W, or, The memory of childhood by Georges Perec (translated from French by David Bellos)

“I write: I write because we lived together, because I was once amongst them, a shadow amongst their shadows, a body close to their bodies. I write because they left in me their indelible mark, whose trace is writing. Their memory is dead in writing; writing is the memory of their death and the assertion of my life.” Both of Perec’s parents were killed in the 1939-1945 war, his father early on as a French soldier, and, soon after, his mother sent to a death camp. Their young son was smuggled out of Paris and spent the war years in a series of children’s homes and safe villages. “My childhood belongs to those things which I know I don’t know much about,” he writes. W alternates two narratives, the first an attempt by Perec to set down the memories of his childhood and to examine these not only for their accuracy but in order to learn the way in which memory works. Often factual footnotes work in counterpoint to the ‘remembered’ narrative, underscoring the limitations of the experiences that formed it. Right from birth the pull of the Holocaust is felt upon Perec’s personal biography, and his story is being shaped by this force, sucking at it, sucking his family and all stability away. Sometimes he attaches to himself experiences of which he was merely a witness, the memories transformed by remembering and by remembering the remembering, and so forth, and by the infection of memories by extraneous imaginative details. “Excess detail is all that is needed to ruin a memory.” The absences around which these memories circulate fill the narrative with suppressed emotion. The other narrative begins as a sort of mystery novel in Part One, telling how one Gaspard Winckler is engaged by a mysterious stranger to track down the fate of the boy whose name he had unknowingly assumed and who had gone missing with his parents in the vicinity of Terra del Fuego where they had gone in search of an experience that would relieve the boy’s mutism. In Part 2, the tone changes to that of an encyclopedia and we begin to learn of the customs, laws and practices of the land of W, isolated in the vicinity of Terra del Fuego, a society organised exclusively around the principles of sport, “a nation of athletes where Sport and life unite in a single magnificent effort.” Perec tells us that ‘W’ was invented by him as a child as a focus for his imagination and mathematical abilities during a time when his actual world and his imaginative world were far apart, his mind filled with “human figures unrelated to the ground which was supposed to support them, disengaged wheels rotating in the void” as he longed for an ordinary life “like in the storybooks”. Life and sport on W are governed by a very complex system of competition, ‘villages’ and Games, “the sole aim to heighten competitiveness or, to put it another way, to glorify victory.” It is not long before we begin to be uncomfortable with some of the laws and customs of W, for instance, just as winners are lauded, so are losers punished, and all individual proper names are banned on W, with athletes being nameless (apart from an alphanumeric serial number) unless their winnings entitle them to bear, for a time, the name of one of the first champions of their event, for “an athlete is no more and no less than his victories.” Perec intimates that there is no dividing line between a rationally organised society valuing competition and fascism, the first eliding into the second as a necessary result of its own values brought to their logical conclusions. “The more the winners are lauded, the more the losers are punished.” The athletes are motivated to peak performance by systematic injustice: “The Law is implacable but the Law is unpredictable.” Mating makes a sport of rape, and aging Veterans who can no longer compete and do not find positions as menial ‘officials’ are cast out and forced to “tear at corpses with their teeth” to stay alive. Perec’s childhood fantasy reveals the horrors his memoir is unable to face directly. We learn that the athletes wear striped uniforms, that some compete tarred and feathered or are forced to jump into manure by “judges with whips and cudgels.” We learn that the athletes are little more than skin and bone, and that their performances are consequently less than impressive. As the two strands of the book come together at the end, Perec tells of reading of the Nazi punishment camps where the torture of the inmates was termed ‘sport’ by their tormentors. The account of W ends with the speculation that at some time in the future someone will come through the walls that isolate the sporting nation and find nothing but “piles of gold teeth, rings and spectacles, thousands and thousands of clothes in heaps, dusty card indexes, and stocks of poor-quality soap.”

After a request for children’s picture books about making friends and getting on with others, we had a decent stack on our table. Here’s a selection from the pile.

You and Me and Everybody Else is a wonderful book about what makes us different, but more importantly what we have in common. Its bold colours, playful design, and Playmobil-like characters are instantly appealing. On every page, there is action (plenty of activities are taking place), but also quiet spaces where children rest, read, chat, and relax. The text at the bottom of each page has repeating lines creating a sense of familiarity which works well as a read-aloud. Each paragraph starts with ‘everybody’, then moves on to ‘some’. Everybody loves to play. Everybody learns new things. Everybody gets angry, Everybody dreams. / Some like to play with others. Some learn by doing it themselves. Sometimes things don’t work out. Some dream of things that don’t exist yet. Children play, get bored, are happy and sad, are lonely and scared, laugh, eat and sleep. They dream and are surprised. The illustrations show children building with blocks, on swings and slides, waiting and watching, alone, and with friends, giving gifts and frights, falling off bikes, playing chess, making music, and making art. There is a diverse range of activities and cultures on every page and the table spread for lunch has noodles and fruit, pizza and popcorn, couscous, and sushi. [>>Look inside.]

In Eva Lindstrom’s Everyone Walks Away things aren’t so straightforward. Frank is always alone. The others (Tilly, Paul, and Milan) are having fun, and they have each other to play with, and they laugh together, not always kindly. When Frank wanders off to the surprise of the others, Tilly, Paul, and Milan become curious. Where has he gone? They follow at a distance. Frank has gone home to cry, and like Owl (in Owl at Home) he’s making tear-water tea letting his tears fall straight into the pot. Later when the tea has been made with the much-needed sugar (if you look closely, you will see Frank is a jam connoisseur) and cooled by the breeze from the window, Frank makes toast and gets things ready. Will anyone come to drink and eat? Maybe. Or will the others keep larking about outside? Lindstrom’s illustrations are a mix of watercolour, gouache, and pencil giving the pages a delightful and sometimes dreamy aspect juxtaposed with deft detail. Her colour palette for this book of yellows, blue-greens, and oranges is strangely attractive. Humour threads its way through the illustrations; there are suggestively sly side glances, and her children’s personalities are expressed by their quirky, slightly animalish features. Tilly’s braided green hair sticks up like perky animal ears, two of the children have snouts rather than petite noses and Frank’s yellow helmet hat gives him a mole-like aspect. The more times you read this sweet sad story, the more you will notice. And I think there might be a happy ending. [>>Look inside.]

There’s more crying in The New Friend, but don’t worry; this is an optimistic tale. Having a best friend is excellent. Losing a best friend is difficult. The excellent author Charlotte Zolotow manages to talk about betrayal, sadness and anger, and the empowering action of overcoming a difficult situation without resorting to easy saccharine answers. At the beginning is memory. Memories of all the wonderful things you did with your friend. Walking in the woods, listening to the rain, picking flowers, eating apples in a tree, and reading books together. And then, they are no longer there. They are with a new friend, sharing all your wonderful friendly things. You’re sad and mad. You cry until you fall asleep. You dream of a someone else. They take you on new paths with different adventures to places you have never been before. When you wake up, it’s time to go in search of this new friend. Looking for them is an adventure in itself, and your memory of your first friend is tucked inside. This classic Zolotow story (first published in 1968) has fresh joyful illustrations by Benjamin Chaud. Chaud’s style is both quiet (the rain falling over the rooftops, the soft wallpaper that cocoons the child in bed) and effervescent (running across the field, a jaunty sun umbrella for a reading shelter) capturing the different moods of the text. There are small birds flittering through the pages and a rabbit popping up when least expected which add little, surprising details to this dreamy thoughtful, and hopeful landscape. [>>Look inside.]

On short-listing Sarah Bernstein’s unsettling and relentlessly granular Study for Obedience for the 2023 Booker Prize, the judges said: ”Study for Obedience is an absurdist tale about how a stranger’s arrival in an unnamed town slowly unearths deep undercurrents of xenophobia, and it feels very like an allegory for the rise of ideological radicalism today. It is also a stirring meditation on survival. It has the uncanny charm of feeling like both a historical work – with its pastoral settings, petty superstitions, and suspicious villagers – and something bracingly modern. In this way it very cleverly, and with great irony, draws a link between a past we’d like to believe is behind us and our very charged present. The humour here is dry as a bone, very Bernhard-esque; it is obliquely and surprisingly funny.”

• The question of innocence is a complicated one.

• Read an extract.

• Gestures of refusal.

• A suspicion of incomers.

• The present collapses into the past.

• A ‘reading guide’.

• A woman on the fringes.

• The burden of survival.

• The void and the void.

• Read Thomas’s review of The Coming Bad Days.

• Other books short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.

A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:

End Times by Rebecca Priestley $35
In the late 1980s, two teenage girls found refuge from a world of cosy conformity, sexism and the nuclear arms race in protest and punk. Then, drawn in by a promise of meaning and purpose, they cast off their punk outfits and became born-again Christians. Unsure which fate would come first - nuclear annihilation or the Second Coming of Jesus — they sought answers from end-times evangelists, scrutinising friends and family for signs of demon possession and identifying EFTPOS and barcodes as signs of a looming apocalypse. Fast forward to 2021, and Rebecca and Maz — now a science historian and an engineer — are on a road trip to the West Coast. Their journey, though full of laughter and conversation and hot pies, is haunted by the threats of climate change, conspiracy theories, and a massive overdue earthquake. End Times interweaves the stories of these two periods in Rebecca's life, both of which have at heart a sleepless fear of the end of the world. Along the way she asks: Why do people hold on to some ideas but reject others? How do you engage with someone whose beliefs are wildly different from your own? And where can we find hope when it sometimes feels as if we all live on a fault line that could rupture at any moment? [Paperback]
>>Apocalypse.
>>Granity is falling into the sea.
>>A meditation on apocalyptic thinking.

