record. But it's winter now and old age has caught up with him in ways neither could have foreseen. And when the father is gone, only memories, images and words — both remembered and recorded — remain. And from these the daughter begins to write her own story, in the pages which become this book.
"Linn Ullmann has written something of beauty and solace and truth. I don't know how she managed to sail across such dangerous waters." —Rachel Cusk
"Compulsively attractive writing. A vivid portrayal of growing up in the 1980s." —Stella
The beautifully written new novel from the author of The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty. Teenage Eulabee and her alluring best friend, Maria Fabiola, own the streets of Sea Cliff, their foggy, oceanside San Francisco neighborhood. They know the ins and outs of the homes and beaches, Sea Cliff's hidden corners and eccentric characters-as well as the swanky all-girls' school they attend. Their lives move along uneventfully, with afternoon walks by the ocean and weekend sleepovers. Then everything changes. Eulabee and Maria Fabiola have a disagreement about what they did or didn't witness on the way to school one morning, and this creates a schism in their friendship. The rupture is followed by Maria Fabiola's sudden disappearance—a potential kidnapping that shakes the quiet community and threatens to expose unspoken truths.
Winner of the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize ("for fiction at its most novel").
Aspiring writer Sterling is arrested one morning, without having done anything wrong. Plunged into a terrifying and nonsensical world, Sterling — with the help of their three best friends — must defy bullfighters, football legends, spaceships, and Google Earth tourists in order to exonerate themselves and to hold the powers that be to account. Sterling Karat Gold is Kafka's The Trial written for the era of gaslighting, a surreal inquiry into the very real effects of state violence and coercion on gender-nonconforming, working-class, and Black bodies.
"A sublime, mesmerising feat. The world feels all the better for it." —Irenosen Okojie
"Sterling Karat Gold reminds me of nothing else. With atypical inventiveness Waidner steers us thorugh a marvellous spinning parade of matadors, red cards, time travel and cataclysm. A beautifully elegant miracle of a book." —Guy Gunaratne
"A sublime, mesmerising feat. The world feels all the better for it." —Irenosen Okojie
"Sterling Karat Gold reminds me of nothing else. With atypical inventiveness Waidner steers us thorugh a marvellous spinning parade of matadors, red cards, time travel and cataclysm. A beautifully elegant miracle of a book." —Guy Gunaratne
Watson's remarkable project evokes, to often hilarious effect, the thought processes of its character through the course of a day. Beneath the world of demarcated fridge shelves, office politics, clock-watching and WhatsApp notifications emerges a instance of sexual violence that has shaken and disordered the character's existence.
"little scratch reads like the cinders settling in the air after an explosion. The silent and enraged inner testimony of a character trying to maintain 'normalcy', little scratch is daring and completely readable." —Colin Barrett
"Playful precise and insightful, Rebecca Watson's writing bursts with enormous energy." —Nicole Flattery
>>Read Thomas's review.
>>Read Thomas's review.
"Wallow in its humour but watch out for the bite that comes with this joyous bark!" —Stella
A sharp, intelligent, playfully transgressive novel-of-ideas that explores the way power, gender and tradition shape modern motherhood. Nightbitch's protagonist, an artist-turned-fulltime-parent, is home with her two-year-old son, struggling with solitude, exhaustion and monotony, even while she feels profound love for her child. Then, over the course of the summer, she experiences a strange metamorphosis (the clue is in the title) which complicates her situation in outrageous ways, whilst also setting her free.
"Graceful, funny and unnerving as hell." —Jenny Offill
List #2: CHILDREN & YOUNG ADULTS
We recommend these books as seasonal gifts and for summer reading. Click through to our website to reserve or purchase your copies—we will have them delivered anywhere or aside for collection. Let us know if you would like them gift-wrapped.
If you don't find what you're looking for here, browse our website, or e-mail us: we have many other interesting books on our shelves.
The domestic outdoors of Aotearoa is filled with birds, both resident and visiting, both native and introduced. This pleasing book, with its clear illustrations and succinct text, is the perfect companion for every child.
Atua: Māori gods and heroes by Gavin Bishop $40
Beautifully presented and endlessly fascinating, Bishop's new book belongs on every child's and every adult's bookshelf. Lively illustrations and text tell the unique stories of Aotearoa's gods, demigods and heroes.
>>Other books by Gavin Bishop.
Koro by Gavin Bishop $18
The child and their koro explore the day – they go for a walk, collect food from the garden, eat, tell stories, and snuggle up for a rest to finish. A beautiful, simple board book in te reo Māori.
Truthmaker ('The Severed Land' #2) by Tony Chapelle $20
The Tiny Woman's Coat by Joy Cowley and Giselle Clarkson $25
A Winter's Promise ('The Mirror Visitor' #1) by Christelle Dabos $26
Baby Meets Bird by Kate Muir $20
The Boy Who Made Things Up by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Lily Emo $25
Stop the Tour! by Bill Nagelkerke $20
Hattie and Olaf by Frida Nilsson and Stina Wirsén $20
The Loop by Ben Oliver $22
"A fast-paced sci-fi thriller for teens. Not only is the unwinding story compelling, and the mysterious experiments on the populace mind-bending, but there is also plenty of emotional heft too, with its diverse characters, developing relationships and consequential situations." —Stella
Inside the Suitcase by Clotilde Perrin $33
Rhyme Hungry by Antonia Pesenti $23
A Mother is a House by Aurore Petit $30
Take Me Home: An activity journal for young explorers by Mary Richards $20
Charlie Tangaroa and the Creature from the Sea by T.K. Roxborogh $25
Kia Kaha: A storybook of Māori who changed the world by Jeremy Sherlock and Stacey Morrison $45
The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne, Being an account of their daring exploits and audacious crimes by Jonathan Stroud $22
No-One Is Angry Today by Toon Tellegen and Marc Boutavant $35
Egg Marks the Spot ('Skunk and Badger' #2) by Amy Timberlake and Jon Klassen $25
Odd companions Skunk and Badger became firm favourites for many (young and old) with their first book, and now they're back, setting off on a rock-finding expedition that is just bound to be very different from what they were expecting!
Oceanarium by Loveday Trinick and Teagan White $50
When We Got Lost in Dreamland by Ross Welford $18
The Big Book of Belonging by Yuval Zommer $35
Beautifully presented and endlessly fascinating, Bishop's new book belongs on every child's and every adult's bookshelf. Lively illustrations and text tell the unique stories of Aotearoa's gods, demigods and heroes.
>>Other books by Gavin Bishop.
The child and their koro explore the day – they go for a walk, collect food from the garden, eat, tell stories, and snuggle up for a rest to finish. A beautiful, simple board book in te reo Māori.
>>Also available in English as Pops.
"This sequel captures the essence of my novel and takes my characters on a tense and dangerous journey through the world of The Severed Land." —Maurice Gee. Picking up where The Severed Land left off, this suspense-filled novel continues the story of the brave ex-slave Fliss. Despite her idyllic life behind the safety of the wall, she can't help longing for someone special to fill the vague sense of loneliness that nags at her. That is until a young man appears, preaching peace and unity. His arrival, however, is about to send Fliss and her friend Minnie back through the wall on a hazardous mission.
>>Read Stella's review.
>>Read Stella's review.
The tiny woman really needs a coat to keep warm, but how will she get one? The trees give her some leaves, the porcupine gives her a needle, the horse gives her its hair for the thread—everyone contributes something and the tiny woman can make herself a coat. This delightful book will be an instant favourite.
"This is an excellent fantasy epic with compelling characters. Ophelia and Thorn are both intriguingly complex, the clans and their gifts fascinating, and the interpersonal relationships between the main characters complex and ever revealing. There is amazing world-building and the plot is tight and tense, with plenty of twists and turns, political games, and machinations of seduction, threat and trickery as the story and its characters feed on the desire for power and status. You will be craving the next instalment." —Stella
>>Read Stella's review.
>>Read the whole series!
The Sky by Hélène Druvert $45
The Sun is a Star: A voyage through the universe with Dick Frizzell $45
Te Tuna Wātakirihi me ngā Tamariki o Te Tiriti o Toa / Watercress Tuna and the Children of Champion Street by Patricia Grace and Robyn Kahukiwa (translated by Hirini Melbourne) $20
The Uprising: The Mapmakers in Cruxcia by Eirlys Hunter $23
>>Read the whole series!
This gorgeous, large-format book is filled with astounding laser cutouts that take readers away through the clouds, through the atmosphere and to the planets, the stars and beyond. On the way they'll learn about birds, insects and pollination, witness a tornado and an eclipse, and see all kinds of flying machines.
>>Other books by Druvert.
>>Other books by Druvert.
Dick Frizzell fills his spaceship with his artist friends (including John Pule, Greg O'Brien, John Reynolds, Judy Darragh, Reuben Patterson, Grahame Sydney, Karl Maughan, Ani O'Neill, Reg Mombassa and Wayne Youle) and sets off into Space to explain the wonders of the universe.
What special gifts does the magical Tuna bring the children of Cannon's Creek? Since its publication in 1984, this wonderful, joyous story about a magical eel that presents cultural treasures to a group of Maori, Pasifika and Pakeha children, who then use their gifts to enrich their neighbourhood, has been essential to any child's library.
Having triumphed in The Mapmakers' Race, Sal, Joe, Francie and Humphrey Santander are back, looking for their father, a famous explorer who disappeared on his last expedition. Their search takes them to Cruxcia, where the people are fighting to protect their land from the all-powerful Grania Trading Company. The Santanders’ mapping skills may just help Cruxcians save their ancient valley—and perhaps provide the key to reuniting their family.
>>Read Stella's review of the phenomenal first book.
There's a Ghost in this House by Oliver Jeffers $38
White Fox by Chen Jiatong $22
The Pōrangi Boy by Shilo Kino $25
Lit: Stories from home edited by Elizabeth Kirkby-McLeod $29
Learning to Love Blue by Saradha Koirala $25
Fossils from Lost Worlds by Benjamin Laverdunt and Helene Rajcak $40
Falling into Rarohenga by Steph Matuku $30
>>Read Stella's review of the phenomenal first book.
A young girl looks everywhere in the haunted house but cannot find the ghosts that are supposed to live here. The glassine overlays show the reader just where they are hiding (and playing), however. A large amount of lightly spooky fun.
Cana Dilah the white fox find the treasure that will enable him to turn into a human? Or will the wicked blue fox get there first? A story steeped in Chinese folklore, and followed by White Fox in the Forest.
"In The Pōrangi Boy, Shilo Kino has crafted, through hard edges and deftness of touch, a story that will endure. Niko’s intensely personal journey is woven through with threads of issues that permeate the lives of young people in Aotearoa – environmental damage, neocolonialism, bullying, poverty – but never slips into didacticism or preachiness. Where the story shines the brightest is in Shilo Kino’s uncontestable genius for crafting believable, authentic voices that are thoroughly rooted in this place, these times. You feel the shapes of the words in your mouth, hear the resonance they leave in your ears – and the resonance of these words and this book is clear and long-lasting." —Judges' citation on the book winning the Young Adults section of the 2021 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
A collection of vital New Zealand short stories for young adults exploring ideas about identity, activism awareness, coming-of-age, society, and family. Stories by Gina Cole, Lani Wendt Young, Rajorshi Chakraborti, Witi Ihimaera, Anahera Gildea, Elsie Locke, Owen Marshall, David Hill, Katherine Mansfield, Patricia Grace, Frank Sargeson, J.P. Pomare, Tracey Slaughter, Russell Boey, Nithya Narayanan, and Ting J. Yiu.
The sequel to the excellent YA novel Lonesome When You Go. With Vox Pop and high school behind her, 18-year-old Paige arrives in Melbourne with her suitcase and bass guitar; a copy of Bob Dylan's Chronicles and Joni Mitchell's Blue - a gift from her estranged mother that she's still learning to love. Following in the footsteps of her musical heroes, all of whom left home to make it in 1960s New York, Paige knows Melbourne's the new rock and roll capital of the world: if she can't make it here, she can't make it anywhere. Besides, her high school crush Spike lives here... Paige has always had music, but realises she still has a lot to learn about relationships: how to be vulnerable and how to be blue.
Clues to prehistoric life lie hidden under the ground, and paleontologists are forever modifying our ideas of the deep past on the basis of new evidence. This lively, gloriously illustrated large-format volume for children is a wonderful introduction not only to the sheer variety and strangeness of creatures that preceded us, but also to the ways in which science is always improving the model it builds of reality and of the past.
It seems like an ordinary day when Tui and Kae, sixteen-year-old twins, get home from school - until they find their mother, Maia, has disappeared and a swirling vortex has opened up in her room. They are sucked into this portal and dragged down to Rarohenga, the Maori Underworld, a shadowy place of infinite dark levels, changing landscapes and untrustworthy characters. Maia has been kidnapped by their estranged father, Tema, enchanted to forget who she really is and hidden somewhere here. Tui and Kae have to find a way through this maze, outwit the shady characters they meet, break the spell on their mother, and escape to the World of Light before the Goddess of Shadows or Tema holds them in Rarohenga forever.
A beautiful high-contrast board book introducing various native birds of Aotearoa.
"Shall we just walk along, Dad, or shall we make some of it up?" Join Michael and his over-worked father as they journey home one fun-filled afternoon. Nelson illustrator won the Margaret Mahy Illustration Award for this book.