Beyond the Door of No Return by David Diop (translated from French by Sam Taylor) $37
The new novel from the International Booker Prize-winning author of the astounding At Night All Blood Is Black. The Door of No Return, on the island of Goree off the coast of Senegal, is where millions of Africans last touched their home continent's soil, before they were transported to slavery in the Americas. When French naturalist Michel Adanson travels to Senegal in 1749, he hears the story of a woman who passed through the door... but then returned. He begins to search for this fabled woman, and soon his search becomes an obsession that leads him on a desperate journey through a land torn apart by slavery. [Paperback]
 “At once melancholy and luminous.” —Le Monde
”Stunningly realized and written in exquisite prose. A love story, an adventure tale, and an unflinching examination of the unexpected ways that colonialism and greed ravaged everyone it touched, European and African.” —Maaza Mengiste
>>Can you conquer death by depicting your life on paper?
>>Read Stella’s review of At Night All Blood Is Black.

In the Temple by Catherine Bagnall and L. Jane Sayle $35
Following their 2021 collaboration On We Go, artist Catherine Bagnall and poet Jane Sayle return with another collection of watercolours and poems inspired by their contemplation of nature within the context of the feminine sublime. In the Temple maintains a focus on ecological thinking, exploring intense personal connections with the natural world that take the reader into the realms of private ritual and the power and meaning of special places. In the Temple evokes a magical atmosphere, a mythological world of enchanted places with powerful and intangible connections to other living beings and to history. [Hardback]
>>Look inside.
>>Darker, or deeper.
>>Read Stella’s review of On We Go.

Remember Me: Poems to learn by heart from Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Anne Kennedy $45
”To remember a poem is to carry it with you always – the poem a distillation of thought, feeling, sound. To remember a poem is to go freely, without your keys, your bag, your baggage, yet to possess a valuable taonga. It’s the ability to speak a poem out loud, to yourself, to the air, to your folks. There’s a reason we say ‘off by heart’ when we commit words to memory: to remember a poem is to hold that poem close to your heart.’” —from the introduction by Anne Kennedy
In haka and waiata, sea shanties and ballads, in the words of Sam Hunt and Selina Tusitala Marsh, Hone Tuwhare and Hera Lindsay Bird, the rhythms of poetry have carried our sounds and stories, our loves and losses for generations. Now Anne Kennedy brings together for the first time a selection of over 200 poems from Aotearoa to learn by heart – whakataukī and odes, poems of love and of nature, of whānau, history and politics. For a wedding, a tangi, for a day at school or an evening at home, Remember Me will be a lively poetic companion for years to come. [Softcover]

Urgent Moments — Art and social change: the Letting Space projects, 2010—2020 edited by Sophie Jerram, Amber Clausner and Mark Amery $65
After first occupying vacant spaces in post-stock-market-crash Auckland in the mid-1990s, public art curators Letting Space re-emerged in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. Confronted by the thin net of social welfare, the waste of the capitalist system and the climate emergency, it brokered spaces for artists to think and act radically, outside gallery walls. This book chronicles the projects those artists drove. From a grocery store where everything was free to an ATM for depositing moods and a citizens' water-testing lab, they added to the civic dialogue at a time when public space and media were increasingly commodified and under surveillance. Written by writers and thinkers, including Pip Adam and Chris Kraus, Urgent Moments demonstrates the vital role artists can play in the pressing discussions of our times. [Softcover]
>>Look inside, and see the contents!

A Wreath for the Enemy by Pamela Frankau $25
Penelope Wells, precocious daughter of a poet, is holidaying at her family's distinctly bohemian hotel on the French Riviera. She spends the summer beneath the green umbrella pines and oppressive purple bougainvillea scribbling into her Anthology of Hates to pass the time. Until she meets the Bradleys. Don and Eva Bradley are well-behaved and middle-class; everything she is not. It is love at first sight. But the friendship ends in tears. Penelope and Don Bradley leave the Riviera, embarking on the painful process of growing up. She, in love with an elusive ideal of order and calm. He, in rebellion against the philistine values of his parents. Compellingly told in a series of first-person narratives, A Wreath for the Enemy explores death, morality, friendship and shows just how brittle and chaotic our lives can become once they collide explosively with those around us. [Paperbck]
”A cousin to both Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse and Iris Murdoch’s philosophical fiction.” —Daily Telegraph

Visible Cities: Lockdown to liberation, stress to sustainability: Aotearoa fiction inspired by Italo Calvino edited by Marco Sonzogni, Sydney J Shep, and Daniel K Brown; illustrated by William du Toit $30
The celebrated Italian writer Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities explores the intersection of reality and imagination through 11 startling themes, from 'Cities and Desire' to 'Trading Cities' to 'Cities and the Dead'. A hundred years after his birth, 11 writers from Aotearoa have each taken a city from their own country and written a short story that pays tribute to Calvino's work while addressing the themes that besiege our cities in the twenty-first century. Stories from Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor, Russell Boey, Dinithi Nelum Bowatte, Jack Remiel Cottrell, Erin Donohue, Madison Hamill, Melanie Kwang, Marlon Moala-Knox, Nkhaya Paulsen-More, William Pigott, and Elsie Uini. [Paperback]

Femina: A new history of the Middle Ages, through the women written out of it by Janina Ramirez $40
The Middle Ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings: a patriarchal society which oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the 'dark' ages were anything but. Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women's names struck out of historical records, with the word FEMINA annotated beside them. As gatekeepers of the past ordered books to be burnt, artworks to be destroyed, and new versions of myths, legends and historical documents to be produced, our view of history has been manipulated. Only now, through a careful examination of the artefacts, writings and possessions they left behind, are the influential and multifaceted lives of women emerging. Femina goes beyond the official records to uncover the true impact of women like Jadwiga, the only female King in Europe, Margery Kempe, who exploited her image and story to ensure her notoriety, and the Loftus Princess, whose existence gives us clues about the beginnings of Christianity in England. [Paperback]
”Ramirez shows again and again that dark age Europe was a far more various place than we like to believe.” —Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian
”Beautifully written, wonderfully free-ranging and gloriously original, Femina makes us look into the mists of history in new, exciting and provocative ways.” —Frankopan

This Is Your Brain on Art: How the arts transform us by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross $45
A journey through the science of neuroaesthetics, which offers proof for how our brains and bodies transform when we participate in the arts — and how this knowledge can improve our health, enable us to flourish, and build stronger communities. Magsamen and Ross offer compelling research that shows how engaging in an art project for as little as forty-five minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol, no matter your skill level, and just one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years. They expand our understanding of how playing music builds cognitive skills and enhances learning; the vibrations of a tuning fork create sound waves to counteract stress; virtual reality can provide cutting-edge therapeutic benefit; and interactive exhibits dissolve the boundaries between art and viewers, engaging all of our senses and strengthening memory. [Hardback]
>>Look inside.
>>The authors introduce us to neuroaesthetics (and show us how to live longer and better).

Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Entanglement and Teleportation by Anton Zeilinger $30
What is the true nature of reality? To find out, Nobel Laureate Anton Zeilinger takes us (along with his fictional students Alice and Bob) on a voyage through a quantum wonderland, explaining entanglement, teleportation, time-travel paradoxes and why our view of the world must change. Originally published in America in 2012, a new Afterword in the light of the author's 2022 Nobel Prize means the book brings readers up-to-date with the most recent developments in quantum teleportation. This describes the author's collaboration to perform the first intercontinental video call encrypted using quantum cryptography, and how Chinese scientists teleported entangled quantum states to an orbiting satellite. Readers also learn how both volunteer humans and astronomical objects billions of light years away have been part of experiments to conclusively prove that quantum states cannot provide a full description of reality at a local level. Einstein had always refused to accept aspects of quantum theory, deriding the notion of instantaneous communication between faraway 'entangled' particles as 'spooky action at a distance'. However, this playful yet deep book takes readers through a series of ingenious experiments conducted in various locations that demonstrate entanglement is indeed real, and speculates that information is an essential part of reality. From a dank sewage tunnel under the River Danube to the balmy air between a pair of mountain peaks in the Canary Islands, with various time-travel paradoxes explained along the way, the author and his fictional physics students Alice and Bob demonstrate the true nature of quantum entanglement and teleportation using photons, or light quanta, created by laser beams. The ideas described have laid the foundations for a new era of quantum technology, including the development of quantum computers and much more. [Paperback]
>>The book has even inspired a performance piece.

The Politics and Poetics of Everyday Life by Kristin Ross $38
Kristin Ross thinks through everyday existence across a range of practices — from philosophy to history, from the visual arts to popular fiction — and across the forms taken by collective political action in contemporary struggles.
Ross returns to Henri Lefebvre's powerful intuition that ordinary life is both residue and resource, the site of profound alienation and, by the same token, the origin of all emancipator initiatives and desires. The Politics and Poetics of Everyday Life explores our attempts to represent our lived reality in media such as painting, literature and film, paying particular attention to contemporary transformations in the genre most embedded in the deep superficiality of ordinary life: detective fiction. Elsewhere, in Ross's investigation of the present-day politics of ecological occupations, such as the zad at Notre-Dame des Landes, the everyday emerges as a repository of rich oppositional resources and immanent social creativity. [Paperback]
”In these remarkably lucid essays, real critics, rebellious farmers, artisans, and diverse character-types are summoned to remind us of moments of conformist immobility, disavowals of colonialism, violence and class difference; but also, of how French cultural history offers paths toward public beauty, collectivity, ecological ways of living. Ross has an uncanny ability to zero in on what matters in the forms of the Paris Commune and beyond, letting participants speak without the usual virtue-signaling.” —Karen Pinkus
”Kristin Ross's work is a necessary point of entry into the infinite insurrection of everyday life envisaged by Karl Marx and Henri Lefebvre, Arthur Rimbaud and Jacques Ranciere, variously enacted from the Commune to May 68, and that animates the rural radicalism of today's Zad. Anyone interested in altering the questions of our day towards a new everyday life will find here an abundant reservoir to think and do anew.” —Manu Goswami

Glass Houses $80
Glass Houses presents 50 stunning architect designed homes that utilize glass to maximum effect. The international selection includes early modernist houses from the 1930s, such as Philip Johnson's Glass House and Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House, and glamorous mid-century LA villas like Pierre Koenig's Case Study #22, alongside outstanding contemporary examples, where new innovations have made even more daring glass structures possible. Includes works by Tatiana Bilbao, Lina Bo Bardi, Ofis Arhitekti, Herzog & de Meuron, Hiroshi Nakamura, Kazuyo Sejima, Philip Johnson, Mecanoo, John Lautner, Richard Rogers, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Very impressive. [Hardback]
>>Look inside (and resist it if you can)!

The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker dwarf who became the first revolutionary abolitionist by Marcus Rediker $39
The transatlantic life and times of a singular and astonishing man — a Quaker dwarf who became one of the first ever to demand the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. He performed public guerrilla theatre to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He wrote a fiery, controversial book against bondage that Benjamin Franklin published in 1738. He lived in a cave, made his own clothes, refused to consume anything produced by slave labour, championed animal rights, and embraced vegetarianism. He acted on his ideals to create a new, practical, revolutionary way of life. [Paperback]
>>The Quaker Comet.

Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek myth by Natalie Haynes $40
a female-centered look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires rival those of their male kin, including: Athene, who sprang fully formed from her father's brow, the goddess of war and provider of wise counsel. Aphrodite, born of the foam (and sperm released from a Titan's castrated testicles), the most beautiful of all the Olympian goddesses, the epitome of love who dispenses desire and inspires longing — yet harbours a fearsome vengeful side, doling out brutal punishments to those who displease her. Hera, Zeus's long-suffering wife, whose jealousy born of his repeated dalliances with mortals, nymphs, and other goddesses, leads her to wreak elaborate and often painful revenge on those she believes have wronged her. Demeter, goddess of the harvest and mother of Persephone; Artemis, the hunter and goddess of wild spaces; the Muses, the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory; and Hestia, goddess of domesticity and sacrificial fire. [Paperback]
”Cheerfully erudite and academically rigorous, combining immense scholarship with a sarky easy-going tone.” —The Times

Ngā Kaihanga Uku: Māori Clay Artists by Baye Riddell $70
The rise of an impressive ceramics movement is one of the more striking developments in contemporary Māori art. Clayworking and pottery firing was an ancient Pacific practice, but the knowledge had largely been lost by the ancestors of Māori before they arrived in Aotearoa. After the national clayworkers’ collective, Ngā Kaihanga Uku, was established in 1987, traditional ancestral knowledge and customs and connections with indigenous cultures with unbroken ceramic traditions helped shape a contemporary Māori expression in clay. This book is the first comprehensive overview of Māori claywork, its origins, loss and revival. Richly illustrated, it introduces readers to the practices of the five founders of Ngā Kaihanga Uku and also surveys the work of the next generation.
>>Look inside!
>>”It’s not just about pottery, is it?”

The Korean Cook book by Junghyun Park and Jungyoon Choi $80
This definitive collection features more than 350 recipes organized into traditional Korean meals, including pantry staples, fermented foods, rice, vegetable dishes, raw food, noodles, stir-fries, grilled meats, soups, stews, hotpots, noodles, dumplings, porridges, rice cakes, and desserts. Acclaimed Atomix chef JP Park and culinary historian Jungyoon Choi share their years of research and expertise, together with their knowledge of the ingredients, culture, and traditions of Korean food in this, the first comprehensive book on Korean home cooking, expansive in breadth and approach and filled with tasty and achievable authentic recipes for the home cook. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!

Normal Rules Don’t Apply by Kate Atkinson $37
In this first short story collection in twenty years, we meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man whose luck changes when a horse speaks to him. With clockwork intricacy, inventiveness and sharp social observation, Atkinson conjures a feast for the imagination, a constantly changing multiverse in which nothing is quite as it seems.
”A brilliant and profoundly original writer.” —Rachel Cusk

Bon Binney: Flight Path by Gregory O’Brien $90
Flight Path follows the painter from Te Henga / Bethells Beach — his artistic turangawaewae — through his years of wandering not only the length of Aotearoa but as far afield as Latin America and Europe. Drawing extensively on Binney's letters, journals and other writings, O'Brien takes us into the world of this gifted but paradoxical artist. Richly illustrated with Binney's paintings, drawings and prints — alongside photographs and documentary materials — this is the first full-length monograph on one of New Zealand's most iconic twentieth-century artists. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!

The Only Girl in Town by Ally Condie $25
What would you do if everyone you love disappeared? What if it was your fault? For July Fielding, nothing has been the same since that summer before her senior year. Or that late-August night at the jump. Before, she had Alex to be her loyal bestie, always up for playing endless rounds of minigolf or trying every ice cream flavour at local favourite, Verity. She had Sydney, who pushed her during every sweaty and wonderful cross-country run, and who sometimes seemed to know July better than she knew herself. And she had Sam. Sam, who told her she was everything and left her breathless with his kisses. Now, July is alone. Every single person in her small town of Lithia has disappeared. No family. No Alex or Sydney. No Sam. July's only chance at unravelling the mystery of their disappearance is a series of objects, each a reminder of the people she loved most. And a recurring message that begins to appear all over town: GET TH3M BACK.

Mangō: Sharks and rays of Aotearoa by Ned Barraud $35
The oceans surrounding Aotearoa are home to over a hundred astonishing and strange species of sharks and rays. This fact-filled book takes you down into the fascinating underwater lives of these expert hunters, illustrates their evolution and explores their place in our culture. And it explains why these ancient fish and their environments need our kaitiakitanga more than ever. [Hardback]
>>Look inside.

A selection of books from our shelves.
Click through to find out more:

Roads to Berlin

Star 111

Kairos

The Undercurrents

Beyond the Wall

Berlin Alexanderplatz

‘i’

3 Streets

NEW BOOKS AND BOOK NEWS

Read our #350th NEWSLETTER. Find out about our Bookshop Day competition, the Nobel Prize in Literature, our Literary Carousel of savings and discoveries, and choose some excellent new books!

6 October 2023

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The Other Name (Septology I—II) by Jon Fosse (translated from Nynorsk by Damion Searle)