"Voila: an actual Mahy, republished with wildly beautiful artwork by Nelson illustrator Lily Emo. The press release about this one called Emo’s work 'breathtaking' and usually that’s hyperbole but in this case my breath actually did catch, more than a few times, as I turned to a fresh page. The seascapes are dreamy, they’re what you notice first, but after many re-reads my very favourite thing about the art here is Emo’s gentle skewering of adults’ terrible awful screen-induced posture." —Catherine Woulfe, The Spinoff
The Springbok Tour held in New Zealand over 3 months in 1981 remains one of the most divisive periods in New Zealandâs recent history. Through his (fictional) diary entries, we learn about 13-year-old Martin Daly's experiences during the tour and his thoughts and feelings about the escalating conflict. His sister, Sarah, is out to stop the tour in protest against South Africa's racist apartheid system. His rugby-mad dad is equally determined that the tour should go ahead. Martin wishes the whole thing would simply go away. But a growing understanding of the issues helps him to stop sitting on the fence and choose a side.
This strikingly illustrated book in te reo Māori tells the legend of how the two taniwha, Ngake and Whātaitai, formed the harbour and hills of Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
Hattie wants a horse more than anything. Her friend Ellen has three ponies. When Hattie’s father finally comes home with a horse float, Hattie is ecstatic. But instead of a horse, out stomps Olaf—a donkey. Now Hattie not only has horse fever, she suddenly catches lying sickness as well... The audacious and captivating Hattie and her best friend Linda navigate the social politics of their first school years in this funny illustrated chapter book.
"A fast-paced sci-fi thriller for teens. Not only is the unwinding story compelling, and the mysterious experiments on the populace mind-bending, but there is also plenty of emotional heft too, with its diverse characters, developing relationships and consequential situations." —Stella
It's Luka Kane's sixteenth birthday and he's been inside The Loop for over two years. Every inmate is serving a death sentence with the option to push back their execution date by six months if they opt into "Delays", scientific and medical experiments for the benefit of the elite in the outside world. But rumours of a war on the outside are spreading amongst the inmates, and before they know it, their tortuous routine becomes disrupted. The government issued rain stops falling. Strange things are happening to the guards. And it's not long until the inmates are left alone inside the prison. Were the chains that shackled Luka to his cell the only instruments left to keep him safe? In a thrilling shift, he must overcome fellow prisoners hell-bent on killing him, the warden losing her mind, the rabid rats in the train tunnels, and a population turned into murderous monsters to try and break out of The Loop, save his family, and discover who is responsible for the chaos that has been inflicted upon the world.
Another wonderfully inventive lift-the-flap book from the creator of Inside the Villains and The House of Madam M. Once upon a time, in a little house behind the hills, a boy packs his suitcase for a long journey. Lift the flaps to see what he takes, and travel with him over oceans and mountains, under water and into the forest. With every step on this voyage of obstacles, the boy faces a decision that will lead to a new adventure and help him get home. Delve deeper into each page and always remember what's in the suitcase.
>>Peek inside the suitcase.
>>Read Stella's review.
>>Peek inside the suitcase.
>>Read Stella's review.
Some things sound like other things, and those things could be very silly indeed. Pesenti continues the madness of the very popular Rhyme Cordial in this bold and inventive board book. Each page also opens backwards to reveal an illustrated silly sound-alike. Would you fancy instant poodles or a cheese ghostie for lunch? A large amount of fun.
A mother is a nest, a mirror, a moon. The baby sees their mother in every aspect of their day. As the pages go by, the child grows. The mother who was a refuge becomes a road, a story, and a show. On the final page, the child is ready to take their first steps. This beautifully illustrated story looks through the baby's eyes for an unexpected and affecting picture of parents and home.
Skinny Dip: Poetry edited by Susan Price and Kate De Goldi $30
Thirty-six poems for young readers from Sam Duckor-Jones, essa may ranapiri, Bill Manhire, Anahera Gildea, Amy McDaid, Kōtuku Nuttall, Ben Brown, Ashleigh Young, Rata Gordon, Dinah Hawken, Oscar Upperton, James Brown, Victor Rodger, Tim Upperton, Lynley Edmeades, Freya Daly Sadgrove, Nina Mingya Powles, Renee Liang and Nick Ascroft. Illustrations by Amy van Luijk.
"Bold and timely. A magnificent range of form from some of our best contemporary voices." —Hera Lindsay Bird
Mary Richards has created an excellent series of activity books to help children become more aware of their surroundings in fun and creative ways. Look at familiar places — or approach unfamiliar ones — in new ways to engage learning and develop self-expression.
Also available:
On a beach clean-up, thirteen-year-old one-legged Charlie and his half-brother, Robbie, find a ponaturi - a mermaid - washed up on a beach. An ancient grudge between the Maori gods Tane and Tangaroa has flared up because a port being built in the bay is degrading the ocean and creatures are fleeing the sea. This has reignited anger between the gods, which breaks out in storms, earthquakes and huge seas. The human world and realm of the gods are thrown into chaos. The ponaturi believes Charlie is the only one who can stop the destruction because his stump is a sign that he straddles both worlds.
"This is a uniquely New Zealand story, and one in which so many of us can see ourselves." —judges' citation when naming this book the 2021 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year.
Featuring people and groups both historic and contemporary, who have achieved great things from land marches and language revival to hip hop and contemporary Maori fashion design, this book will fill readers of all ages, and from all walks of life, with aroha, whanaungatanga and hope for our future. Illustrations by Akoni Pakinga, Haylee Ngaroma, Isobel Joy Te Aho-White, Jess Thompson aka Maori Mermaid, Josh Morgan, Kurawaka Productions, Miriama Grace-Smith, Ngaumutane Jones aka Ms Meemo, Reweti Arapete, Taupuruariki Whakataka-Brightwell, Xoe Hall, and Zak Waipara.
New from the author of the wonderful 'Lockwood & Co' and 'Bartimaeus' series. England has been radically changed by a series of catastrophes – large cities have disappeared and London has been replaced by a lagoon. The surviving population exists in fortified towns where they cling to traditional ways, while strangely evolved beasts prowl the wilderness beyond. Conformity is rigidly enforced and those who fall foul of the rules are persecuted: some are killed, others are driven out into the wilds. Only a few fight back – and two of these outlaws, Scarlett McCain and Albert Browne, display an audacity and talent that makes them legends.
"Stroud doesn’t miss a beat in laying down some great challenges: climate change, species mutation, psychological manipulation, and power struggles — as well as more endearing qualities of humanity in bravery, loyalty and friendship." —Stella
"Stroud doesn’t miss a beat in laying down some great challenges: climate change, species mutation, psychological manipulation, and power struggles — as well as more endearing qualities of humanity in bravery, loyalty and friendship." —Stella
Ten thoughtful, philosophical, absurd tales about forest animals—from squirrel to scarab beetle—spending their days as friends do, with birthday parties, writing letters, visiting, dancing, or sometimes all alone. Each day brings emotions that are always worth exploring, although not always easy...
Odd companions Skunk and Badger became firm favourites for many (young and old) with their first book, and now they're back, setting off on a rock-finding expedition that is just bound to be very different from what they were expecting!
Step inside the pages of Oceanarium to enjoy the experience of a museum from the comfort of your own home. This stunning large-format offering from the 'Welcome to the Museum' series guides readers around the world's oceans, from sandy shorelines to the deepest depths. Get up close and personal with giant whale sharks, tiny tropical fish, majestic manatees and so much more, travel the world from frozen Arctic seas to shimmering coral reefs, and learn why it is so important that we protect our oceans.
When 12 year-old Malky and his younger brother Seb become the owners of a "Dreaminator", they are thrust into worlds beyond their wildest imagination. From tree-top flights and Spanish galleons, to thrilling battles and sporting greatness - it seems like nothing is out of reach when you can share a dream with someone else. But impossible dreams come with incredible risks, and when Seb won't wake up and is taken to hospital in a coma, Malky is forced to leave reality behind and undertake a final, terrifying journey to the stone-age to wake his brother.
A celebration of all the ways that humans are connected to life on planet Earth. With children at the heart of every beautifully illustrated spread, this book draws parallels between the way humans, plants, and animals live and behave. We all breathe the same air and take warmth from the same sun, we grow, we adapt to the seasons, and we live together in family groups.
List #4: CULTURE
We recommend these books as seasonal gifts and for summer reading. Click through to our website to reserve or purchase your copies—we will have them delivered anywhere or aside for collection. Let us know if you would like them gift-wrapped.
If you don't find what you're looking for here, browse our website, or e-mail us: we have many other interesting books on our shelves.
Polly Barton reflects on her experience of moving to the Japanese island of Sado at the age of twenty-one and on her journey to becoming a literary translator. Written in fifty semi-discrete entries, Fifty Sounds is a personal dictionary of the Japanese language that draws together a variety of cultural reflections — from conformity and being an outsider, to the gendering of Japanese society, and attitudes towards food and the cult of 'deliciousness' — alongside insights into the transformative powers of language-learning.
One of the first writers to speak with an authentic New Zealand voice, Blanche Edith Baughan (1870-1958) was known as a poet and local travel writer. Enough Horizon tells of Baughan's troubled upbringing with a mentally ill mother in London, and her emigration to New Zealand in 1900, where she embraced the freedom it gave her to write and think and enjoy the wilderness she grew to love. It was here, particularly in her beloved Akaroa, that Blanche's writing and interests in the environment and her advocacy for the vulnerable in society flourished. She was a botanist, conservationist, humanitarian and prison reformer, who strove for the effective and humane treatment of prisoners. Blanche met and corresponded with leading writers, thinkers and scientists of her day, including John Ruskin, and poets Jessie Mackay and Ursula Bethell.
A book about books, mostly, and bonfires, clichés, dystopias, failure, happiness, jokes, justice, privilege, publishing, rejection, self-loathing, shoplifting and umbrellas. Writer and reader meet in cafés to talk about books – that’s the plot. There are arguments, spilt coffee, deaths both in life and in fiction, and rain and laughter. Wonderful.
>>Read Thomas's review.
>>Read Thomas's review.
Shaun Bythell, proprietor of The Bookshop, Wigtown, follows his (cuttingly accurate) Diary of a Bookseller and Confessions of a Bookseller, with a hilarious 'useful' handbook to the types of customers booksellers are faced with every day. Which type are you?
"A writer as mighty as Kafka, as subtle as Flaubert, and as epoch-making, in her own way, as Proust." —Ali Smith
Lydia Davis gathered a selection of her non-fiction writing for the first time in 2019 with Essays: One. Now, she continues the project with Essays Two, focusing on the art of translation, the learning of foreign languages through reading, and her experience of translating, amongst others, Flaubert and Proust, about whom she writes with an unmatched understanding of the nuances of their styles.
>>Read Thomas's review of the first volume.
>>Read Thomas's review of the first volume.
A hilarious and personal collection of essays from a distinctive and resonant voice. Things I Learned at Art School tells the story of Dunn's early life and coming-of-age in New Zealand in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. From her parents’ split-up to her Smurf collection, from the mean girls at school to the mermaid movie Splash!, from her work in strip clubs and massage parlours (and one steak restaurant) to the art school of the title, this book has been eagerly anticipated—and very much worth waiting for. Chapters include: The Ballad of Western Barbie; A Comprehensive List of All the Girls Who Teased Me at Western Heights High School, What They Looked Like and Why They Did It; On Being a Redhead; Life Begins at Forty: That Time My Uncle Killed Himself; Good Girls Write Memoirs, Bad Girls Don’t Have Time; Videos I Watched with My Father; Things I Learned at Art School; CV of a Fat Waitress; Nine Months in a Massage Parlour Called Belle de Jour; Various Uses for a Low Self-esteem; Art in the Waiting Room; and Submerging Artist.
Commuting between English and French, Lauren Elkin chronicles a life in transit in this book written on her cellphone during her daily commute. From musings on Virginia Woolf and Georges Perec, to the discovery of her ectopic pregnancy, her diary sketches a portrait of the author, not as an artist, but as a pregnant woman on a Parisian bus. In the troubling intimacy of public transport, Elkin queries the lines between togetherness and being apart, between the everyday and the eventful, registering the ordinary makings of a city and its people.
"Paris in intense, dramatic closeup — an insider's entrancing view. Lauren Elkin turns her phone outwards, like a camera to see with, she writes about the outside world while inside a glass container (the bus), she maps the inner world of self and indeed of the bus onto the outer world she is travelling through. She allows herself to catch moments most writers would think don't belong in a text. The book's form perfectly embodies its content. It is disarmingly modest and that is part of its charm. She is thinking about self / community. Re-making it." — Michèle Roberts
Bold, angry, despairing and very funny, these essays cover everything from matriarchy to environmental catastrophe to Little House on the Prairie to Agatha Christie. Ellmann calls for a moratorium on air travel, rails against bras, and pleads for sanity in a world that hardly recognises sanity when it (occasionally) appears.
"Joyously electric." —Guardian
Following astonishing, insightful, and pellucidly written novels, including Visitation and Go, Went, Gone, Erpenbeck turns her pen on herself and reveals aspects of her life, her literary and musical influences and preoccupations, and thoughts on society. Her essays are as astonishing, insightful and pellucidly written as her fiction.
"Wonderful, elegant, and exhilarating. Ferocious as well as virtuosic." —Deborah Eisenberg
"Her restrained, unvarnished prose is overwhelming." —Nicole Krauss
"Erpenbeck's writing writing is a lure that leads us — off-centre as into a vortex — into the most haunted and haunting territory." —Anne Michaels
Over the course of their prolific forty-year career The Fall were consistently one of the most influential and idiosyncratic groups in Britain, with frontman Mark E. Smith hailed as one of the sharpest lyricists. Following Smith's death in January 2018, there was an outpouring of tributes from a surprising spectrum of admirers. With contributions from Adelle Stripe, Dan Fox, Elain Harwood, Mark Fisher, Ian Penman and others, alongside never-before seen artwork, photographs, and hand-written material from Smith and the band, Bob Stanley and Tessa Norton book unpack and make sense of the strangely fascinating landscape of The Fall.