and I see myself sitting and reading the thick blue book of two parts, not that thick, actually, and I have reached that point in the book, though it is not in fact a point in the book for there is nothing in the book that would mark such a point, but rather a point in my reading of the book, which just happens to be around page seventy-five, that I came to realise that the book is written entirely in one sentence, one slow, patient, uninterrupted flow of words, no, I think, that is not correct, the book is written in two parts, though each begins with the word And, but neither part ends, each rather just leaves off, so it would not be correct that the book is written in one sentence, or in two sentences, one for each part, but rather in no sentences, one, or two, slow, patient, uninterrupted flow, or flows, of words, that much at least I got right, I think, just the kind of thing I like, but done with such virtuosity and with such little display of virtuosity that I had not realised until page seventy-five or thereabouts that there are no full stops to be found in this book, or no full stop, I am uncertain if this absence should be singular or plural, possibly both, this Jon Fosse and his translator Damion Searls having built these words without one misstep, or missomething, the metaphor seems mixed and I has not even realised that it was a metaphor, I must be more careful, capturing the flow of thought, so to call it, and speech, realistically, seemingly of the narrator, a middle-aged painter named Asle, living, I am almost tempted to put, as such people do, in a small town in western Norway, driving in the snow to and from a city on the western coast of Norway, the city of the gallery which shows, which is a euphemism of sorts for sells, his paintings, but also the city in which lives a middle-aged painter named Asle, resembling both in looks and clothing, if clothing is not part of looks, the narrator, the narrator narrating in the first person and this other Asle, the alter-Asle if you like, this alter-Asle to the thoughts and memories of whom the narrator-Asle has extraordinary access, though there is no evidence of any reciprocal mechanism, we are, I am sure, never given an instance of the alter-Asle even being aware of the existence of such a person as the narrator, this aler-Asle, being confined to the third person, and, I wonder, what sort of trauma confines a person to an existence only in the third person? presumably a trauma, I think, this alter-Asle being also an alcoholic and a person who “most of the time, doesn’t want to live any more, he’s always thinking that he should go out into the sea, disappear into the waves,” but not doing so because of his love for his dog, there is, I think as I am reading, some relationship between the two Asles, well, obviously there is, my thought, or the thought I have, being that the alter-Asle is the actual Asle and the narrator-Asle is the Asle that the alter-Asle-who-is-actually-the-actual-Alse would have been if he was not the Asle he became, which, I think, I have made sound a bit confusing, and the opposite of an explanation, not that that matters, on account of whatever trauma, or whatever it is that I speculate is a trauma, that confined him to a third-person existence, the characters being one character, all characters being one character as they are in all books, I speculate, though in this book The Other Name, almost all the characters have, if not the same name, almost the same name, which tightens the knot somewhat, if I can be forgiven another metaphor, though I will not forgive myself for it at least, I will try to avoid, I think, thinking of the relationships between these persons-who-are-one-person, or, in any rate, describing the relationships between these persons-who-are-one-person, in any way other than a literary way, whatever that means, nothing, I think, the person that Asle could have been sees the Asle that Asle became, though Alse cannot know him, the person that Asle could have been rescues Asle when he has collapsed in the snow and takes him to the Clinic and to the Hospital, and takes the dog to look after, who knows, though, if the third-person Asle, the one I was calling the alter-Asle until that became too confusing, at least for me, survives, neither we nor the first-person Asle know that, but after the first-person Asle goes to the city and rescues the third-person Asle from the snowdrift, how could he know where to find him, I wonder, he begins, in the second part of the book, to have access to some deeply buried memories of the Asle that perhaps they once both were, memories all in the third person, for safety, I think, memories firstly of Asle’s and his sister’s disobedience of their parents in straying along the shore and to the nearby settlement, a narrative in which threat hums in every detail, a narrative in which colour impresses itself so deeply upon Asle that, I think, he could have become nothing other than a painter, a narrative that seems searching for a trauma, for a misfortune, a narrative assailed by an inexplicable motor noise as they approach the settlement but which resolves with a misfortune that is anticlimactic, at least for Asle, a trauma but not his trauma, what has this narrative avoided, I wonder at this point, what has not been released, or what has not yet been released, I wonder, Fosse is a writer who writes to be rid of his thoughts, I think, just as his narrator says, “when I paint it’s always as if I’m trying to paint away the pictures stuck inside me, to get rid of them in a way, to be done with them, I have all these pictures inside me, yes, so many pictures that they’re a kind of agony, I try to paint away these pictures that are lodged inside me, there’s nothing to do but paint them away,” and, yes, when the narrator lies in bed at the end of the book and is unable to sleep, he does recover the memory, a third person memory, the memory of the trauma that split the Asles and trapped one thereafter in the third person, the memory that explains the awful motor noise that intruded on the previous narrative of disobedience as the children approached the locus of the trauma, and, I think, all the sadness of the book leads from here and to here

Bookshop Day is a time to celebrate your bookshop and the books that we find and recommend for you. We take pleasure in introducing new books to you, finding the books you want, and going the extra mile for those special customer requests. At VOLUME we are knowledgeable, and our many years of bookselling experience speaks for itself. Our interest in literature is unquenchable. Bookshop Day is also a time to reflect on the literary ecosystem of Aotearoa. It's small and mighty, with passionate authors, publishers, and booksellers who, against the odds, make superb books appear and land in your hands. Many work long hours for little recompense, and every sale makes a difference. This Bookshop Day I'm recommending my two favourite books — so far — this year from two very special New Zealand publishers. From Gecko Press: the daring and delightful Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai. From Lawrence & Gibson: The Words For Her. This collective of authors not only publish their books, they make them!
As we say at VOLUME, buying interesting books makes interesting books happen.
P.S. A small plug for our own writing/publishing endeavours for 2023: Just out, Thomas's Some Things Wrong — it will take you to another layer of consciousness! And in its second print run, my own I, Object.
And thanks for your ongoing support!

This week we are featuring the books of the remarkable Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, who has developed a method he calls 'slow prose' to explore the depths and subtleties of memory and experience and to grapple with the complex predicaments of human existence, language, time, and personhood. His prose is hypnotic, looping, emotionally resonant, philosophical, and often also funny.  Fosse has just been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature.
>>It's not me who's seeing. 
>>The mystical realist. 
>>Giving voice to the unsayable.
>>Biobibliography.
>>A search for peace. 
>>Pure prose. 
>>Frames and levels. 
>>Revisions and the ear. 
>>A new name.
>>Where to start.
>>Septology  (also available as The Other Name, I Is Another, and A New Name). 
>>Thomas reviews The Other Name. 
>>Melancholy 1—2.. 
>>Trilogy. 
>>Aliss at the Fire. 
>>Scenes from a Childhood.. 
>>A Shining.

A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:

Sleepless by Marie Darrieussecq (translated from French by Penny Hueston) $45
Plagued by insomnia for twenty years, Marie Darrieussecq turns her attention to the causes, implications and consequences of sleeplessness: a nocturnal suffering that culminates at 4 a.m. and then defines the next day. In Sleepless, she recounts her own experiences alongside those of fellow insomniacs, mostly writers – ‘as if writing were not sleeping’ – Ovid, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Franz Kafka, Georges Perec and others. With her inimitable humour, she describes her dealings with a somnologist and her attempts to find a remedy – trying sleeping pills, cannabis, alcohol, bedtime rituals, acupuncture, yoga, hypnosis, psychoanalysis, a gravity blanket and a range of sleep-aid devices. Darrieussecq considers bedrooms, beds, clinophilia (‘the tendency to remain in a prone position without sleeping for prolonged periods of time’), her need to be alone in bed, those without beds, the homeless, refugees, trauma and capitalism’s role in sleeplessness, our constant wakefulness online, the forest as a hypnagogic zone and how our relationship with animals is connected to our sleep, or lack of it. Ranging between autobiography, clinical observation and criticism, Sleepless is a graceful, inventive meditation and an innovation in form.
”Marie Darrieussecq invites us on an extended patrol of the corridors of Hotel Insomnia in the company of the ghosts of the famous sleep-deprived, then turns to the story of her own intimate tussle with sleep that will not come. Amid the torrent of publications in the new sleep science, this is the only book I know that concedes to sleep its proper majesty and its own dark poetry.” —J. M. Coetzee
”On the page Sleepless is fragmentary, footnoted and studded with photos and illustrations. It’s panoramic in its survey of insomniac literature, and also softly intimate where it touches on the author’s own life. In its range and genre it’s unpindownable. Darrieussecq is one of the most prolific and distinguished living writers in France with a truly impressive body of work. All her familiar acuity, humour, humility and intensity are evident in Sleepless.” —Samantha Harvey, Guardian
”Darrieussecq shows convincingly that the socioeconomic organization of twenty-first-century life conspires to rob us of sleep. It is that, in the eyes of capitalism, sleep is a ‘structural attention deficit’ that impedes ‘non-stop-connectivity’ and the possibility of being open for value extraction and commodification twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. For her readers, whether they are insomniacs or not, Sleepless is a meditation on a condition that is more widespread than is generally acknowledged, and impinges, at least philosophically, even on those who do not have it.” —Ryan Ruby, Times Literary Supplement
>>Waking up to Kim Hill.
>>Sleep as another awakening.

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein $40
In her accomplished and unsettling second novel, Sarah Bernstein explores themes of prejudice, abuse and guilt through the eyes of a singularly unreliable narrator. A woman moves from the place of her birth to a ‘remote northern country’ to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has just left him. Soon after she arrives, a series of unfortunate events occurs: collective bovine hysteria; the death of a ewe and her nearly-born lamb; a local dog’s phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the community’s suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed particularly in her case. She feels their hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother’s property. Inside the house, although she tends to her brother and his home with the utmost care and attention, he too begins to fall ill. (Hardback) Short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.
”Study for Obedience is an absurdist tale about how a stranger’s arrival in an unnamed town slowly unearths deep undercurrents of xenophobia, and it feels very like an allegory for the rise of ideological radicalism today. It is also a stirring meditation on survival. It has the uncanny charm of feeling like both a historical work – with its pastoral settings, petty superstitions, and suspicious villagers – and something bracingly modern. In this way it very cleverly, and with great irony, draws a link between a past we’d like to believe is behind us and our very charged present. The humour here is dry as a bone, very Bernhard-esque; it is obliquely and surprisingly funny.” —Booker judges’ citation
”Bernstein paints from a palette of dread. This masterly follow-up to her debut acts as a meditation on survival, the dangers of absorbing the narratives of the powerful, and a warning that the self-blame of the oppressed often comes back to bite.” —Observer
>>The question of innocence is a complicated one.
>>Read an extract.
>>Read Thomas’s review of The Coming Bad Days.

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo $48
Chetna Maroo's tender and moving debut novel about grief, sisterhood, a teenage girl's struggle to transcend herself — and squash. Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a 13-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe. (Hardback)  Short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.
”Western Lane is a mesmerising novel about how silence can reverberate within a family in the aftermath of grief. The story unfolds on a squash court; the reader quickly learns how sport can act as a balm for the living. It is also about sisterhood, and about the love that remains after a devastating loss. The language in this novel is truly something to be savoured. Western Lane contains crystalline prose that also feels warm and tender, which can be a difficult balance to strike. Bereavement is something which we will all experience one day in some shape or form, and the complexity of familial dynamics is another universal theme which Western Lane explores with great sincerity and depth of feeling.” —Booker judges’ citation
”The work of a writer who knows what they want to do, and who has the rare ability to do it.” —The Guardian
>>Focussed attention.
>>Read an extract.