For nearly fifty years, Vivian Gornick’s essays, written with her characteristic clarity of perception and vibrant prose, have explored feminism and writing, literature and culture, politics and personal experience. Drawing on writing from the course of her career, Taking a Long Look illuminates one of the driving themes behind Gornick’s work: that the painful process of understanding one’s self is what binds us to the larger world. In these essays, Gornick explores the lives and literature of Alfred Kazin, Mary McCarthy, Diana Trilling, Philip Roth, Joan Didion, and Herman Melville; the cultural impact of Silent Spring and Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and the characters you might only find in a New York barber shop or midtown bus terminal. Even more, Taking a Long Look brings back into print her incendiary essays, first published in the Village Voice, championing the emergence of the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s.
“We all talk the talk about public intellectuals nowadays. Vivian Gornick walks the walk. The essays in Taking a Long Look could not be more direct, more authoritative, more alive with the pleasures of discovery or alert to the ambiguities of argument. Whether writing literary or political criticism, memoir, or feminist polemic, her mastery is assured.” —George Scialabba
Patricia Grace begins her remarkable memoir beside Hongoeka Bay. It is the place she has returned to throughout her life, and fought for, one of many battles she has faced. This book provides special insight into the life of this important author. "It was when I first went to school that I found out that I was a Maori girl. I found that being different meant that I could be blamed."
Part memoir, part manifesto, Some Answers Without Questions is a rigorous and lyrical work of self-investigation. Lavinia Greenlaw sets out to explore the impulse to say something, to write or sing, and finds herself confronting matters of presence and absence, anger and speechlessness, authority and permission. The result is important and timely, a spirited and vital exploration of what enables anyone — but a woman and an artist in particular — to create and record even when not invited to do so. Some Answers Without Questions is the result of decades of answering questions that don't really matter - and not being asked the ones that do.
Brave, explosive, and thought-provoking, this is a powerful memoir. 'It's material, make a story out of it,' was the mantra Charlotte Grimshaw grew up with in her literary family. But when her life suddenly turned upside-down, she needed to re-examine the reality of that material. The more she delved into her memories, the more the real characters in her life seemed to object. So what was the truth of 'a whole life lived in fiction'? This is a vivid account of a New Zealand upbringing, where rebellion was encouraged, where trouble and tragedy lay ahead. It looks beyond the public face to the 'messy reality of family life — and much more'.
A nicel presented book about the remarkable collaboration between the modernist architect James Hackshaw (a member, for a time, of the famous Group Architects), the painter Colin McCahon, and the then young sculptor Paul Dibble on 12 New Zealand buildings — from churches to school halls. Drawing on interviews with James Hackshaw before his death and on the McCahon archive, this book brings into the light a body of work and a collaboration that has hitherto been little known or examined. Illustrated with Hackshaw's plans, McCahon's drawings, letters and journal entries, and contemporary images of the surviving buildings and artworks, the book includes essays by Peter Simpson, Julia Gatley, Peter Shaw and Alexa Johnston.
A beautifully presented book of this outstanding artist. Includes an interview between the Bill Hammond and fellow artist Tony de Lautour; Texts by Rachael King, Nic Low, Paul Scofield, Ariana Tikao and Peter Vangioni: Images and details of some of Hammond’s finest paintings; Responses to Hammond’s practice by other artists, including Fiona Pardington, Marlon Williams and Shane Cotton.
In 2001, Gavin Hipkins unveiled his photo frieze, 'The Homely', at City Gallery Wellington. Consisting of eighty photos taken between 1997 and 2000 on travels in New Zealand and Australia, neighbouring antipodean colonies, it became his best-known and most celebrated work. In 2018, he unveiled its sequel in the exhibition This is New Zealand, also at City Gallery. 'The Homely II' also comprises eighty photos, shot in the same manner, arranged in the same frieze format. Hipkins took the images between 2001 and 2017 on excursions through New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the former colony and the colonial homeland. Contributions by Megan Tamati-Quennell, Robert Leonard, Felicity Barnes, Andrew Clifford, Blair French, Terrence Handscomb, Emil McAvoy, Emma Ng, and Lara Strongman.
>>A few images.
>>A few images.
"I’d wanted to remember why it was we swam in the first place – to remember the pleasure of immersing in an element other than air." Ingrid Horrocks had few aspirations to swimming mastery, but she had always loved being in the water. She set out on a solo swimming journey, then abandoned it for a different kind of swimming altogether – one which led her to more deeply examine relationships, our ecological crisis, and responsibilities to collective care. Why do people swim, and where, how, with whom? Where We Swim ranges from solitary swims in polluted lakes and rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand, to swims in pools in Medellín, Phoenix and the Peruvian Amazon. Near Brighton, Horrocks is joined by an imagined community of early women swimmers; back home she takes her first tentative swim after lockdown. Part memoir, part travel and nature writing, this book is about being a daughter, sister, partner, mother, and above all a human animal living among other animals.
Hotere invited O'Sullivan to write his life in 2005, and this nuanced and insightful portrait of one of Aotearoa's most important and interesting artists is the long-awaited and supremely fulfilling result.
An outstanding collaborative book by four New Zealand-based photographers and one writer, breaking out of conventional story-telling to play out their anxieties and doubts about the world they see. Developed over the last two years, . . . . . and then there were none grew from conversations and arguments about mortality, our technologically mired existence and the degradation of the environment. The project triggered its own version of flygskam for the collaborators, conflicted by the international travel that made many of the photographs and the writing possible and tainted by knowing the greater price to be paid. Images included from such travels are drenched in sordid human histories that recall the myriad pathways that have led us to now, and to what comes next.
"When I explained to the collectors that I hoped to find at least fifty fine examples to showcase an industry that once thrived in every New Zealand city, their eyes lit up. We disappeared together into a world that no longer exists, of forges and lugs and pinstriping. A time when the humble bicycle was not so humble, and everyone knew the name of the craftsman that built the machine they rode." Includes much to recognise and much to discover with surprise.
In nineteen razor-sharp essays Kushner explores friendship, loss, social justice, art and more, taking us into the world of truckers, a Palestinian refugee camp, the American prison system and the San Francisco music scene, via the work of Jeff Koons, Marguerite Duras and the Rolling Stones. The book also details how, in her twenties, Kushner went to Mexico in pursuit of her first love — motorbikes — to compete in the notorious and deadly race, Cabo 1000, and how, following a crash at 200km/h, she decided to leave her controlling boyfriend and manoeuvred her way into a freer new life.
The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. At a moment in which basic rights are once again imperilled, Olivia Laing conducts an ambitious investigation into the body and its discontents, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to chart a daring course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, from gay rights and sexual liberation to feminism and the civil rights movement. Drawing on her own experiences in protest and alternative medicine, and travelling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of McCarthy-era America, she grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century, among them Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Andrea Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag and Malcolm X. Despite its many burdens, the body remains a source of power, even in an era as technologized and automated as our own. Everybody is an examination of the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.
Real Estate by Deborah Levy $26
The final volume of Levy's 'Living Autobiography' is a meditation on home, the spectres that haunt it and the possibilities it offers. Reconfiguring her life after her children leave home, how can Levy create a balance between her creative, political and personal lives and the demands of the world she lives in?
>>Read an extract.
>>Things I Don't Want to Know.
>>The Cost of Living.
In these essays McLauchlan explores ideas and paths that he hopes will make him freer and happier – or, at least, less trapped, less medicated and less depressed. He stays at a monastery and meditates for eight hours a day. He spends time with members of a new global movement who try to figure out how to do the most possible good in the world. He reads forbiddingly complex papers on neuroscience and continental philosophy and shovels clay with a Buddhist monk until his hands bleed. He tries to catch a bus. Tranquillity and Ruin is a light-hearted contemplation of madness, uncertainty and doom. It’s about how, despite everything we think we know about who we are, we can still be surprised by ourselves.
"McLauchlan is likely the most intelligent essayist in New Zealand and this is likely to be the most thought-provoking book of non-fiction published in New Zealand in 2021." —Steve Braunias
>>Writing in his head.
>>Writing in his head.
As the outward face of the text, the book cover makes an all-important first impression. The Look of the Book examines the interface of art and literature through notable covers and the stories behind them, galleries of the many different jackets of bestselling books, an overview of book cover trends throughout history, and insights from dozens of literary and design luminaries.
Paul Morley had stopped being surprised by modern pop music and found himself retreating into the sounds of artists he loved when, as an emerging music journalist in the 70s, he wrote for NME. But not wishing to give in to dreary nostalgia, endlessly circling back to the bands he wrote about in the past, he went searching for something new, rare and wondrous – and found it in classical music. A soaring polemic, a grumpy reflection on modern rock, and a fan's love note, A Sound Mind rejects the idea that classical music is establishment; old; a drag. Instead, the book reveals this genre to be the most exciting and varied in music. A Sound Mind is a multi-layered memoir of Morley's shifting musical tastes, but it is also a compelling history of classical music that reveals the genre's rich and often deviant past – and, hopefully, future.
Nina Mingya Powles first learned to swim in Borneo - where her mother was born and her grandfather studied freshwater fish. There, the local swimming pool became her first body of water. Through her life there have been others that have meant different things, but have still been, in their own way, home: from the wild coastline of New Zealand to a pond in northwest London. This collection of essays explores the bodies of water that separate and connect us, as well as everything from migration, food, family, earthquakes and the ancient lunisolar calendar to butterflies.
>>The safe zone.
>>The safe zone.
"What's the lobster's tune when he is boiling?" Exploring the lobster's biology and its history in language, literature and gastronomy, The Lobster's Tale navigates the perils of a life driven by overreaching ambition and the appetite for knowledge, conquest and commerce. In conversation with Chris Price's text, Bruce Foster's photographs navigate a parallel course of shadows and light, in which the extraordinary textures and colours of the natural world tell a darker story. The Lobster's Tale is a meditation on the quest for immortality on which both artists and scientists have embarked, and the unhappy consequences of the attempt to both conquer nature and create masterpieces. Meanwhile, below the waterline of text and images, a modest voice can be overheard whispering an alternative to these narratives of heroic and doomed exploration.
>>Other books in the Kōrero series: High Wire by Lloyd Jones and Euan Macleod; Shining Land: Looking for Robin Hyde by Paula Morris and Haru Sameshima.
A beautifully presented look at colonial-era fashionable dress, based on the collections at Te Papa (of which Regnault is curator), and exploring the social context of the garments and of the women who wore or made them. How does clothing give us an insight into Women's historical experiences that might otherwise not be available to us?
For the last twenty years, George Saunders (whose Lincoln in the Bardo won the Booker Prize) has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
>>Read our reviews of Lincoln in the Bardo.
>>Read our reviews of Lincoln in the Bardo.
Through books such as The Emigrants, Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, Sebald pursued an original literary vision that combined fiction, history, autobiography and photography and addressed some of the most profound themes of contemporary literature: the burden of the Holocaust, memory, loss and exile. The first biography to explore his life and work, Speak, Silence pursues the 'true' Sebald through the memories of those who knew him and through the work he left behind.
165 million years ago saw the birth of rhythm. 66 million years ago was the first melody. 40 thousand years ago Homo sapiens created the first musical instrument. Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to this music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet music is an overlooked part of our origin story. The Musical Human takes us on a journey across the ages, from Bach to BTS and back, to explore the relationship between music and the human species. With insights from a wealth of disciplines, musicologist Michael Spitzer renders a global history of music on the widest possible canvas, looking at music in our everyday lives; music in world history; and music in evolution, from insects to apes, humans to AI.
"Michael Spitzer has pulled off the impossible - a Guns, Germs and Steel for music." —Daniel Levitin
After the death of her aunt, Maria Stepanova is left to sift through an apartment full of faded photographs, old postcards, letters, diaries, and heaps of souvenirs: a withered repository of a century of life in Russia. Carefully reassembled with calm, steady hands, these shards tell the story of how a seemingly ordinary Jewish family somehow managed to survive the myriad persecutions and repressions of the last century. In dialogue with writers like Roland Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag and Osip Mandelstam, In Memory of Memory is imbued with rare intellectual curiosity and a wonderfully soft-spoken, poetic voice. Dipping into various forms – essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue and historical documents – Stepanova assembles a vast panorama of ideas and personalities and offers an entirely new and bold exploration of cultural and personal memory.
"A luminous, rigorous, and mesmerizing interrogation of the relationship between personal history, family history, and capital-H History. I couldn’t put it down; it felt sort of like watching a hypnotic YouTube unboxing-video of the gift-and-burden that is the twentieth century. In Memory of Memory has that trick of feeling both completely original and already classic, and I confidently expect this translation to bring Maria Stepanova a rabid fan base on the order of the one she already enjoys in Russia." —Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot
The most substantial survey to date of modern and contemporary African-born or Africa-based artists. Long overdue.
Does this look like your record collection? Published to mark the fortieth anniversary of the founding of Flying Nun Records in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Hellzapoppin’! brings together original artwork and design, film, record covers, posters and photography from the label’s early years. From rare collectible records and vintage posters to original artworks and paste-up designs, this book explores the art and artists behind some of New Zealand’s favourite bands. Essays from Peter Vangioni, Kath Webster, Russell Brown and Flying Nun founder Roger Shepherd will be interspersed with brief interview-style contributions from some of the people responsible for creating the art of the label. Heavily illustrated with original artwork for the records and posters, photography from the archives, and rarely seen vinyl releases and posters.
An astounding survey of contemporary drawing from over 100 artists, selected by over 70 international experts.