Star 111 by Lutz Seiler (translated from German by Tess Lewis) $45
November 1989. The Berlin Wall has just fallen when the East German couple Inge und Walter, following a secret dream they’ve harboured all their lives, set out for life in the West. Carl, their son, refuses to keep watch over the family home and instead heads to Berlin, where he lives in his father’s car until he is taken in by a group of squatters. Led by a shepherd and his goat, the pack of squatters sets up the first alternative bar in East Berlin and are involved in guerrilla occupations. And it’s with them that Carl, trained as a bricklayer, finds himself an initiate of anarchy, of love, and above all of poetry. Star 111, musical and incantatory, tells of the search for authentic existence and also of a family exploded by political change which must find its way back together.
”There aren't many books that can be cited as the missing link between Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries and Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives, and still fewer that could live up to the comparison, but Lutz Seiler (with impeccable assistance from Tess Lewis) makes it look easy. Star 111 is a brilliant, immersive, sometimes funny, slyly moving book with a main character who walks through the new reality he finds himself in like an astronaut exploring alone beneath a strange, harsh, beautiful sun.” —Will Ashon
”The presence of objects have is no doubt one of the most extraordinary things about Star 111. Everything is unique, everything has a price, everything is respected because it is the fruit of work or of making. Nothing is thrown away, everything kept. What if the objects have a soul? Read Star 111 (the title is the name of an East German transistor radio) and understand the real value of an object.” —Cecile Dutheil de la Rochere
>>Read a sample.

The Observologist: A handbook for mounting very small scientific expeditions by Giselle Clarkson $40
An observologist is someone who makes scientific expeditions, albeit very small ones, every day. They notice interesting details in the world around them. They are expert at finding tiny creatures, plants and fungi. They know that water snails glide upside down on the undersurface of the water; not all flies have wings; earthworms have bristles; butterflies taste with their feet. The Observologist puts over 100 small creatures and features of the natural world under the microscope, piquing our curiosity with only the most interesting facts. Subjects range from slugs, ants and seeds, fungi and flies through to bees and bird poop. But this is no everyday catalogue of creatures. It is an antidote to boredom, an encouragement to observe our environment, with care and curiosity, wherever we are. Facts combine with comics, detailed illustrations, science and funny stories in this unique, warm and fascinating account of the small things all around us. Completely wonderful.
>>Look inside!

Gunflower by Laura Jean McKay $37
The new short story collection from the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of The Animals in That Country. A family of cat farmers gets the chance to set the felines free. A group of chickens tells it like it is. A female-crewed ship plows through the patriarchy. A support group finds solace in a world without men. With her trademark humor, energy, and flair, McKay offers hallucinogenic glimpses of places where dreams subsume reality, where childhood restarts, where humans behave like animals and animals talk like humans.
”Amidst a pile of shed skin and fur, McKay moulds a kaleidoscopic and horrifyingly real portrait of life at the fringes. By turns gritty, surreal, and absurd, Gunflower isn’t afraid to weigh flesh on the scales of our own judgments, a delicate balancing act between life and death, connection and disconnection. Perhaps part Kelly Link and Ottessa Moshfegh, McKay delivers an assured follow-up to The Animals in That Country in her own singular voice that zeroes in on our anxieties and existential crises with deft and often poetic flair.” —Sequoia Nagamatsu
>>Given up on book clubs?
>>Read Stella’s review of The Animals in That Country.

The Forgotten Forest: In search of the lost plants and fungi of Aotearoa by Robert Vennell $40
Deep in the forest, in places you would never think to look, are some of the most remarkable creatures. Overlooked and unsung, this is the forgotten forest: a world of glow-in-the-dark mushrooms and giant mosses, where slime moulds travel the forest in search of prey and ancient lichens live for thousands of years. A beautifully illustrated guide to the spectacular oddities of the forests of Aotearoa, by the author of The Meaning of Trees and Secrets of the Sea. Fascinating, surprising, and mysterious.
>>Look inside!

Constance Barnicoat: A cool head and a sharp pen by Annabel Schuler $30
Nelsonian Constance Barnicoat (1872-1922) was sassy, strong, opinionated, brave, meticulous, and very intelligent. She should be celebrated as a leading journalist of her time, but she is unknown to most people. While she was born and brought up in New Zealand, Constance Barnicoat wrote for publications around the world, having learned her craft in London from the pioneer of modern journalism, W. T. Stead. Annabel Schuler came across Constance’s story five years ago and wrote a brief article about her achievements for a historical journal. People wanted to know more, so she dug deeper into Constance’s writing, her climbing, her grit in a man’s world, and her unflagging work ethic. In A Cool Head and a Sharp Pen readers will learn about Constance Barnicoat’s career as a multi-lingual journalist firstly in England, then based in Switzerland during World War I. Her contacts included the Archbishop of Canterbury, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Georg F. Nicolai and, back in New Zealand, politicians such as Richard John Seddon and Sir Francis Dillon Bell. If that was not enough, she claimed several ‘firsts’, climbing some of the most treacherous mountain peaks of Europe as her form of relaxation.

Earth & Fire: Modern potters, their tools, techniques and practices by Kylie Johnson and Tiffany Johnson $80
From clay to kiln and all the techniques between, this is an introduction to the craft and techniques of working with ceramics by ceramicists. Visit the studios of established ceramicists who are making waves in the art world, of midcareer potters who work diligently at their craft daily and make a living from their work, as well as those who turn to clay for relaxation and a hobby. With a focus on techniques and processes, Earth and Fire captures the diversity of ceramics and how clay doesn't just get under your fingernails; it gets under your skin.
>>Look inside!

Rintaro by Sylvan Mishima Brackett and Jessica Battilana $70
This cookbook, from one of San Francisco's most acclaimed restaurants, translates the experience of a Tokyo izakaya to the home kitchen. Crowd-pleasing foods like curry rice, tonkatsu, and yakitori, eaten most often at lunch counters and in home kitchens, live alongside sashimi, fresh bamboo shoots, and other dishes that are usually considered part of a more elevated Japanese cooking tradition and not often covered in cookbooks. Through clear instruction, abundant photography, and delicious recipes, Rintaro demystifies Japanese food for home cooks with over 70 recipes for rice, simmered dishes, homemade udon, and grilled foods.
>>Look inside!
>>Visit Rintaro!

What Is Antiracism? And why it means anticapitalism by Arun Kundnani $40
What is ‘racial capitalism’ and how do we overcome it? This sharp, slim, revelatory book argues that we misunderstand contemporary capitalism if we miss the centrality of racism to neoliberalism.
From David Harvey to Wendy Brown, the leading scholars of neoliberalism's rise treat racism as an ornamental feature of recent capitalist politics — an ugly ornament, to be sure, but not one that is central to neoliberalism. In crisp, accessible prose and via descriptions of some key moments of modern history in the US (like the Black Power movement) and the UK (like Enoch Powell's introduction of neoliberal ideas in parliament), Arun Kundnani argues that this misapprehension of the role of race in neoliberalism contributes to the Left's inability to build a successful movement connecting race and class.

Kallocain by Karin Boye (translated from Swedish by David McDuff) $26
Leo Kall is a zealous middle-ranking scientist in the totalitarian World State who has just made a thrilling discovery: a new drug, Kallocain, that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth. At last, criminality will be dragged out into the open and private thought can finally be outlawed. But can the World State be trusted with Kallocain? For that matter, can Kall himself be trusted? Written as the terrible events of World War II were unfolding, Karin Boye's classic dystopian novel speaks more clearly than ever of the dangers of acquiescence and the power of resistance.
"The world of the Swedish writer Karin Boye's little-known 1940 novel, Kallocain, is a close cousin to those depicted in We and Brave New World. The women characters in many classic twentieth-century dystopias tend to be flat, mere foils to male protagonists. But in Kallocain it is the inner lives of women that come to illustrate both the state's power over its citizens and their own power to resist." —The New Yorker
>>Reimagining the dystopian novel.

The Book that No-One Wanted to Read by Richard Ayoade and Tor Freeman $23
Have you ever thought about how it feels to be a book? To be left under a whiffy pant pile or shelved, forever collecting dust? To have your pages bent backwards or your spine BROKEN? What if you don't have a sparkly unicorn or dragon adorning your cover — who will pick you out of the bookshop then? This is the story of the sadly neglected Book That No One Wanted To Read — Can its destiny change when it finally meets the right reader? Spoiler alert: yes.
”Very funny, with brilliant illustrations. It should be called The Book That Everyone Wanted To Read." —Nadia Shireen
>>Look inside (what fun!).

Celebrate your bookshop with books!

Many thanks for all the wonderful entries in our Bookshop Day competition. Entrants sent us a photograph of a book or books they had purchased from VOLUME. Bookshop Day was celebrated on 7 October (but the appreciation of your independent bookshop (and its appreciation of you) continues all year round).

The winner of the six-month VOLUME Reading Subscription was Tania Norfolk, who is seated beside the tower of books she has purchased from us. 

Have a look at the other entries we received ! (Click on the images to see them in full.)

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A selection of books from our shelves.
Click through to find out more:

The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories

A Clear Dawn

Hiwa

The Penguin Book of French Short Stories

A Kind of Shelter

Liberating the Canon

McSweeney’s Issue 57

The Penguin Book of Spanish Short Stories

• Browse short stories.