Claire Wilcox has been a curator of fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum for most of her working life. In Patch Work, she steps into the archive of memory, deftly stitching together her dedicated study of fashion with the story of her own life lived in and through clothes. From her mother's wedding outfit to her own silk kimono, her memoir unfolds in a series of intimate and compelling close-ups. Wilcox tugs on the threads that make up the fabric of our lives—a cardigan worn by a child, a mother's button box, the draping of a curtain, a pair of cycling shorts, a roll of lace, a pin hidden in a seam. Through the eye of a curator, we see how the stories and the secrets of clothes measure out the passage of time, our gains and losses, and the way we use them to unravel and write our histories.
List #6: IN THE GARDEN & IN THE KITCHEN
We recommend these books as seasonal gifts and for summer reading. Click through to our website to reserve or purchase your copies—we will have them delivered anywhere or aside for collection. Let us know if you would like them gift-wrapped.
If you don't find what you're looking for here, browse our website, or e-mail us: we have many other interesting books on our shelves.
Insight into the legendary chef's life, philosophy and exploits through the eyes of his colleagues, family and friends.
An excellent and attractive Gujarati Indian Cookbook transporting authentic Indian flavours to a relaxed family atmosphere in New Zealand.
Flip Grater is a renowned kiwi singer/songwriter, who boasts her own Indie record label and owns Grater Goods, a plant-based delicatessen based in central Christchurch. In her professional life she is a successful chef and recipe writer, developing her vegan recipes and Grater Goods products that are sold in retailers throughout Aotearoa. In her precious spare time you'll find her chilling with French husband Youssef and five-year-old daughter Anais. Flip and Youssef met in Paris in 2012 where she was recording her album Pigalle, and moved Back to Flips native New Zealand in 2018. Grater Goods is a little slice of Paris in industrial Sydenham. Over 60 European-inspired, adaptable dishes, ranging from Seitan sausages, cassoulets and breads to super easy spreadable cheeses, pates, crackers, delectable desserts and plant-based baking and cooking. These recipes are edible activism, ethical hedonism.
Whether you start your day with something sweet, finish it with something sweet, or make sure sweets are within reach all day long, you'll find serious inspiration in the pages of Salma Hage's latest cookbook for home cooks. The Middle East's wide range of cultures, ingredients, and influences informs the array of dishes she includes.
In a celebration of the healing power of nature, New Zealand gardening guru Lynda Hallinan focuses on the gentle delights that bring joy to our backyards, from birdsong to seasonal beauty.
"Gardening, then, is a practice of sustained noticing." In this collection of essays, fourteen writers go beyond simply considering a plot of soil to explore how gardening is a shared language, an opportunity for connection, something that is always evolving. Penelope Lively trains her gardening eye on her gardens past and present; Paul Mendez reflects on the image of the paradisal garden; Jon Day asks whether an urban community garden can be a radical place; and Victoria Adukwei Bulley considers the power of herbs and why there is no such thing as a weed.
In these essays thirteen writers consider the subjects of cooking and eating and how they shape our lives, and the possibilities and limitations the kitchen poses. Rachel Roddy traces an alternative personal history through the cookers in her life; Rebecca May Johnson considers the radical potential of finger food; Ruby Tandoh discovers a new way of thinking about flavour through the work of writer Doreen Fernandez; Yemisi Aribisala remembers a love affair in which food failed as a language; and Julia Turshen considers food's ties to community, Nina Mingya Powles considers the various food traditions of her family.
Irvine's hands-on, often humorous advice steps readers through everything they need to know to grow great produce at home, including garden design, tools and equipment, seasonal planting advice, soil fertility, seed-saving basics, managing pests and diseases, and how to incorporate organic and permaculture gardening methods into any home garden. While documenting a year on her own property, Irvine shows how you can successfully produce bountiful crops throughout the seasons to provide a steady, daily harvest with minimal wastage. The book is illustrated with hundreds of photographs and hand-drawn illustrations that share design concepts and planting plans for gardens of all shapes and sizes.
You can travel the world weekly from your kitchen with dishes such as: Persian noodle soup; Korean carrot and sesame pancakes; African peanut stew; baked dahl with tamarind-glazed sweet potato; and halloumi, mint, lemon and caramelised onion pie. With recipes for every occasion from a weeknight tahini broccoli on toast to the puddings and feasts, these inventive and varied recipes will become kitchen staples. All delicious, whether made vegetarian or vegan, Anna Jones also helps you to reduce waste, use leftovers. and make your kitchen plastic free.
The Arabesque Table: Contemporary recipes from the Arab world by Reem Kassis $60
The Arabesque Table takes inspiration from the traditional food of the Arab world, weaving Reem Kassis's cultural knowledge with her contemporary interpretations of an ancient, diverse cuisine. She opens up the world of Arabic cooking today, presenting 130 delicious, achievable home recipes. Organised by primary ingredient, her narratives formed by her experiences and influences bring the dishes to life, as does the book's vivid photography. From the author of The Palestinian Table.
Niva and Yotam Kay of Pakaraka Permaculture on the Coromandel Peninsula share their long experience of organic gardening in this comprehensive book on how to create and maintain a productive and regenerative vegetable garden. Taking care of the soil life and fertility provides plants with what they need to thrive. The book reflects in the latest scientific research on soil health, ecological and regenerative practices.
Knox's excellent book has been updated and is now fully illustrated in colour.
Inspired by twenty-six fruits, essayist, poet and 'pie lady' Kate Lebo expertly blends the culinary, medical and personal. A is for Aronia, berry member of the apple family, clothes-stainer, superfruit with reputed healing power. D is for Durian, endowed with a dramatic rind and a shifty odour – peaches, old garlic. M is for Medlar, name-checked by Shakespeare for its crude shape, beloved by gardeners for its flowers. Q is for Quince, which, fresh, gives off the scent of ‘roses and citrus and rich women’s perfume’ but if eaten raw is so astringent it wicks the juice from one’s mouth. In this work of unique invention, these and other difficult fruits serve as the central ingredients of twenty-six lyrical essays (and recipes!) that range from deeply personal to botanical, from culinary to medical, from humorous to philosophical. Delightful.
"A beautiful, fascinating read full of surprises – a real pleasure." —Claudia Roden
Strong on regional cuisines and variations, this book brings together 600 remarkable recipes expressing the vibrancy of Latin America and its myriad influences — indigenous, European, Asian and beyond.
Matt's book reflects his extensive research into traditional Icelandic dishes to preserve local culinary knowledge while applying a modern approach for a cuisine to be enjoyed both by locals and international foodies.
With its studious devotion to tradition, craftsmanship, and hospitality, Japanese cocktail culture is an art form treated with the same kind of spiritual reverence as sushi-making. Julia Momose presents a journey into the realm of Japanese spirits and cocktails with eighty-five drink recipes. In this essential guide, she breaks down master techniques and provides in-depth information on cocktail culture, history, and heritage spirits that will both educate and inspire. The recipes, inspired by the twenty-four micro-seasons that define the ebb and flow of life in Japan, include classics like the Manhattan and Negroni, riffs on some of Japan's most beloved cocktails like the whisky highball, and even alcohol-free drinks inspired by traditional ingredients, such as yuzu, matcha, and ume.
Behind the wonderful cookbooks and the iconic restaurant that has made Ottolenghi a household name stands the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen, a team of quirky gifted gastronomes who devise, tweak and perfect the recipes you love. In this new book, the team turn their attentions to the contents of your fridge and kitchen cupboards, showing you how to transform humble ingredients into delicious food. The approach is flexible and relaxed, but imbued with that mix of inventiveness and tradition that we have come to expect from anything Ottolenghi. Visit the kitchen that is Ottolenghi's creative hub and enrich your own.
>>Visit the OTK.
>>Visit the OTK.
From regenerating native bush, through formal gardens and heritage fruit trees, to community gardens and a dry garden in Central Otago, there is a place here to inspire everyone. The stories of their founders and developers bring the gardens to life. Located from Butler Point, across the harbour from Mangonui in Aotearoa's far north, down to Central Otago and Southland, the varying terrains and climates affect which plants flourish, and the exchange of ideas between the gardeners keep things vibrant and ever-changing.
Nigel Slater is always superb company in the kitchen. In this substantial new book, he looks back over his life and presents his culinary experiences from childhood to the present alongside 200 of his ever-wonderful recipes.
"A Cook's Book, all 500 pages and nearly one and a half kilos of it, enters the world as if from the kitchen of someone fresh to the world of food writing, a-brim with ideas, vital and enthusiastic." —Nigella Lawson
"This is a book for life. This, and it's high praise, is Slater's best book. —Diana Henry
From 1936 to 1940, the newly-wed George Orwell lived in a small cottage in Hertfordshire, writing, and tending his garden. When Rebecca Solnit visited the cottage, she discovered the descendants of the roses that he had planted many decades previously. These survivors, as well as the diaries he kept of his planting and growing, provide a springboard for a fresh look at Orwell's motivations and drives — and the optimism that countered his dystopian vision — and open up a mediation on our relationship to plants, trees and the natural world. Tracking Orwell's impact on political thought over the last century, Solnit journeys to England and Russia, Mexico and Colombia, exploring the political and historical events that shaped Orwell's life and her own. From a history of roses to discussions of climate change and insights into structural inequalities in contemporary society, Orwell's Roses is a fresh reading of a towering figure of 20th century literary and political life, and finds optimism, solace and solutions to our 21st century world.
The garden has always been a place of peace and perseverance, of nurture and reward. A garden can provide a family's food, a child's playground, an adult's peaceful retreat. But around the world and throughout history, gardens have often meant something more profound. For Sue Stuart-Smith's grandfather, returning from the First World War weighing six stone, a year-long horticulture course became a life raft for recovering from the trauma. For prisoners in today's justice system, gardening can be a mental escape from captivity which offers, in a context when opportunity is scarce, the chance to take ownership of a project and build something positive up from seed. In The Well Gardened Mind, Stuart-Smith investigates the huge power of the garden and its little-acknowledged effects on health and wellbeing.
Suzanne Turley — one of New Zealand's most sought-after landscape designers — has created many of the country's most desirable private gardens, all set against the spectacular backdrop of the natural environment.
Thirty-four years ago, when they were in their twenties, Niall Williams (the author of This Is Happiness)and Christine Breen made the impulsive decision to leave their lives in New York City and move to Christine's ancestral home in the town of Kiltumper in rural Ireland. In the decades that followed, the pair dedicated themselves to writing, gardening and living a life that followed the rhythms of the earth. In 2019, with Christine in the final stages of recovery from cancer and the land itself threatened by the arrival of turbines just one farm over, Niall and Christine decided to document a year of living in their garden and in their small corner of a rapidly changing world.
In the Baltics, two worlds meet: the Baltic Sea joins Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, bringing culinary influences and cultural exchange. Food is author Zuza Zak's doorway to a deeper understanding of this region, its rich history, its culture and what makes it tick.
List #3: SOCIETY
We recommend these books as seasonal gifts and for summer reading. Click through to our website to reserve or purchase your copies—we will have them delivered anywhere or aside for collection. Let us know if you would like them gift-wrapped.
If you don't find what you're looking for here, browse our website, or e-mail us: we have many other interesting books on our shelves.
A short memoir whose main focus is unpacking a family story that was never told: that a farm in Taranaki on which the family's generations-long comfortable fortunes rested had been directly taken from the people of Parikaha and given to anancestor, a member of the Armed Constabulary following the invasion of the village during the New Zealand Wars.
"Writing with radical tenderness, with beauty and pain and precision, Hana Pera Aoake envisions an anticapitalist, de-colonial, Indigenous way of living and being, transcending the borders of poetry and prose in a style similar to that of Claudia Rankine and Layli Long Soldier. A bath full of kawakawa and hot water is an essential poetic text in the literature of Aotearoa, and a call to action at the end of the world." —Nina Mingya Powles
"Part memoir, part myth, part rant, part dream, part chant. This is an exciting and poignant book from one of my favourite NZ writers." —Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle
"Hybrid in form and theme, what cyborg melts hierarchies, what cyborg turns the gender binary to dust, what cyborg fights for our mana motuhake? This one! Read this book and then do something about it." —essa may ranapiri
A wonderful graphic memoir of Bechdel's lifelong love affair with exercise— set against a hilarious chronicle of fitness fads in our times.
A superbly drawn graphic novel recalibrating the history of the entwined Australian and New Zealand involvement in the Vietnam War. Led by an unconscientiously objecting wombat registered for military service during Australia's war in Vietnam, Underground digs tunnels through a chapter of Australian history that many have attempted to bury. Why would a wombat be registered for war? It's 1965, and an old Tattersalls barrel starts rolling marbles to randomly conscript young Australian men to fight in the war in Vietnam. Melbourne housewife Jean McLean is outraged, as are her artist friends Clif and Marlene Pugh, who live in the country with their wombat, Hooper. Determined to wreck the system, Jean forms the Save Our Sons movement's Victorian branch, and she and her supporters take to the streets to protest. Meanwhile, in the small country town of Katunga, Bill Cantwell joins the Australian Army, and in Saigon, young Mai Ho is writing letters to South Vietnamese soldiers from her school desk. And when Hooper's call-up papers arrive, he mysteriously goes underground... As these stories intersect in unexpected ways and destinies entwine, a new world gradually emerges - a world in which bridges of understanding make more sense than war.
>>Born to dig.
Through the centre of China's historic capital, Long Peace Street cuts a long, arrow-straight line. It divides the Forbidden City, home to generations of Chinese emperors, from Tiananmen Square, the vast granite square constructed to glorify a New China under Communist rule. To walk the street is to travel through the story of China's recent past, wandering among its physical relics and hearing echoes of its dramas. Long Peace Street recounts a journey in modern China, a walk of twenty miles across Beijing offering a very personal encounter with the life of the capital's streets. At the same time, it takes the reader on a journey through the city's recent history.
An important book, not only reassessing the achievements—and failures—of Churchill's life and leadership, but examining the legacies of the 'Churchill myth' on all that has come after, from Tony Blair's eagerness to follow the United States into war in Iraq to the belief in British exceptionalism that underpinned Brexit.
"Provocative, clear-sighted, richly textured and wonderfully readable, this is the indispensable biography of Churchill for the post-Brexit 2020s." —David Kynaston
"Darkness is not empty," writes Teju Cole in this book that meditates on what it means to sustain our humanity—and witness the humanity of others—in a time of darkness. Wide-ranging but thematically unified, the essays address ethical questions about what it means to be human and what it means to bear witness, recognising how our individual present is informed by a collective past. Cole's writings in Black Paper approach the fractured moment through a constellation of interrelated concerns: confrontation with unsettling art, elegies both public and private, the defense of writing in a time of political upheaval, the role of the colour black in the visual arts, the use of shadow in photography, and the links between literature and activism. Throughout, Cole gives us intriguing new ways of thinking about blackness and its numerous connotations. "Writing on the top white sheet would transfer the carbon from the black paper onto the bottom white sheet. Black transported the meaning."
Cullen describes his lengthy political career, including his major economic policies. Among the many highlights are the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, also known as the Cullen Fund; Kiwisaver; and the Working for Families package, which sought to reduce inequalities. Well written.
"Nelson in 1843 was a violent place." In 1843 the New Zealand Company settlement of Nelson was rocked by the revolt of its immigrant labourers. Over 70 gang-men and their wives collectively resisted their poor working conditions through petitions, strikes and, ultimately, violence. Yet this pivotal struggle went on to be obscured by stories of pioneering men and women 'made good'. The History of a Riot uncovers those at the heart of the revolt for the first time. Who were they? Where were they from? And how did their experience of protest before arriving in Nelson influence their struggle? By putting violence and class conflict at the centre, this fascinating microhistory upends the familiar image of colonial New Zealand.
Beginning in the fifteenth century with Christine de Pizan, who imagined a City of Ladies that would serve as a refuge from the harassment of men, the book reaches around the whole earth and through history to us, now, splashing about in the fourth wave. It goes beyond the usual white, Western story, attentive also to class, capitalism and colonialism, and to the other axes of oppression that intersect with sexism. Alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who declared in Seneca Falls in 1848 the self-evident truth 'that all men and women are created equal', we find Sojourner Truth, born into slavery in New York in 1797, who asked 'and ain't I a woman?' Draws on poems, novels and memoirs, as well roaring manifestos.
Count Moise de Camondo lived a few doors away from Edmund de Waal's forebears, the Ephrussi, first encountered in his bestselling memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes. Like the Ephrussi, the Camondos were part of belle epoque high society. They were also targets of anti-semitism. Camondo created a spectacular house and filled it with the greatest private collection of French eighteenth-century art for his son to inherit. But when Nissim was killed in the First World War, it became a memorial and, on the Count's death, was bequeathed to France. The Musee Nissim de Camondo has remained unchanged since 1936. Edmund de Waal explores the lavish rooms and detailed archives and uncovers new layers to the family story. In a haunting series of letters addressed to the Count, he tells us what happened next. A beautifully presented illustrated hardback.
>>Visit the Musee Nissim de Camondo.
>>The Library of Exile.
>>Visit the Musee Nissim de Camondo.
>>The Library of Exile.
In 1877, Kate Edger became the first woman to graduate from a New Zealand university. The New Zealand Herald enthusiastically hailed her achievement as 'the first rays of the rising sun of female intellectual advancement'. Edger went on to become a pioneer of women's education in New Zealand. In 1883, she was the founding principal of Nelson College for Girls. She also worked to mitigate violence against women and children and to fortify their rights through progressive legislation. She campaigned for women's suffrage and played a prominent role in the Women's Christian Temperance Union and in Wellington's Society for the Protection of Women and Children. Later in life she advocated international diplomacy and co-operation through her work for the League of Nations Union.
This remarkable book challenges our received narratives of historical determinism, narratives that were devised in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to critiques of European culture inherent in the Indigenous cultures then entering European awareness. If we unshackle ourselves from thee preconceptions about human 'progress' and look more closely at the evidence, we find a wide array of ways in which humans have lived with each other, and with the natural world. Many of these can provide templates for new forms of social organisation, and lead us to rethink farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilisation itself.
Noah Yuval Harari's remarkable set of thinking tools for looking at human history are now presented as a graphic novel.
When nomadic Homo sapiens settled to live in one place, they started working harder and harder. But why didn't they get a better life in return? In The Pillars of Civilisation, Yuval Noah Harari and his companions including Prof. Saraswati and Dr. Fiction travel the length and breadth of human history to investigate how the Agricultural Revolution changed society forever. Discover how wheat took over the world, how war, famine, disease and inequality became a part of the human condition, and why we might only have ourselves to blame. Nicely drawn. Follows The Birth of Humankind.
Using a bioarchaeological approach, Jarman follows evidence that suggests a Viking-dominated trade and slave route from Northern Europe to the Middle East, India and beyond, and reconfigures our thinking about the Vikings themselves.
Humans are changing the world in extremely complex ways, creating a new geological age called the Anthropocene. How do we – as parents, caregivers and as a society – raise our children and dependents in this new world? This book explores ways to ensure the health and wellbeing of the next generations, with a view to encouraging inclusivity and critical discourse at a time of climate crisis, inequality and polarisation. From tikanga Māori and collective care in child-rearing through to new family forms, futures literacy, and shifting economic paradigms and societal structures, Parenting in the Anthropocene is a reflection of both the world we live in and the one we aspire to. Contents: 'Bountiful' — Emily Writes (writer & mother): 'Parenting in the first 1000 days: Moving towards equity' — Amanda Malu (CEO of Whānau Awhina Plunket); 'Stories for the children of the Anthropocene' — Jess Berentson-Shaw (researcher & advocate): 'The future is ours to design and build' — Dr David Galler (intensive care specialist): 'Inheriting climate disruption' — Mia Sutherland (youth climate-change activist); 'When do we talk about childlessness?' — Briohny Doyle (writer & lecturer); 'Reproductive and familial futures in Aotearoa New Zealand' — Nicola Surtees, PhD (academic & former ECE teacher); 'Poipoia te kākano: Nuturing tamariki Māori' — Leonie Pihama (Te tiawa, Waikato, Ngā Māhanga a Tairi); 'Be kind' — Brannavan Gnanalingam (writer & lawyer); 'Futures literacy and youth resilience: Educating for the future' — Amy L. Fletcher, PhD (academic & futurist); 'Are our children capitalism’s succession plan?' — Sacha McMeeking (researcher & commentator); 'Books for challenging times: Children and youngsters' — Terrisa Goldsmith (librarian); 'Books for challenging times: Caregivers' — Jane Keenan (librarian)
Winner of the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize.
The Sacklers are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations in the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing Oxycontin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis-an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people. Compelling.
The possession and dispossession of land continues to cast a long shadow between the partners of the Treaty of Waitangi, and until these issues are adequately addressed a wound will remain in New Zealand race relations.
Kelly was the first woman to lead the country’s trade union movement: a visionary who believed that all workers, whether in a union or not, deserved to be given a fair go; a fighter from a deeply communist family who never gave up the struggle; a strategist and orator who invoked strong loyalty; a woman who could stir fierce emotions. Her battles with famous people were the stuff of headlines. Macfie examines not only Kelly’s life but also a defining period in the country’s history, when old values were replaced by the individualism of neo-liberalism, and the wellbeing and livelihood of workers faced unremitting stress.
What is decolonisation? Why is it urgent? What would Aotearoa be like if it were decolonised? Certainly the way in which Aotearoa was colonised is responsible for many of the social, ethical and environmental problems we face collectively today—could a process of decolonisation remedy some of these problems and create a more equitable, healthy and sustainable approach to living in this place in the twenty-first century?
The Haitian Revolution began in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue with a slave revolt in August 1791, and culminated a dozen years later in the proclamation of the world's first independent black state. After the abolition of slavery in 1793, Toussaint Louverture, himself a former slave, became the leader of the colony's black population, the commander of its republican army and eventually its governor. During the course of his extraordinary life he confronted some of the dominant forces of his age—slavery, settler colonialism, imperialism and racial hierarchy. Treacherously seized by Napoleon's invading army in 1802, this charismatic figure ended his days, in Wordsworth's phrase, "the most unhappy man of men", imprisoned in a fortress in France.
Guided by Ngāi Tahu’s ancient oral maps supplemented by a modern satellite atlas, Low crossed the Southern Alps more than a dozen times, trying to understand the relationship between people and land — both now and in history — and seeking to reclaim his ancestors’ view of a world in which these mountains loomed large. If walking is in itself a form of knowing, what can we learn from tracing the backbone of the island on which we live?
War: How conflict shaped us by Margaret MacMillan $45
There is always a war in progress somewhere—is it an essential part of being human? What is the relationship between society and war? Economies, science, technology, medicine, culture: all are instrumental in war and have been shaped by it—without conflict it we might not have had penicillin, female emancipation, radar or rockets. Throughout history, writers, artists, film-makers, playwrights, and composers have been inspired by war—whether to condemn, exalt or simply puzzle about it. If we are never to be rid of war, how should we think about it and what does that mean for peace?
Marshall's global bestseller Prisoners of Geography showed how every nation's choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Since then, the geography hasn't changed, but the world has. In this new book, Marshall takes us into ten regions that are set to shape global politics and power. Find out why the Earth's atmosphere is the world's next battleground; why the fight for the Pacific is just beginning; and why Europe's next refugee crisis is closer than it thinks. Chapters cover Australia, The Sahel, Greece, Turkey, the UK, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Space.
An interesting and inspiring snapshot of Indigenous wāhine today, with both text and photographs. Through wide-ranging voices this ambitious social documentary showcases diverse representations of leadership, systems change and success. From Oscar-nominated filmmakers and award-winning musicians, to scientists, entrepreneurs, tribal leaders, artists, environmental champions, knowledge holders, mothers and more. The youngest wahine is 14, the eldest is in her mid-70s, and their locations span both North and South Islands of Aotearoa and across to Rēkohu (Chatham Islands). They are wāhine Māori, wāhine Moriori, Pasifika, Melanesian, Wijadjuri, Himalayan and Mexican.
>>Check out the NUKU 100.
>>Check out the NUKU 100.
The human mind can grapple with the future, visualising and calculating solutions to complex problems, giving us advantages over other species throughout our evolutionary history. However, this capability comes with a curse. By five to ten years of age, all humans know where they are ultimately heading: to the grave. Rachel and Ross Menzies examine the major human responses to death across history, from the development of religious systems denying the finality of death to 'immortality projects' involving enduring art, architecture and literature. While some of these have been glorious, like the construction of the pyramids, others have been destructive, leading to global conflicts and genocide. The authors hypothesise that worse is to come — our unconscious dread of death has led to the rampant consumerism and overpopulation of the 20th century, which has driven the global warming and pandemic crises that now threaten our very existence. In a terribly irony, Homo sapiens may ultimately be destroyed by our knowledge of our own mortality.
He Ringatoi o ngā Tūpuna: Isaac Coates and his Māori portraits by Hilary and John Mitchell $80
Isaac Coates was an Englishman who lived in Wellington and Nelson between 1841 and 1845. During that time he painted watercolour portraits of 58 Māori from Nelson, Marlborough, Wellington, Waikanae and Kapiti. Some of these portraits have been well-known for nearly 180 years, although their creator was not definitively identified until 2000. The discovery in 2007 of a Coates book of portraits in the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University added many previously unknown images to his body of work. The portraits depict Māori men and women from chiefly whakapapa, as well as commoners and at least one slave. Coates's meticulous records of each subject's name, iwi and place of residence are invaluable, and his paintings are strong images of individuals, unlike the more stereotyped work of some of Coates's contemporaries. Whānau, hāpu and iwi treasure Coates's works because they are the only images of some tūpuna, and they are reminders of those who risked their lives to bring their people to a better life in the Cook Strait regions of Kapiti coast, Wellington, Nelson and Marlborough. In He Ringatoi o ngā Tūpuna Te Tau Ihu historians John and Hilary Mitchell unravel the previously unknown story of Isaac Coates, as well as providing biographical details and whakapapa of his subjects, where they can be reliably identified. Meticulously researched and beautifully presented.
From 1919 to 1923, at Sir Apirana Ngata’s initiative, a team from the Dominion Museum travelled to tribal areas across Te Ika-a-Māui The North Island to record tikanga Māori that Ngata feared might be disappearing. These ethnographic expeditions, the first in the world to be inspired and guided by indigenous leaders, used cutting-edge technologies that included cinematic film and wax cylinders to record fishing techniques, art forms (weaving, kōwhaiwhai, kapa haka and mōteatea), ancestral rituals and everyday life in the communities they visited. The team visited the 1919 Hui Aroha in Gisborne, the 1920 welcome to the Prince of Wales in Rotorua, and communities along the Whanganui River (1921) and in Tairāwhiti (1923). Medical doctor-soldier-ethnographer Te Rangihīroa (Sir Peter Buck), the expedition’s photographer and film-maker James McDonald, the ethnologist Elsdon Best and Turnbull Librarian Johannes Andersen recorded a wealth of material. This beautifully illustrated book tells the story of these expeditions, and the determination of early twentieth century Māori leaders, including Ngata, Te Rangihiroa, James Carroll, and those in the communities they visited, to pass on ancestral tikanga ‘hei taonga mā ngā uri whakatipu’ as treasures for a rising generation.