Read the winner of the 2023 BOOKER PRIZE! Read the other excellent books on the short list! Although full of hope, humour and humanity, the books address many of 2023’s most pressing concerns: climate change, immigration, financial hardship, the persecution of minorities, political extremism and the erosion of personal freedoms. They feature characters in search of peace and belonging or lamenting lost loves. There are books that are grounded in modern reality, that shed light on shameful episodes in history and which imagine a terrifying future.

Click through to buy your copies! Read the books! Tell us what you think!

THE WINNER OF THE 2023 BOOKER PRIZE:

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
A mother faces a terrible choice, in Paul Lynch’s exhilarating, propulsive and confrontational portrait of a society on the brink. On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her doorstep. Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police want to speak with her husband. Things are falling apart. Ireland is in the grip of a government that is taking a turn towards tyranny. And as the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a collapsing society — assailed by unpredictable forces beyond her control and forced to do whatever it takes to keep her family together. 
”Prophet Song follows one woman’s attempts to save her family in a dystopic Ireland sliding further and further into authoritarian rule. It is a shocking, at times tender novel that is not soon forgotten.  It is propulsive and unsparing, and it flinches away from nothing. This is an utterly brave performance by an author at the peak of his powers, and it is terribly moving. Prophet Song has one of the most haunting endings you will ever read. The book lives long in the mind after you’ve set it down.” —Booker judges’ citation
”I haven't read a book that has shaken me so intensely in many years. The comparisons are inevitable — Saramago, Orwell, McCarthy — but this novel will stand entirely on its own.” —Colum McCann
”It was gripping and chilling, and terribly prescient — a novel with a darkly important message about this particular moment in time.” —Sara Baume
>>Radical empathy.
>>Read an extract.

THE OTHER SHORT-LISTED BOOKS

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
In her accomplished and unsettling second novel, Sarah Bernstein explores themes of prejudice, abuse and guilt through the eyes of a singularly unreliable narrator. A woman moves from the place of her birth to a ‘remote northern country’ to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has just left him. Soon after she arrives, a series of unfortunate events occurs: collective bovine hysteria; the death of a ewe and her nearly-born lamb; a local dog’s phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the community’s suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed particularly in her case. She feels their hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother’s property. Inside the house, although she tends to her brother and his home with the utmost care and attention, he too begins to fall ill.
”Study for Obedience is an absurdist tale about how a stranger’s arrival in an unnamed town slowly unearths deep undercurrents of xenophobia, and it feels very like an allegory for the rise of ideological radicalism today. It is also a stirring meditation on survival. It has the uncanny charm of feeling like both a historical work – with its pastoral settings, petty superstitions, and suspicious villagers – and something bracingly modern. In this way it very cleverly, and with great irony, draws a link between a past we’d like to believe is behind us and our very charged present. The humour here is dry as a bone, very Bernhard-esque; it is obliquely and surprisingly funny.” —Booker judges’ citation
”Bernstein paints from a palette of dread. This masterly follow-up to her debut acts as a meditation on survival, the dangers of absorbing the narratives of the powerful, and a warning that the self-blame of the oppressed often comes back to bite.” —Observer
>>The question of innocence is a complicated one.
>>Read an extract.
>>Read Thomas’s review of The Coming Bad Days.

This Other Eden by Paul Harding
Full of lyricism and power, Paul Harding's spellbinding novel celebrates the hopes, dreams and resilience of those deemed not to fit in a world brutally intolerant of difference. Inspired by historical events, This Other Eden tells the story of Apple Island: an enclave off the coast of the United States where castaways — in flight from society and its judgment — have landed and built a home.  In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey arrives on the island with his Irish wife, Patience, to make a life together there. More than a century later, the Honeys’ descendants remain, alongside an eccentric, diverse band of neighbours. Then comes the intrusion of ‘civilization’: officials determine to ‘cleanse’ the island. A missionary schoolteacher selects one light-skinned boy to save. The rest will succumb to the authorities’ institutions — or cast themselves on the waters in a new Noah’s Ark.
”It’s rare to encounter a work of historical fiction that is at once so lyrical and so empathetic. While many readers will be struck by Harding’s inimitable voice, many more will also be drawn to his beautifully etched portraits of the inhabitants of Apple Island. Though set in the past, it’s impossible to ignore the novel’s contemporary resonance, especially in its exploration of how those in power, convinced of their righteousness, abuse others whose identities and way of life don’t conform to their own.” —Booker judges’ citation
”Masterful. This Other Eden is a story of good intentions, bad faith, worse science, but also a tribute to community and human dignity and the possibility of another world. In both, it has much to say to our times.” —The Guardian
>>Mostly written on post-it notes.
>>Read an extract.

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
Chetna Maroo's tender and moving debut novel about grief, sisterhood, a teenage girl's struggle to transcend herself — and squash. Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a 13-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe. 
”Western Lane is a mesmerising novel about how silence can reverberate within a family in the aftermath of grief. The story unfolds on a squash court; the reader quickly learns how sport can act as a balm for the living. It is also about sisterhood, and about the love that remains after a devastating loss. The language in this novel is truly something to be savoured. Western Lane contains crystalline prose that also feels warm and tender, which can be a difficult balance to strike. Bereavement is something which we will all experience one day in some shape or form, and the complexity of familial dynamics is another universal theme which Western Lane explores with great sincerity and depth of feeling.” —Booker judges’ citation
”The work of a writer who knows what they want to do, and who has the rare ability to do it.” —The Guardian
>>Focussed attention.
>>Read an extract.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
A patch of ice on the road, a casual favour to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil — can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under — but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker. His exasperated wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay while half-heartedly dodging the attentions of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike. Meanwhile, teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way to her final exams. And 12-year-old PJ, in debt to local sociopath ‘Ears’ Moran, is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away. Yes, in Paul Murray’s brilliant tragicomic saga, the Barnes family is definitely in trouble. So where did it all go wrong? And if the story has already been written — is there still time to find a happy ending? 
”The Bee Sting is the very funny, sad and truthful story of the Barnes family, set in contemporary Ireland and written with considerable wit and compassion. The characters are unforgettable. They persist with hope and are capable of startling moments of love and generosity, despite their myriad flaws and problems. Imelda Barnes is a wonderful creation — initially we see her exterior waspishness and materialism but as the book progresses, Murray skilfully reveals the family secrets which have led them all to their present situation. Imelda’s response to the hardship of her childhood is at once courageous, self-deluding and entirely human.” —Booker judges’ citation
”It can't be overstated how purely pleasurable The Bee Sting is to read. Murray's brilliant new novel, about a rural Irish clan, posits the author as Dublin's answer to Jonathan Franzen . A 650-page slab of compulsive high-grade entertainment, The Bee Sting oozes pathos while being very funny to boot. Murray's observational gifts and A-game phrase-making render almost every page — every line, it sometimes seems — abuzz with fresh and funny insights. At its core this is a novel concerned with the ties that bind, secrets and lies, love and loss. They're all here, brought to life with captivating vigour in a first-class performance to cherish.” —The Observer
>>A possible future.
>>Read an extract.

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
In 1979, as political violence consumes their native Kingston, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami. But they soon learn that the welcome in America will be far from warm.  Trelawny, their youngest son, comes of age in a society that regards him with suspicion and confusion. Their eldest son Delano’s longing for a better future for his own children is equalled only by his recklessness in trying to secure it.  As both brothers navigate the obstacles littered in their path – an unreliable father, racism, a financial crisis and Hurricane Andrew — they find themselves pitted against one another. Will their rivalry be the thing that finally tears their family apart? 
”In Jonathan Escoffery’s vital, captivating debut novel, each chapter takes us deeper into a family album of stories, revealing the life and survival of a family, fleeing the violence of early Seventies’ Jamaica for the uncertain sanctuary of a new beginning in America. From the heartbreaking to the hilarious, Escoffery effortlessly conducts the various voices, contradictory in their perspectives, their dreams and desires, while wrestling with the age-old immigrant dilemma — who are my people and where do I belong? As with the best fiction, all of life is here in unflinching detail: the vagaries of capitalism, our yearning for a safety net, international migration, the American Dream, the fragility of existence, climate change, catastrophic misunderstandings and the road not taken." —Booker judges’ citation
>>”Humour is a coping mechanism used by people aware of their powerlessness.”
>>Read an extract.

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Whenever you buy a book...
—you are helping to make a world that contains such a book possible;
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Buying interesting books makes interesting books possible.
Bookshop Day (7 October) gives us a chance to think about the importance of bookshops to the lives we'd like to lead — and to make those lives more plausible. 

NEW BOOKS AND BOOK NEWS

Read our #349th NEWSLETTER.