Voices from the New Zealand Wars | He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O'Malley $50
The New Zealand Wars of the mid-nineteenth century profoundly shaped the course and direction of our nation's history. This book takes us to the heart of these conflicts with a series of first-hand accounts from Maori and Pakeha who either fought in or witnessed the wars that ravaged New Zealand between 1845 and 1872. From Heni Te Kiri Karamu's narrative of her remarkable exploits as a wahine toa, through to accounts from the field by British soldiers and powerful reports by observers on both sides, we learn about the wars at a human level. The often fragmentary, sometimes hastily written accounts that make up Voices from the New Zealand Wars vividly evoke the extreme emotions — fear, horror, pity and courage — experienced during the most turbulent time in our country's history. Each account is expertly introduced and contextualised, so that the historical record speaks to us vividly through many voices.
A large-format book featuring over 50 superb photographs, many previously unseen, from the Springbok Tour protests of 1981, showing the people, marches, and often violent clashes between the police, protesters and spectators around Eden Park Photographed on the day of the 3rd rugby test match between New Zealand and South Africa at Eden Park in Auckland with some photos from earlier protest marches including the Day of Shame, the 22nd of July when the first match of the Tour was played. Limited edition of 100 signed copies.
Does temperament in childhood predict adult personality? What role do parents play in shaping how a child matures? Is day care bad--or good--for children? Does adolescent delinquency forecast a life of crime? Do genes influence success in life? Is health in adulthood shaped by childhood experiences? A fascinating and important book, based on the internationally significant ongoing Dunedin Study.
Today, someone in the wealthiest 1 per cent of adults — now a roughly 40,000-strong club — has a net worth 68 times that of the average New Zealander. Too Much Money is the story of how wealth inequality is changing Aotearoa New Zealand. Possessing wealth opens up opportunities to live in certain areas, get certain kinds of healthcare, make certain kinds of social connections, exert certain kinds of power. But when access to these opportunities becomes alarmingly uneven, the implications are profound. This new book by the country's leading chronicler of economic inequality provides a far-reaching and compelling account of the way that wealth — and its absence — is transforming our lives. Drawing on the latest academic research, personal interviews and previously unexplored data, Too Much Money reveals the way wealth is distributed across the peoples of Aotearoa. Having helped elevate the word 'inequality' into the political lexicon, Max Rashbrooke's widely-anticipated new book arrives at a time of heightened concern for the division of wealth and what this means for our country's future.
For centuries the city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1833 it was discovered in Afghanistan by the unlikeliest person imaginable: Charles Masson, an ordinary working-class boy from London turned deserter, pilgrim, doctor, archaeologist and scholar. On the way into one of history's most extraordinary stories, Masson would take tea with kings, travel with holy men and become the master of a hundred disguises; he would see things no westerner had glimpsed before and few have glimpsed since. He would spy for the East India Company and be suspected of spying for Russia at the same time, for this was the era of the Great Game, when imperial powers confronted each other in these remote lands. Masson discovered tens of thousands of pieces of Afghan history, including the 2,000-year-old Bimaran golden casket, which has upon it the earliest known face of the Buddha.
"Full, extraordinary, heart-breaking, utterly brilliant." —William Dalrymple
In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times. The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.
24 Māori academics share their personal journeys, revealing what being Māori has meant for them in their work.
An A-Z guide on how we stay informed in the era of fake news, from former Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger. Nothing in life works without facts. A society that isn't sure what's true can't function. Without facts there can be no government or law. Science is ignored. Trust evaporates. People everywhere feel ever more alienated from—and mistrustful of—news and those who make it. We no longer seem to know who or what to believe. We are living through a crisis of 'information chaos'.
Too often, history is told from the northern hemisphere, with modernity, knowledge, selfhood and politics moving from Europe to influence the rest of the world. This book traces the origins of our times from the perspective of indigenous and non-European people in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. From Aboriginal Australians to Parsis and from Mauritians to Malays, people asserted their place and their future as the British empire drove unexpected change. The tragedy of colonisation was that it reversed the immense possibilities for liberty, humanity and equality in this period. Waves Across the South insists on the significance of the environment: the waves of the Bay of Bengal or the Tasman Sea were the context for this story. Sivasundaram tells how revolution, empire and counter-revolt crashed in the global South. Naval war, imperial rivalry and oceanic trade had their parts to play, but so did hope, false promise, rebellion, knowledge and the pursuit of being modern.
"Fresh, sparkling and ground-breaking, Waves Across the South helps re-centre how we look at the world and opens up new perspectives on how we can look at regions, peoples and places that have been left to one side of traditional histories for far too long." —Peter Frankopan
"Global history at its finest: eloquent, surprising, and deeply moving." —Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters
The Florentines: From Dante to Galileo by Paul Strathern $37
Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642 something happened which transformed the entire culture of western civilisation. Painting, sculpture and architecture would all visibly change in such a striking fashion that there could be no going back on what had taken place. Likewise, the thought and self-conception of humanity would take on a completely new aspect. Sciences would be born, or emerge in an entirely new guise. The ideas which broke this mould largely began, and continued to flourish, in the city of Florence in the province of Tuscany in northern central Italy. These ideas, which placed an increasing emphasis on the development of our common humanity - rather than other-worldly spirituality - coalesced in what came to be known as humanism. This philosophy and its new ideas would eventually spread across Italy, yet wherever they took hold they would retain an element essential to their origin. And as they spread further across Europe this element would remain.
When John Summers moved to a small town in the Wairarapa and began to look closely at the less-celebrated aspects of local life - our club rooms, freezing works, night trains, hotel pubs, landfills - he saw something deeper. It was a story about his own life, but mostly about a place and its people. The story was about life and death in New Zealand. Combining reportage and memoir, The Commercial Hotel is a sharp-eyed, poignant yet often hilarious tour of Aotearoa: a place in which Arcoroc mugs and dog-eared political biographies are as much a part of the scenery as the hills we tramp through ill-equipped. We encounter Elvis impersonators, the eccentric French horn player and adventurer Bernard Shapiro, Norman Kirk balancing timber on his handlebars while cycling to his building site, and Summers's grandmother: the only woman imprisoned in New Zealand for protesting World War Two. And we meet the ghosts who haunt our loneliest spaces. As he follows each of his preoccupations, Summers reveals to us a place we have never quite seen before.
"A beautiful, robust collection of work. Every once in a while a book comes along that you read, reread, and treasure. This is one of those books." —Laurence Fearnley
"This book is an achievement of much clarity and grace, but more importantly it is a work of promise." —Landfall Review Online
In his eightieth year Thubron travelled the length of the river that divides China from Russia, using public transport where possible and sleeping where he could. In his inimitable elegant prose, he evokes the ordinary lives of those in a place of tension between superpowers.
Winchester explores the the possession of land, the ways it is delineated and changes hands, the great disputes, and the questions of restoration – particularly in the light of climate change and colonialist reparation. A global study, this is an exquisite exploration of what the ownership of land might really mean for the people who live on it.
List #5: NATURE & SCIENCE
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For generations, New Zealanders have taken to the hills and into the forests on foot to find out more about this land, its flora and fauna, themselves, and their companions. This book presents a wide gathering of writing concerned with tramping — from journals to yarns to poetry, from articles to fiction to songs — and captures something unique in the experience of Aotearoa. Sits well on a shelf alongside Laurence Fearnley’s and Paul Hersey’s To the Mountains: A Collection of New Zealand Alpine Writing.
I am an Island by Tamsin Calidas $37
When Tamsin Calidas first arrives on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides, it feels like coming home. Disenchanted by London, she and her husband left the city and high-flying careers to move the 500 miles north, despite having absolutely no experience of crofting, or of island life. It was idyllic, for a while. But as the months wear on, the children she'd longed for fail to materialise, and her marriage breaks down, Tamsin finds herself in ever-increasing isolation. Injured, ill, without money or friend she is pared right back, stripped to becoming simply a raw element of the often harsh landscape. But with that immersion in her surroundings comes the possibility of renewal.
How to Be Animal: A new history of what it means to be human by Melanie Challenger $33
Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive and baffling animals on the planet. But how well do we really know ourselves? How to Be Animal writes a remarkable story of what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our psychology is a profound struggle with being animal. As well as piecing together the mystery of how this psychology evolved, the book examines the wide-reaching ways in which it affects our lives, from our politics to the ways we distance ourselves from other species.
“Melanie Challenger’s wonderful book teaches me this: our blazing continuity with the depth of time and the whole of life. It is a huge, complex and triumphant thing: challenging, but also celebratory, courageous, mournful and apprehensive. Her language is lovely: exact and lyrical and sparklingly full of suggestion and implication. It is a hymn to generosity. I know it will be something I will return to again and again.” —Adam Nicholson
Arranged by bird, these literary excerpts and poems from classic and modern writers are accompanied by striking woodcuts. A very attractive hardback volume.
In his follow-up to the equally fascinating and beautiful Around the World in 80 Trees, Jonathan Drori takes another trip across the globe, bringing to life the science of plants by revealing how their worlds are intricately entwined with our own history, culture and folklore. From the seemingly familiar tomato and dandelion to the eerie mandrake and Spanish 'moss' of Louisiana, each of these stories is full of surprises. Some have a troubling past, while others have ignited human creativity or enabled whole civilisations to flourish.
The Light Ages: A medieval journey of discovery by Seb Falk $30
An interesting survey of the under-recognised scientific achievements of the Middle Ages, concentrating on the life and journeys of a real-life fourteenth century monk, John of Westwyk—inventor, astrologer, crusader—who was educated in England's grandest monastery and exiled to a clifftop priory.
This is a book about abandoned places: exclusion zones, no man's lands, ghost towns and post-industrial hinterlands – and what nature does when we're not there to see it. Exploring some of the eeriest, most desolate places in the world, Cal Flyn asks: what happens after humans pick up and leave? Whether due to war or disaster, disease or economic decay, each extraordinary place visited in this book has been left to its own devices for decades. In this time, nature has been left to work unfettered – offering a glimpse of how abandoned land, even the most polluted regions of the world, might offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery.
Featherhood by Charlie Gilmour $30
Gilmour's developing relationship with a magpie leads him to deeply consider his relationship with his father, anarchist poet and absconder Heathcote Williams, and also Williams's relationship with a jackdaw. What repeats across generations? Can birds 'run in the blood'? What else 'runs in the blood'?
"The best piece of nature writing since H is for Hawk, and the most powerful work of biography I have read in years." —Neil Gaiman
"Wonderful - I can't recommend it too highly." —Helen Macdonald
As climate change imposes significant challenges on the natural world we are being encouraged to plant trees. At the same time, urban intensification and expansion threatens our existing arboreal resources and leads to disputes among communities, councils and developers over the fate of mature trees. To find our way through this confusion, we need to build our respect for trees and to recognise their essential role in our environment, our heritage, our well-being and our future. We need to build a 'tree sense'. This collection of essays, art and poetry by artists, activists, ecologists and advocates discusses the many ways in which humans need trees, and how our future is laced into their roots and their branches. Includes contributions from Huhana Smith, Mels Barton, Elizabeth Smither, Philip Simpson, Anne Noble, Kennedy Warne, Meredith Robertshawe, Glyn Church, Jacky Bowring, and Colin Meurk.
>>Have a look inside the book.
>>Have a look inside the book.
What do we know, and how do we know it? What do we now know that we don't know? And what have we learnt about the obstacles to knowing more? In a time of deepening battles over what knowledge and truth mean, these questions matter more than ever. Grayling seeks to answer them in three crucial areas at the frontiers of knowledge — science, history, and psychology. In each area he illustrates how each field has advanced to where it is now, from the rise of technology to quantum theory, from the dawn of humanity to debates around national histories, from ancient ideas of the brain to modern theories of the mind. A remarkable history of science, life on earth, and the human mind itself.
50,000 years ago, we were not the only species of human in the world. There were at least four others, including the Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonesis and the Denisovans. At the forefront of the latter's discovery was Oxford Professor Tom Higham. In this book he explains the scientific and technological advancements—in radiocarbon dating and ancient DNA, for example—that allowed each of these discoveries to be made, enabling us to be more accurate in our predictions about not just how long ago these other humans lived, but how they lived, interacted and live on in our genes today.
In the company of bats, owls, moths and seabirds, Annette Lees guides us from dusk to dawn with fascinating night stories: tales of war stealth and ghosts; nights lit by candles and lighthouses; night surfing, fishing, diving and skiing; mountain walking and night navigation on ocean voyaging waka. From the author of Swim.
Piripai is natural history as prose poetry. It is a story of place, time and a subtle coming of age on the sand dunes between the river and the sea. The book is structured around twenty-six birds that inhabited Piripai, and ordered according to the time of year, beginning in spring and ending in winter. It is suffused with observation and memory, conveyed in a stripped-back style that both evokes and abstracts. Through the eyes of the book's three characters we learn about their family, their culture, their birds and the rough, beautiful land they call home.
Above the Treeline: A nature guide to alpine New Zealand by Alan Mark $80
Long unavailable and now completely revised and extended, this wonderful well-illustrated book is the definitive guide to the alpine regions that comprise so much of New Zealand. An essential book (even if you already have the earlier edition).
"It is clear that our bodies still recognize nature as our home." —Yoshifumi Miyazaki. 'Forest bathing' or Shinrin-yoku is a way of walking in the woods that was developed in Japan in the 1980s. It brings together ancient traditions with cutting edge environmental health science.
Conversātiō: In the company of bees by Anne Noble $60
"To fear the sting of a bee and know the sweetness of honey." Renowned New Zealand photographer Anne Noble has become increasingly fascinated with bees: their social complexity, their otherness, their long importance to humans, and the clarity with which they raise the alarm over environmental stress and degradation. This beautifully presented and idiosyncratic book displays Noble's bee photographs, at once sensitive and stunning, and helps us to think in new ways about the bees with which we share our world.
>>Look inside.
Of all the many things humans rely on plants for, surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness—to stimulate, calm, or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. In This Is Your Mind On Plants, Michael Pollan explores three very different drugs - opium, caffeine, and mescaline - and throws the fundamental strangeness of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming (or in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos. Why are some drugs encouraged by governments and others restricted?
This thought-provoking collection brings together essays by fifteen philosophers reflecting on what it means to live according to a philosophy of life. From Eastern philosophies (Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism), to classical Western philosophies (such as Aristotelianism and Stoicism), to the four major religions, as well as contemporary philosophies (such as existentialism and effective altruism), each contributor offers a lively, personal account of how they find meaning in the practice of their chosen philosophical traditions.
Fox & I: An uncommon friendship by Catherine Raven $38
A solitary woman's inspiring, moving, surprising, and often funny memoir about the transformative power of her unusual friendship with a wild fox. Catherine Raven left home at 15, fleeing an abusive father and an indifferent mother. Drawn to the natural world, she worked as a ranger in national parks, at times living in her run-down car on abandoned construction sites, or camping on a piece of land in Montana she bought from a colleague. She managed to put herself through college and then graduate school, eventually earning a PhD in biology and building a house on her remote plot. Yet she never felt at home with people. Except when teaching, she spoke to no one. One day, she realised that a wild fox that had been appearing at her house was coming by every day precisely at 4.15. He became a regular visitor, eventually sitting near her as she read to him. Her scientific training had taught her not to anthropomorphise animals, but as she grew to know him, his personality revealed itself - and he became her friend. But friends cannot always save each other from the uncontained forces of nature. Though this is a story of survival, it is also a poignant and dramatic tale of living in the wilderness and coping with inevitable loss.
Through his offbeat adventures in healthcare and travel, Reisman discovers new perspectives on the body: a trip to the Alaskan Arctic reveals that fat is not the enemy, but the hero; a stint in the Himalayas uncovers the boundary where the brain ends and the mind begins; and eating a sheep's head in Iceland offers a lesson in empathy. By relating his experiences in far-flung lands and among unique cultures back to the body's inner workings, he shows how our organs live inextricably intertwined lives in an internal ecosystem that reflects the natural world around us.
In June 1925, twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, retreated to a small, treeless island in the North Sea called Helgoland. It was there that he came up with one of the most transformative scientific concepts—quantum theory. Almost a century later, quantum physics has given us many startling ideas—ghost waves, distant objects that seem magically connected to each other, cats that are both dead and alive. At the same time, countless experiments have led to practical applications that shape our daily lives. Today our understanding of the world around us is based on this theory. And yet it is still profoundly mysterious. In this book, Carlo Rovelli tells the story of quantum physics and reveals its deep meaning—a world made of substances is replaced by a world made of relations, each particle responding to another in a never ending game of mirrors.
>>Other excellent books by Rovelli.
>>Other excellent books by Rovelli.
"I was tired of speed. I wanted to live tree time." Drawn to trees' wisdom, their nonviolent way of being, their ability to cope with loneliness and pain, Roy movingly explores the lessons that writers, painters, photographers, scientists, and spiritual figures have gleaned through their engagement with trees—from Rabindranath Tagore to Tomas Tranströmer, Ovid to Octavio Paz, William Shakespeare to Margaret Atwood. Her stunning meditations on forests, plant life, time, self, and the exhaustion of being human evoke the spacious, relaxed rhythms of the trees themselves.
Consciousness is the great unsolved mystery in our scientific understanding of the brain. Somewhere, somehow, inscribed in the brain is everything that makes you you. But how do we grasp what happens in the brain to turn mere electrical impulses into the vast range of perceptions, thoughts and emotions we feel from moment to moment? Anil Seth charts the developments in our understanding of consciousness, revealing radical interdisciplinary breakthroughs that must transform the way we think about the self. Drawing on his original research and collaborations with cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, brain imagers, virtual reality wizards, mathematicians and philosophers, he puts forward a new theory about how we experience the world that should encourage us to view ourselves as less apart from and more a part of the rest of nature.
"Beautifully written, crystal clear, deeply insightful." —David Eagleman
Raised in the forests of British Columbia, Simard was working in the forest service when she first discovered how trees communicate underground through an immense web of fungi, at the centre of which lie the Mother Trees — the mysterious, powerful entities that nurture their kin and sustain the forest.
Neanderthals became a distinct population 450,000 to 400,000 thousand years ago, and lived all over the world from north Wales to China and Arabia, in climates ranging from glacial to tropical, until about 40,000 years ago. They were shorter than we are, with strong arms for working hides and fine motor skills for making small tools, but probably saw, heard, smelled and possibly even spoke much like we do. With a sketch and a short piece of fiction at the start of each chapter, Wragg Sykes paints a vivid picture of life as lived by a Neanderthal parent, hunter or child. She doesn’t just want us to see Neanderthals for who they (probably) really were; she wants us to see their world through their eyes.
In this impressive reassessment Neanderthals emerge as complex, clever and caring, with a lot to tell us about human life." —Guardian
Edith Widder grew up wanting to become a marine biologist. But after complications from surgery caused her to go temporarily blind while at university, she became fascinated by light, and her focus turned to bioluminescence. On her first visit to the deep ocean, in an experimental diving suit that took her to a depth of 250 metres, she turned off the suit's lights and witnessed breathtaking explosions of bioluminescent activity. Why was there so much light down there? Below the Edge of Darkness takes readers deep into the mysteries of the oceans as Widder investigates one of nature's most widely used forms of communication. She reveals hidden worlds and a dazzling menagerie of creatures, from microbes to leviathans—many never before seen or, like the giant squid, never before filmed.
Definitively describes the different groups of seabirds, where in New Zealand they occur, their breeding biology, foods and foraging behaviours, the conservation threats they face, and the vast distances they often travel to feed and breed.
List #7: NEW ZEALAND POETRY
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"Savage is as savage does. And we’re all implicated. Avia breaks the colonial lens wide open. We peer through its poetic shards and see a savage world – outside, inside. With characteristic savage and stylish wit, Avia holds the word-blade to our necks and presses with a relentless grace. At the end, you’ll feel your pulse anew." —Selina Tusitala Marsh
Winner of the Mary & Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2021 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
This exquisite little hardback of 21 poems and 26 watercolour paintings is the result of a long-time poet-and-artist collaboration and grew out of their thinking about the natural world, childhood memories and thoughts about the climate change crisis. It’s part of a growing literary genre based on emerging forms of ecological thinking that cross genres and scientific disciplines. An adult picture book to be read aloud to all ages, and a gesture of playful joy, this small treasure can be enjoyed in one sitting and returned to on a regular basis.
>>Look inside.
A patchy archive of hallucinatory field notes, dictionary definitions from inside a dream, and diary entries from an alternate history. This collection of strange poems maintains both excitement and melancholy like the two-edged blade of a letter opener.
"Reading Bird Collector is like walking through the rooms of a nineteenth century house, filled with curiosities but also with a deeper sense of buried trauma: both on a personal and an environmental scale. The fragmentary pieces invite the reader to search for a narrative at the same time as they frustrate this desire—much like the appearance and disappearance of ghosts or spirits. Alison Glenny’s writing suggests a literary lineage that includes Gertrude Stein and Anne Carson. There is a mastery of technique and a skilled repurposing of language and text. I am very much in awe of this work." —Airini Beautrais
"I often think of Emily Dickinson when I read Alison Glenny. There are the same provoking gaps and absences, the same particular gaze; and always — to adapt one of Alison Glenny’s own phrases — the steady habit of turning starlight into song." —Bill Manhire
Stjepan and Elizabeta are siblings in Kotoriba, a small village between two rivers in Yugoslavia. They want to know everything about the world. From their tiny corner of communist Europe, small cracks are starting to appear in their adoration of their national leader, Tito. The poems in All Tito's Children are shadowed by the story of Grgec's own grandparents, who fled communist Yugoslavia in the 1950s and came to New Zealand as refugees. The collection is a multilayered portrait of personal and political disillusionment, deception, escape and loss.
Hassan's poems chartan intimate course through memories from his childhood and upbringing in Egypt, New Zealand, Turkey and elsewhere to untangle the intersecting traumas of migration, Islamophobia and grief and ask difficult questions about the essence of nationalism and belonging.
New Zealand West Coast poet, novelist, teacher, bookseller and conservationist Peter Hooper (1919-1991) was described by Colin McCahon, who used his poems in a number of art works, as a 'poet of grace and truth'. His voice on behalf of nature and the environment, and clear insight into where our treatment of the environment was heading, has only deepened in its relevance in the 21st century.
"A new book by Anne Kennedy, one of our most exciting and innovative poets, is always a cause for celebration. These poems, like her mind, are a treasure trove – full of wit, intelligence, innovation, challenge, beauty and a whole lot of heart." —Helen Rickerby
"Anne Kennedy celebrates and memorialises the world in a state of flux, at once dynamic, absurd and magical. Her poems are funny, sceptical and impassioned by turns, and always finely calibrated. Ultimately, she writes about the minor daily miracles of life itself, the narratives of the moment, the human surplus that eludes legal tidiness and finality of judgement." —David Eggleton
Great Works consists of thirteen poems, each about a different freezing works in Aotearoa New Zealand. Satirising the colonial-pastoral mythologies through which the local landscape has often been interpreted, the collection gives due attention to an industry which, in spite of its centrality to the nation’s economic history, has remained conspicuously absent from its art and literature. Here, as in Bataille, ‘the slaughterhouse is linked to religion’: Great Works offers a darkly comic view of sacrifice and slaughter in ‘God’s Own Country’. Limited edition of 100.
>>Read some of the poems.
A beautifully presented collection of surprising and shifting poems, focused on connection and displacement, the blurring between internal landscapes and longed-for realities.
"Courtney Sina Meredith is one of New Zealand's most talented and influential authors. Burst Kisses On The Actual Wind will find an eager audience." —Paula Morris.
"Courtney Sina Meredith has grown a distinctive voice. Her arrangements are formally inventive. She surprises in ways that writers ought to." —Lloyd Jones
The first collecting from an exciting emerging poet. "Take part in a new transformation with every new page as the speaker becomes by turns an egg, multiple trees, a town crier, a needle in a haystack, and a cone of blue light in this incisive and pathos-filled exploration of what it means to be anything at all."
From his 1989 collection Coming Here – in which he wrote the first of his ‘Secret Life’ poems – to his 2018 collection Winter Eyes, which reviewer Tim Upperton called "unsettling, moving, both estranging and empathetic", Ricketts has written of friendship, youth, romance, loss, and the small moments that carry a lifelong weight, or light, within us.
"When you first told me that you gave me the name of our tupuna so that I would be strong enough to hold our family inside my ribcage, I believed you. Here you are. Here is how I saw you, trapped in your own amber. Now it’s time for you to believe me. Tōku Pāpā is a book that serves as a map of survival for Māori growing up outside of their papakāika. These poems look at how we take the knowledge we are given by our ancestors and hide it beneath our tongues for safekeeping. They show us how we live with our tūpuna, without ever fully understanding them. This book encompasses a journey spanning generations, teaching us how to keep the home fires burning within ourselves when we have forgotten where our homes are. But have our homes forgotten us?"
Tibble's eagerly awaited second collection, following 2018's Poūkahangatus.
"The intricate politics woven into Tibble’s poetry give her writing strength and purpose." —Winnie Siulolovao Dunn, Cordite Poetry Review
"Tibble speaks about beauty, activism, power and popular culture with compelling guile, a darkness, a deep understanding and sensuality." —Hinemoana Baker
>>Two poems from the book.
>>Two poems from the book.
Is it the case that repetitive tasks of quotidian cleaning better distill our existential predicaments than the loftiest theoretical musings? Possibly, but, be that as it may, this little book of delightfully sprightly, concisely insightful verse, matched with equally amusing illustrations, will improve the mood of anyone who reads it.
>>And there are cards!!
>>And there are cards!!
This collection of poetry, fiction and essays by emerging writers is the first-ever anthology of Asian New Zealand creative writing. A Clear Dawn presents a new wave of creative talent. With roots stretching from Indonesia to Japan, from China to the Philippines to the Indian subcontinent, the authors in this anthology range from high school students to retirees, from recent immigrants to writers whose families have lived in New Zealand for generations. Some of the writers – including Gregory Kan, Sharon Lam, Rose Lu and Chris Tse – have published books; some, like Mustaq Missouri, Aiwa Pooamorn and Gemishka Chetty, are better known for their work in theatre and performance. The introduction outlines New Zealand's long yet under-recognised history of immigration from Asia.
"Breathtaking in its parts and as a hole. Even if you know a part of Asia well, even if you feel in touch with present-day Aotearoa, this anthology will surprise you again and again, as, voice by unique voice, truth by particular truth, its artists build a mosaic you have never seen before." —Rajorshi Chakraborti
Aotearoa is a land of extraordinary queer writers, many of whom have contributed to our rich literary history. But you wouldn’t know it. Decades of erasure and homophobia have rendered some of our most powerful writing invisible. Out Here will change that. This landmark book brings together and celebrates queer New Zealand writers from across the gender and LGBTQIA+ spectrum with a generous selection of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and more.
>>Read Thomas's review.
>>Alternative routes.
>>The diary as a record of our joys.
>>Inquisitiveness, Exuberance, Neuroses.
>>An attempt to pay attention.
>>Launching the book in French.
>>In conversation with Deborah Levy.