29 September 2023

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99 Interruptions by Charles Boyle 

1.   I sit down to write a review of Charles Boyle’s 99 Interruptions, but I no sooner put finger to keyboard than I urgently need the right word to describe the book’s appealing smallness. Is it a duodecimo or a sextodecimo, I wonder. I count the leaves, check the binding, trawl the internet. This is an out-of-date question, I realise eventually, and not really an interesting question anyway.
2.   To any given task the potential interruptions are infinite, but they do seem to fall into two categories: interruptions with an external source (family members, a cat fight in the back garden, a caller from Porlock) and interruptions with an internal source (useless questions about book format, random alerts from some malfunctioning mental appointments calendar, concerns about the underlying cause of various pains, the endless rephrasing of an imperfect conversation). Not that I really think there is a distinction between an internal and an external, I don’t believe in either after all, but it helps to halve infinity sometimes. 
3.   I will just interrupt the practical demands of my life to read this book, I thought, but the practical demands of my life, so to call them and so to call it, repeatedly interrupt my reading, even though the book is short. Two sets of interruptions grapple with each other over my attention. There are perhaps only interruptions (and interruptions to the interruptions).
4.   Sometimes the interruptions come even before whatever it is that they interrupt, in which case they are perhaps not interruptions to that activity but interruptions to the preconditions of that activity, to the preparations that are I suppose themselves some sort of activity but not identifiable as any activity in particular. Is most of my life these days lived in this state of velleity? 
5.   The first time I sat down to read read this book, 99 Interruptions, I was interrupted by finding a surprising quotation on the first page I came to, and then by finding that I had to check the source and context of that quotation.
6.   Without interruptions there is no story, Boyle shows. The interruptions are the story. An interruption disrupts the natural tendency to oversimplification (which is indistinguishable from nonexistence). 
7.   An interruption is the assertion of the particular against the pull of the general and the abstract. It is the prime quality of fiction. 
8.   An interruption breaks a continuum and causes two realities to mingle. I frequently find this irritating but at least my irritation is real irritation.  
9.   Is the fragment the only authentic contemporary literary form?
10.   Boyle remarks that, although most fiction is written in the past tense, a reader or critic invariably relates the narrative to someone else as happening in the present, “as if everything … is still happening and there’s no end in sight.” I hadn’t thought about this before, and thinking about it now is interrupting my progress through the book. 
11.   Fiction interrupts time by the introduction of a completely other thread of time, allowing the reader to jump between the two as inclination or interruption dictates. Before it is anything else, fiction is a sin against time, an interruption or eruption.
12.   In most situations I tend to feel that my presence is an interruption of whatever would otherwise be the case. This is probably not a very healthy way to think, but I cannot find a way in which it is not true. 
13.   I am actually writing a review, if you can call it that, but I am interrupted by that little repeated stifled sound coming from the headphones that S is wearing so that I am not interrupted by the music she is listening to. I won’t interrupt what she is busy doing over there on account of this; it is about time I accepted that the membrane between writing and real life (so to call it) is always entirely permeable. No wonder I never get anything done. 
14.   Would it be possible to welcome every interruption into the work itself? To create a work entirely of interruptions? (Like Boyle’s!)
15.   Be that as it may (does this construction even make sense?), the work is ultimately interrupted by its deadline. 

Other books from CB Editions.

Acutely observed and beautifully written, Christina Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes explores the enduring effects of racism (relevant anywhere); questions about time, memory and loss; and the particular effects of these on the shapes and potentials of Black lives. Presented as a series of 248 ‘notes’ on her own life, on art and culture, and on the society in which she lives, the book is a perfect blend of form, art, passion and acuity.

• Some notes.

• Slips of the tongue.

• Notes as form.

• Something like hope.

• Look inside!

• Trigger.

• Exquisitely original.

• Other excellent books published by Daunt Books.

A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:

Backwaters by Emma Ling Sidnam $38
Laura is tired of being asked where she's really from. Her family has lived in Aotearoa New Zealand for four generations, and she's ambivalent at best about her Chinese heritage. But when she's asked to write about the Chinese New Zealander experience for a work project, Laura finds herself drawn to the diary of her great-great-grandfather Ken, a market gardener in the early years of the British colony. With the help of her beloved grandpa, Laura begins to write a version of Ken's story. She imagines his youth in Guangzhou and his journey to a new land-unaware that soon, spurred on by a family secret that comes to light, she will go on her own journey of self-discovery, sexuality and reckoning with the past. A tender, nuanced novel about the bittersweet search for belonging.
Winner of the 2022 Michael Gifkins Prize.
”The past and present carry out intimate conversations in this compelling and beautiful work. The rhythms of modern city life speak with the deep histories of Chinese lives in Aotearoa in ways that give a sense of walking backwards into the future. Sidnam's magnificent novel shows us that the past is living, evolving and all around us. It is an absolute joy to read.'“ —Pip Adam
>>The story of my body, which refuses to co-operate.

Encounters Across Time by Judith Binney $18
”Story telling is an art deep within human nature.” A timely collection of writings on history, from one of Aotearoa New Zealand's most distinguished scholars. These essays bring forth important questions for New Zealand history about autonomy, restoration and power that continue to reverberate today. They also serve as a pathway into the rigorous and imaginative scholarship that characterised Judith Binney's acclaimed historical writing.
Contents: ‘Māori Oral Narratives, Pākeha Written Texts’; Songlines from Aotearoa’; ‘Encounters Across Time’: Hostory and Memory’; ‘Stories Without End’.
The 101st BWB Text! To celebrate, buy the texts at a special price!

Macunaíma by Mário de Andrade (translated from Portuguese by Katrina Dodson) $37
An exciting new translation of the modernist Brazilian epic Macunaíma. This landmark novel from 1928 has been hugely influential. It follows the adventures of the shapeshifting Macunaíma and his brothers as they leave their home in the northern Amazon for a whirlwind tour of Brazil, cramming four centuries and a continental expanse into a single mythic plane. Having lost a magic amulet, the hero and his brothers journey to São Paulo to retrieve the talisman that has fallen into the hands of an Italo-Peruvian captain of industry (who is also a cannibal giant). Written over six delirious days — but the fruit of years of study — Macunaíma magically synthesizes dialect, folklore, anthropology, mythology, flora, fauna, and pop culture to examine Brazilian identity. This translation by has been many years in the making, and includes an extensive section of notes providing essential background information for this remarkable work.
”Katrina Dobson’s translation, employing a colloquial American diction with palpable African American and Deep South overtones, gives Macunaíma a consistent, credible voice in English. She inhabits and breathes life into the novel as though she were a revenant from the Brazilian jungle of a century ago…It is not only Brazil’s complexity that Mário de Andrade captures, but that of the Americas as a whole, and to some extent that of the entire modern world.” — Times Literary Supplement
”Over the course of seventeen chapters and an epilogue, violent parables and raunchy parodies nestle within one another to create a dazzling and chaotic Luso-tropical Holy Grail epic… Perhaps through Dodson’s masterful work, Andrade will finally be widely read alongside Joyce, Woolf, and Kafka, and Brazilian modernism will be cemented in a canon that has largely excluded authors from Latin America. —Meg Weeks, The Baffler
>>The hero with no character.

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery $33
In 1979, as political violence consumes their native Kingston, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami. But they soon learn that the welcome in America will be far from warm.  Trelawny, their youngest son, comes of age in a society that regards him with suspicion and confusion. Their eldest son Delano’s longing for a better future for his own children is equalled only by his recklessness in trying to secure it.  As both brothers navigate the obstacles littered in their path – an unreliable father, racism, a financial crisis and Hurricane Andrew — they find themselves pitted against one another. Will their rivalry be the thing that finally tears their family apart? 
>>Short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.
”In Jonathan Escoffery’s vital, captivating debut novel, each chapter takes us deeper into a family album of stories, revealing the life and survival of a family, fleeing the violence of early Seventies’ Jamaica for the uncertain sanctuary of a new beginning in America. From the heartbreaking to the hilarious, Escoffery effortlessly conducts the various voices, contradictory in their perspectives, their dreams and desires, while wrestling with the age-old immigrant dilemma — who are my people and where do I belong? As with the best fiction, all of life is here in unflinching detail: the vagaries of capitalism, our yearning for a safety net, international migration, the American Dream, the fragility of existence, climate change, catastrophic misunderstandings and the road not taken." —Booker judges’ citation
>>”Humour is a coping mechanism used by people aware of their powerlessness.”

Te Awa o Kupu edited by Vaughan Rapatahana and Kiri Piahana-Wong $37
An important new collection of poetry and stories by over eighty contemporary Māori writers, both established and emerging.
A companion volume to Ngā Kupu Wero.

Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue $38
In 1805, at boarding school in York, England, two fourteen-year-olds meet — an orphan heiress, sent from India to England at six, and a gifted troublemaker. Anne Lister would go on to be a gifted diarist, famous the world over. But in the early nineteenth century she met Eliza Raine, someone who would change her life for ever.
"Donoghue's affection for the savvy, strange Lister is obvious, and the author makes her teenage couple's partnership both deeply serious and wonderfully naive, but the reader knows from the first page that their infatuation won't last, and the novel is ultimately a tender, sad account of first love." —Emma Sarappo, The Atlantic
>>Other books about Anne Lister.
>>Gentleman Jack.

Technofeudalism: What killed Capitalism by Yanid Varoufakis $40
No one noticed when capitalism died. Perhaps we were too distracted by the implosion of global finance, or the rise of populism, or the demise of the planet — or all of those cute cats on Instagram. But gradually, quietly, a yet more exploitative new system has taken hold — techno-feudalism. Written in the form of a letter to his late father, who first taught him about the power of new technologies to shape human history, Yanis Varoufakis explains how Big Tech has effected an invisible but fundamental transformation in all our lives. Drawing on stories from Greek Myth and pop culture, from Mad Men to Karl Marx, he explains how the key ingredients of capitalism — profit and markets — have both been replaced. And he exposes the hidden connection between your personal data and the transformative power of 'cloud capital' which means that without our realising it, we are all working every day for the tech giants, for free.