>>"I felt like I was in de Beauvoir's body."
>>Elkin's translation of Simone de Beauvoir's 'lost' novel The Inseparables.
>>Flâneuse.
>>The End of Oulipo?
>>Your copy of No. 91/92.
| THOMAS | >> Read all Thomas's reviews. |
 | Exteriors by Annie Ernaux (translated by Tanya Leslie) {Reviewed by THOMAS} I would like the work to be a non-work, I thought, though it was not exactly my thought or a new thought. I would like a literature that revealed as much as possible of what we call real life, that was as close as possible to real life, so close, perhaps that it cannot be distinguished from what we call real life. Is such a thing possible, I wondered, as I read Annie Ernaux’s Exteriors, a book drawn from her journal entries over a period of seven years, entries in which she is attempting to exclude as much as possible of herself and of her past from her writing and, as much as this is possible, and her work is perhaps testing to what extent this is possible, to observe and record the actual particulars that present themselves to her as she travels on Métro or the RER after moving to a New Town just outside Paris, if it is the case that details are themselves active in their presentation, which is somehting of which I am not certain. “It is other people,” Ernaux writes, “who revive our memory and reveal our true selves through the interest, the anger or the shame that they send rippling through us.” She cannot help but write some of her own thoughts, probably more than she knows or intends, which is not surprising, I thought, it is not that easy to excise yourself entirely, everything you notice points primarily to you who do the noticing. “(By choosing to write in the first person, I am laying myself open to criticism. … The third person is always somebody else. … ‘I’ shames the reader,)” she writes. Meticulously recording her observations gives Ernaux insight not just into the people she observes, their lives are mostly withheld from her, after all, there are only the moments, but, I thought, we exist in any case only in moments, but into the society, into the world, for which these particulars are what literary types might call text and what medical types might call symptoms. As Ernaux observes she observes herself being the kind of person who observes in the way that only she observes. “(I realise that I am forever combing reality for signs of literature,)” she says in an aside. “(Sitting opposite someone in the Métro, I often ask myself, ‘Why am I not that woman?’)” For Ernaux so-called real life is a text, but artless, raw. She observes the performative efforts of other people in public places, on public transport. “Contrary to a real theatre, members of the audience here avoid looking at the actors and affect not to hear their performance. Embarrassed to see real life making a spectacle of itself, and not the opposite.” The extent to which artifice can be removed is the extent to which, ultimately, our mostly unconscious responses to the external reveal something about ourselves. This is what it means to exist. “It is outside my own life that my past existence lies: in passengers commuting on the Métro or the RER; in shoppers glimpsed on escalators at Auchan or in the Galleries Lafayette; in complete strangers who cannot know that they possess part of my story; in faces and bodies which I shall never see again. In the same way, I myself, anonymous among the bustling crowds on streets and in department stores, must secretly play a role in the lives of others.” The purpose of art is to remove itself. Or to reduce itself. Just as the perfect crime is one so subtle that is never discovered, so it is with the perfect artwork, I thought, the perfect art ‘passes' as ordinary life. The work becomes a non-work. Well, I thought, I will write no more. |
| >> Read all Stella's reviews. | |
 | The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa {Reviewed by STELLA} Need some distraction from the world? How about stepping through the back wall of a bookshop into a series of fantastical scenarios to save some books? A talking cat, a young man — Rintaro — who considers himself a typical hikikomori, plenty of classics getting a mention — and all taking place in a small, special second-hand bookshop. When Rintaro’s grandfather dies, his connection with the world is further severed, despite his classmate Sayo keeping an eye on him and trying to get him back to the classroom. Rintaro seems keener on drinking Assam tea — his grandfather’s favourite — and dreamily sitting in the bookshop, then closing Natsuki Books and packing to move in with his Aunt. One evening, just as Rintaro is ready to close and go upstairs, the bell on the front door rings out — but there is no one there. Yet, a voice sings out. Tracking the sounds reveals a large stripy cat, who introduces himself as Tiger and nicknames Rintaro 'Mr Proprietor'. And apparently, the cat needs his help. Help that will require Rintaro to step through the back wall into a labyrinth to save books. There are several adventures into magical worlds, each a little more dangerous and strange. Will Rintaro be brave enough to complete these tasks or will he and Tiger be lost to the labyrinth? And how come no one else sees the talking cat? That is until Sayo walks into the bookshop. Together they will use their wits — Sayo is determined and Rintaro has a passion for books (one developed by his literature-loving grandfather) — to change others' minds and behaviour. The Cat Who Saved Books is a magical book — a charming Japanese-style fable about the pleasures of literature and books. |
NEW RELEASES
A hunted being escapes certain death at breakneck speed. Faster and faster, escaping the assassins, the protagonist flies forward, blending into crowds, adjusting to terrains, hopping on and off ferries, always desperately trying to stay a step ahead of certain death—the past did not exist, only what was current existed—a prisoner of the instant, rushing into this instant, an instant that has no continuation. Krasznahorkai's mesmeric prose is accompanied by unsettling paintings by Neumann, and Miklós's percussive accompaniment is accessed via QR codes in each section. Remarkable.
"Allusive and acerbic: a brilliant work that proves the adage that even paranoiacs have enemies." —Kirkus
i>>Dismiss all questions.
>>"I didn't want to be a writer."
>>"I thought that real life was elsewhere."
>>Where to start with Krasznahorkai.
>>Other books by Krasznahorkai.
In the four stories that make up The Dolls, characters are plagued by unexplained illnesses and oblique, human-made disasters and environmental losses. A big sister descends into the family basement. Another sister refuses her younger brother. A third sister with memory loss is on the run and offered shelter by Notpla, a man both an ally and an enemy. A fourth set of siblings travel to Hungary with their late mother in a coffin. They each have a different version of their mother’s story. Drawing on the likes of August Strindberg, Franz Kafka, Andrej Kurkov, Knut Hamsun, T.S. Eliot, Béla Tarr, and Hieronymus Bosch, Scavenius’s universe is chilling and excruciatingly seductive.
>>'Compartment.'
>>In a choked state of mind.
>>'Compartment.'
>>In a choked state of mind.
H of H Playbook is an explosion of thought, in drawings and language, about a Greek tragedy called Herakles by the 5th-century BC poet Euripides. In myth Herakles is an embodiment of manly violence who returns home after years of making war on enemies and monsters to find he cannot adapt himself to a life of peacetime domesticity. He goes berserk and murders his whole family. Suicide is his next idea, but, due to the intervention of his friend Theseus, Herakles comes to believe he is not, after all, indelibly stained by his own crimes, nor is his life without value. It remains for the reader to judge this redemptive outcome.
In the first days of spring in his eighty-second year, Gerald Murnane began a project which would round off his career as a writer – he would read all of his books in turn and prepare a report on each. His original intention was to lodge the reports in two of his legendary archives, the Chronological Archive, which documents his life as a whole, and the Literary Archive, which is devoted to everything he has written. But as the reports grew, they themselves took on the form of a book, Last Letter to a Reader. The essays on each of his works travel through the capacious territory Murnane refers to as his mind: they dwell on the circumstances which gave rise to the writing, images, associations, reflections on the theory of fiction, and memories of a deeply personal kind.
>>Read Thomas's reviews of several of Murnane's books.
.....and then there were none by Harvey Benge, Jon Carapiet, Lloyd Jones, Haru Sameshima, and Stu Sontier $40
>>Read Thomas's reviews of several of Murnane's books.
An outstanding collaborative book by four New Zealand-based photographers and one writer, breaking out of conventional story-telling to play out their anxieties and doubts about the world they see. Developed over the last two years, . . . . . and then there were none grew from conversations and arguments about mortality, our technologically mired existence and the degradation of the environment. The project triggered its own version of flygskam for the collaborators, conflicted by the international travel that made many of the photographs and the writing possible and tainted by knowing the greater price to be paid. Images included from such travels are drenched in sordid human histories that recall the myriad pathways that have led us to now, and to what comes next.
His life passed without recognition and he worked without reward, mocked, dismissed and misinterpreted. Yet from his ignoble end in a pauper's grave, Blake now occupies a unique position as an artist who unites and attracts people from all corners of society. Blake famously experienced visions, and it is these that shaped his attitude to politics, sex, religion, society and art. Thanks to the work of neuroscientists and psychologists, we are now in a better position to understand what was happening inside that remarkable mind, and gain a deeper appreciation of his brilliance. His work has never been more relevant. In William Blake vs the World we return to a world of riots, revolutions and radicals, discuss movements from the Levellers of the sixteenth century to the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s, and explore the latest discoveries in neurobiology, quantum physics and comparative religion. Taking the reader on wild detours into unfamiliar territory, John Higgs places the bewildering eccentricities of a most singular artist into context. Lively and compelling.
Nigel Slater is always superb company in the kitchen. In this substantial new book, he looks back over his life and presents his culinary experiences from childhood to the present alongside 200 of his ever-wonderful recipes.
"A Cook's Book, all 500 pages and nearly one and a half kilos of it, enters the world as if from the kitchen of someone fresh to the world of food writing, a-brim with ideas, vital and enthusiastic." —Nigella Lawson
"This is a book for life. This, and it's high praise, is Slater's best book. —Diana Henry
Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. A historical novel from the author of the outstanding (and very contemporary) Fates and Furies.
>>Research and imagination.
All the Queens Houses: An architectural portrait of New York's most diverse borough by Rafael Herrin-Ferri $45
>>Research and imagination.
Queens is often celebrated as the 'melting pot' of the United States of America. People from all over the world built houses that reflected both their heritages and their aspirations. While All the Queens Houses is mainly a photography book celebrating the broad range of housing styles in New York City's largest and most diverse county, it is also an endorsement of a multicultural community that mixes global building traditions into the American vernacular, and by so doing breathes new life into its architecture and surrounding urban context.
"The character of the everyday has always been repetitive and veiled by obsession and fear." The Everyday and Everydayness takes seriously the everyday as a structure imposed upon all of life in the context of the 'modern'. At a moment of enforced reflection on the everyday, artist Julie Mehretu re-examines and responds to Lefebvre's text, bringing to bear her own longstanding fascination with questions of time, space and place.
Matt's book reflects his extensive research into traditional Icelandic dishes to preserve local culinary knowledge while applying a modern approach for a cuisine to be enjoyed both by locals and international foodies.
Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the City for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian's evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian's family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise. When a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak, the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea... What happens when public duty and private morals are irreconcilable? This is the last novel from this master of intrigue, whose insider knowledge of the secret service gave his novels a powerful veracity.
There are said to be over 300 shapes of pasta, each of which has a history, a story to tell, and an affinity with particular foods. These shapes have evolved alongside the flavours of local ingredients, and the perfect combination can turn an ordinary dish into something sublime. The Geometry of Pasta pairs over 100 authentic recipes from critically acclaimed chef, Jacob Kenedy, with award-winning designer Caz Hildebrand's incredible black-and-white designs to reveal the science, history and philosophy behind spectacular pasta dishes from all over Italy.
Joy Division: Juvenes photography by Kevin Cummins $70
The iconic images captured by Cummins — from snowy bridges and dark rehearsal rooms to electrifying live performances — helped to define Joy Division and cement their place in music history. Originally published in an limited run of just 226 copies, Juvenes is a book with legendary status. Now comprehensively updated with new material and images, and including interviews with Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris, and recollections by David Peace, Pat Nevin, and others.
>>'Dead Souls.'
>>'Dead Souls.'
Some things sound like other things, and those things could be very silly indeed. Pesenti continues the madness of the very popular Rhyme Cordial in this bold and inventive board book. Each page also opens backwards to reveal an illustrated silly sound-alike. Would you fancy instant poodles or a cheese ghostie for lunch? A large amount of fun.
>>Read Stella's review.
>>Read some of the poems.
| >> Read all Stella's reviews. | |
 | Great Works by Oscar Mardell {Reviewed by STELLA} Oscar Mardell's freezing works poems are a clever addition to the tradition of New Zealand gothic literature. Think Ronald Hugh Morrison’s The Scarecrow and David Ballantyne's Sydney Bridge Upside Down and you’ll get a sense of the macabre that edges its ways through these poems like entrails. There’s the nostalgia for the stink of the slaughter yards, the adherence to the architects of such vast structures on our landscapes, and the pithy analysis of our colonial pastoral history. That smell so evocative of hot summer days cooped up in a car travelling somewhere along a straight road drifts in as you read 'Horotiu' with its direct insult to the yards and its references to offal. In these poems, there is the thrust and violence of killing alongside the almost balletic rhythm of the work — the work as described on the floor as well as the poetic structure of Mardell’s verse. “ th sticking knife th steel th saw “ the dull thud resonates Most of the poems note the architect and the date of construction for these ominous structures, which had a strange grandeur — simultaneously horrific and glorious. One of the outstanding architects was J.C. Maddison, a designer known for both his slaughterhouses and churches, alongside other stately public buildings. In 'Belfast', Mardell cleverly bridges these divides — the lambs, the worship, the elation. “ did he who set a compass There are plenty of other cultural references tucked away in these poems. Minnie Dean makes an appearance in Mataura and James K Baxter in Ngauranga Abattoir. In the latter, Mardell slips in Baxter's line "sterile whore of a thousand bureaucrats". Yet the poems go beyond nostalgia or clever nods to literature, to sharpen our gaze on our colonial relationship. 'Burnside' tells it perfectly: “ & ws new zealands little lamb Mardell’s collection, Great Works, is pithy and ironic with its clever nods to cultural and social history, gothic in imagery, and all wrapped up like a perfectly trussed lamb in our ‘God’s Own Country’ nostalgia, with a large drop of sauce and a knife waiting to slice. |