Harrow by Joy Williams $25
”How do you get geriatric eco-terrorists into a book and make it sound believable, ironic, outrageous, and compelling? When your main protagonist is a ten-year-old with a jaundiced view of the world, but also a surprising innocence, how are we convinced that this could be a future reality? Joy Williams makes us believe because she’s a genius. Harrow, her recent novel, is a sideways dystopia, very strange and difficult to follow — not because it’s pretentious or overly literary but because the end of the world (as we know it) will be confusing, blindingly obvious, and surprisingly full of unexpected consequences. As you read this review, you will notice the inconsistencies — how can it be this, but also that? How can you have a 10-year-old protagonist surviving crossing America alone but somehow be okay —  picked up and harnessed by the goodwill of others — even if this is fleeting? How can, and why, do terminally ill geriatrics who can’t seem to get along (there are plenty of petty squabbles at the abandoned conference centre/resort) have a plan (of destruction — we will get to that later) that forces them to be bound together by a mutual ideology? Well, it works because Joy Williams is a brilliant writer and she’s angry, even as she darkly exploits us humans and uses our foibles to create characters who will stick on you. And that’s how it is — Harrow gets under your skin and just when you’re confused the lightbulb clicks on and it’s so bright, you hope you’ll be in the dark again. Darkness may be preferable to the future.” —Stella
Now in paperback!
>>Read the rest of Stella’s review.

My Art Book of Adventure by Shana Gozansky $35
”The latest in a charming series of board books for pre-schoolers. This series introduces the very young to a range of fine art images alongside relevant childhood experiences. Exploring their world, going on a picnic, being a baby, sleeping and dreaming. The book is designed to appeal and be practical for youngsters with its firm pages, only one or two images per page (there are 35 artworks) and short, sweet texts.” —Stella
>>Look inside!
>>Other books in the series.

The Handover: How we gave control of our lives to corporations, states and A.I. by David Runciman $40
'The Singularity' is what Silicon Valley calls the idea that, eventually, we will be overrun by machines that are able to take decisions and act for themselves. What no one says is that it happened before. A few hundred years ago, humans started building the robots that now rule our world. They are called states and corporations: immensely powerful artificial entities, with capacities that go far beyond what any individual can do, and which, unlike us, need never die. They have made us richer, safer and healthier than would have seemed possible even a few generations ago — and they may yet destroy us. The Handover distils over three hundred years of thinking about how to live with artificial agency. Runciman is incisive, as always.
”Refreshingly free of received and rehearsed wisdoms, Runciman doesn't tiptoe around sacred cows and invites us to take part in that most adult way of thinking: to examine contradictory ideas in tandem and ponder what the dissonance amounts to.” —Australian

The Unbroken Beauty of Rosalind Bone by Alex McCarthy $37
Tucked into the Welsh valleys and encircled by silver birch and pine, the village of Cwmcysgod may appear a quiet, sleepy sort of place. But beneath the surface, tensions simmer, hearts ache, and painful truths threaten to emerge. Sixteen-year-old Catrin Bone knows only what she has been told. Now, she is beginning to question her small world, and a version of the past that seems to entrap and embitter her reclusive mother, Mary. Mary had a sister once, a girl of unparalleled beauty. Why did she disappear from the village in a shroud of shame all those years ago — and where is she now?
Meanwhile the Clements brothers, skint and all out of hope, run rampant across the hills and lanes. And old Dai Bevel, whose frailty masks a dark history, dreams of a girl he used to know. The sins of the past are approaching, for it takes a village: to raise a child, to bring down a woman, to hide something monstrous and to look the other way.
”Small Things Like These meets Under Milk Wood — this slim but devastating novel captures an entire village, an entire world, and the many ways in which a woman can be trapped. A real gem.” —Ruth Gilligan
”A wonderful novella, full of atmosphere and feeling.” —Sara Baume

Around the Ocean in 80 Fish (and other sea life) by Helen Scales, illustrated by Marcel George $60
An inspiring tour of the world's oceans and eighty of its most notable inhabitants. Filled with lively illustrations, the book includes fascinating stories of the fish, shellfish and other sea life that have somehow impacted human life — whether in medicine, culture or folklore — in often surprising and unexpected ways.
>>Look inside!

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney $37
Jamie O'Neill loves the colour red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that comes with wind, the curvature of many objects, books with dust jackets, cats, rivers and Edgar Allan Poe. At age 13 there are two things he especially wants in life: to build a Perpetual Motion Machine, and to connect with his mother Noelle, who died when he was born. In his mind these things are intimately linked. And at his new school, where all else is disorientating and overwhelming, he finds two people who might just be able to help him. How to Build a Boat is the story of how one boy and his mission transforms the lives of his teachers, Tess and Tadhg, and brings together a community in rural Ireland.
>>Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.

Holding the Note: Writing on music by David Remnick $43
The editor of The New Yorker writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years. He portrays a series of musical lives – Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more – and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time.
”This collection of articles by David Remnick can stand as literature. He treats the reader as an informed, intelligent equal.” —The New York Times

Fire Weather: A true story from a hotter world by John Vaillant $40
In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of Canada's oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration, John Vaillant reveals a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world. For hundreds of millennia, fire has been a partner in our evolution, shaping culture and civilization. Yet this volatile energy has always threatened to elude our control, and in our age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in ways never witnessed by human beings. With masterly prose and cinematic style, Vaillant explores the intertwined histories of the oil industry and climate science, the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern forest fires, and the lives forever changed by these disasters. Fire Weather is an urgent book for our new century of fire.

City of Stolen Magic by Nazneen Ahmed Pathak $21
India, 1855. The British rule, and all across the country, Indian magic is being stamped out. More terrifying still, people born with magic are being snatched from their homes. Rumour is that they are being taken across the sea — to England — by the all-powerful, sinister Company. When Chompa's home is attacked and her mother viciously kidnapped, Chompa — born with powerful and dangerous magic that she has always been forbidden from using — must travel to the smoky, bustling streets of East London in search of her. But Chompa will discover far more treachery in London than she had bargained for — and will learn that every act of her rare magic comes with a price.
”Dazzling from start to finish.” —Abi Elphinstone
”A gripping and spellbinding fantasy woven together with threads of magic, secrets and colonial history . An incredible cast of characters and a truly multicultural Victorian London that we don't see often enough.” —Rashmi Sirdeshpande

BOOKSHOP DAY is approaching. It's a chance to reflect on what your bookshop means to you! The way in which we find books comes in many guises. Whether you are waiting for your favourite author to write that next book, getting tips from a friend, being gifted or gifting a surprise package, or indulging in something from your wish-list, it's likely a bookseller has a hand in your book discovery. At VOLUME, we offer our customers excellent service, and love to share our knowledge of and passion for interesting books produced by some of the very best publishers in Aotearoa and internationally; and written by authors who take us to new places, inform us about our world and incite us to action, literally and philosophically. Bringing books and readers together is the purpose of a bookshop. This year, to celebrate, send us a photograph of a book (or a stack of books!) you have purchased from VOLUME — it could be a snap of you reading it, a photo of the book in situ on your shelf, arranged in a curated display, or any inventive arrangement. Entries due by midnight 7th October 2023. Every entry goes in the draw to win a 6-month VOLUME Reading Subscription. You can enter as many times as you like (but each entry should be in a separate email). Email your entry to us at books@volume.nz.

If you have a young aspiring artist in your household, or a keen block builder, then one of these lovely art books would make an excellent gift. For the absolute beginners, My Art Book of Adventures is the latest in a charming series of board books for pre-schoolers. This series introduces the very young to a range of fine art images alongside relevant childhood experiences. Exploring their world, going on a picnic, being a baby, sleeping, and dreaming. The book is designed to appeal to and be practical for youngsters with its firm pages, only one or two images per page (there are 35 artworks), and short, sweet texts.
Building up and breaking down, find out all about buildings in 100 Things to Know About Architecture. This is an excellent book featuring both iconic buildings and simple structures, early builders, and famous architects. What I enjoy about this book over others that cover similar ground is the inclusion of technical information, architectural concepts, and socio-cultural context. Have a look at a few images on our website and you will see what I mean. Here you’ll find out the relationship between topography and buildings, what it takes to build a bridge, and how we live in houses. The attractive illustrations are immediately appealing and the text is informative, yet incisive. Each entry (100 in all) has a 100-word descriptor alongside its illustration.
And for something more hands-on, just published, a wonderful and inspiring art activity book, Ziggle! - The Len Lye Art Activity Book. The education team at the Len Lye Centre has gathered together 65 activities and plenty of information about the playful and inventive artist. This is fun, fascinating, and brimming with ideas. You might get a wind wand in your garden or get to enjoy an avant-garde film experience!
Recently, the art of Hilma af Klint has been showing up at galleries around the world. This renewed interest reflects the re-examination of influential women artists who have previously been sidelined. A Swedish artist, she was part of a circle of female mystics. Her work is grounded in her philosophy. Her paintings are among the first abstract works known in Western art history, predating Kandinsky and Mondrian. The Art and Life of Hilma af Klint is a great introduction to this artist, their distinctive style, and their passion for art and ideas.

Click on the book jackets to look inside!

• Other art books for children.