A selection of urgent and important books from our shelves.
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The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine
What does Israel Fear from Palestine?
Having an expert on hand in the kitchen is a bonus. If you don’t have a resident chef, you could try the next best thing: a cookbook about cooking and everything you need to know.
Food historian and home cook Bee Wilson brings us her first recipe book, The Secret of Cooking. And with the subtitle, ‘recipes for an easier life in the kitchen’, you feel at ease with Wilson straight away. With chapters on pots and pans, knives, the joys of the box grater — your essential tools, and getting the most from your ingredients, discovering what element is missing in your dish, and finding easy solutions, there is knowledge galore. Delving into her bank of food knowledge and drawing from some of her favourite food writers, this is not only informative but packed with recipes, from sauces to treats and everyday wonders, across a wide range of culinary styles. This excellent book, compiled from a lifetime’s experience of preparing, eating, thinking and writing about food, realigns even a sophisticated cook’s basic approaches and ingredients, and makes life in the kitchen simpler, more enjoyable, and always satisfyingly productive.
What the critics say: “Reading The Secret of Cooking is like sitting in a warm kitchen with an exceptionally articulate friend.” —Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, authors of Honey & Co.
”A genuinely game-changing cookbook. There’s not a kitchen that should be without a copy” —Nigella Lawson
Enjoy simple cooking at its best with Jeremy Lee’s Cooking: Simply and Well, For One or Many. For everything that’s great about potatoes, aspargaus, and beans, for the love of food — whether it’s a pie or a hearty dish, smoked treats or restortaive soups — you will find something to love here. In Lee’s wonderful turn of phrase, childhood memories, cooking experiences and joyous explorations, the pages are alive with inspiration and musings. There’s a whole chapter on the potato, alongside one on salsify, and you can get to the heart of the matter with offal and nut it out with the walnut. This beautifully produced book is idosyncratic and bursting with food goodness.
What the critics say: “I worship Jeremy Lee. Not just the best cook, he’s also the jolliest, most joyous host, in person, and on the page.” —Olivia Laing
”Jeremy Lee is not only an expectional chef, but an exceptional write. One of the most beautiful cookery books I have ever seen.” —Rcahel Roddy
”Jeremy Lee masters the alchemy of food writing: insighful, witty, encouraging, patient, wise.” —Charlie Porter
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Find out what winter is for.
19 July 2024
I have most, if not all, of Ali Smith’s novels on my shelf. I’ve been reading her for twenty years plus some, because she’s brilliant. It’s seems an appropriate time to revisit her seasonal quartet, which starts with Autumn, heads through Winter , to Spring and Summer. So, in keeping with the temperature gauge, Winter lands us in a cold house where things have gone slightly awry, but like all seasons things will turn.
Ali Smith's Winter is dazzling. The second in her ‘Seasons’ quartet, draws richness out of desolation. Strangely, the novel opens with Sophia, lonely and retired, conversing with a detached head. Not too far along we meet Arthur, her son, who has just fallen out with his girlfriend Charlotte, who has accused him of being a fraud and politically disconnected. Charlotte, aggrieved by his uselessness, has drilled holes through his laptop, taken off and taken over his ‘art and nature’ blog, posting false and possibly libelous material. Arthur (Art as he is affectionately known to his family) has to travel to Cornwall to visit Sophia for Christmas, and he is meant to be arriving with Charlotte. In desperation, he finds a stand-in, Lux, who he pays a thousand pounds to pretend to be Charlotte for the long weekend. Arriving at Sophia's home, they find Sophia sitting huddled in layers of clothes in a cold house, not quite herself. Lux takes it upon herself to make Art contact Iris, his aunt. And here the novel starts to unfold. The fraught relationship between the sisters, one the seemingly conservative businesswoman, the other the 'wild child' activist who chained herself to the fence at Greenham Common, still protesting and aiding the disempowered. The conversations between the sisters reveal much to Arthur about his upbringing. Yet more is revealed to Lux, the stranger in the mix, who Sophia seems to trust. Lux is a recent migrant, studying English literature before she ran out of money and now making do with low-pay jobs and sleeping anywhere she isn’t noticed. Her brief interlude in this winter Christmas family tale is inspired - a catalyst for change. Ali Smith draws us in with cool, icy precision - Winter, like the season, is deep, dark and melancholic when we enter the novel - yet she gives us love and hope, and lets us see the green shoots waiting for the snow to melt. Like Autumn, Winter is a book about time and place, about now - refugees, fires in substandard towers - about what binds families and also what splits them asunder. Smith can take a simple series of events with a cast of few and tell us so much about ourselves, and the culture (art, literature, language) and choices that shape us. And she does it with intelligence, wit and style.
Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Brotherless Night was described by the judges as ‘A powerful book that has the intimacy of memoir, the range and ambition of an epic, and tells a truly unforgettable story about the Sri Lankan civil war.’
It’s the story of sixteen-year-old Sashi who wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K's invitation to work as a medic at a field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. She must ask herself — is it possible for anyone to move through life without doing harm?
With accolades from authors and star reviews from critics, along with taking home the prize from a very strong shortlist (iwhich included Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost and Anne Enright’s The Wren, The Wren) this is one to add to your pile of excellent reading.
‘A blazingly brilliant novel . . . With immense compassion and deep moral complexity, V. V. Ganeshananthan brings us an achingly moving portrait of a world full of turmoil, but one in which human connections and shared stories can teach us how-and as importantly, why-to survive.’ — Celeste Ng, New York Times
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“Who eats in a cage? Or with a caged mouth?” There is either writing or not-writing (even though not-writing may be as specific concerning what is not written as writing is concerning what is), and the dividing line between the two is not so much a wall as a cliff, an inequality more effective than a barrier. Anne Boyer’s collection of prose poems, Garments Against Women, is everywhere alert to the ways in which the world as experienced by those who live in it is riven by inequalities. Those who wield a power or who benefit from the wielding of that power have little perceptual overlap with those upon whom that power is wielded or who suffer from the wielding of that power, but, interestingly, the advantaged live in a world of more restricted truth, even though the disadvantaged may feel the effects of this restriction. This asymmetry acts as a constraint upon those to whom falls more heavily the burden of existing, “lives diminished by the arrangement of the world,” their time forced into objects and taken from them by what is termed an ‘economic system’. Boyer’s poems interrogate her relationship with objects, for instance the garments she sews or that she buys from thrift shops: “the fabric still contains the hours of the lives.” Can these hours have their value restored? For whose benefit have these hours been put into objects? If “writing is the manufacture of impossible desires,” can we write of or read of objects without involving ourselves in the mechanisms by which time is taken asymmetrically from workers? Is it possible for an object to not exist except as a vicarious object, “an object which exists only as it might exist to another”? Are all objects more vicarious than not? “I am the dog who can never be happy because I am imagining the unhappiness of other dogs,” writes Boyer. How it is possible to write, even to imagine writing, even if one had the time to write, without writing ‘garments’ that are designed by and are to the benefit of those who have confined ‘writing’ in the narrow world of their advantage? Whose roles must be challenged and overhauled? “I will soon write a long, sad book called A Woman Shopping", writes Boyer, an self-described “addict of denial”, in the poem ‘A Woman Shopping’. “It will be a book about what we are required to do and also a book about what we are hated for doing.” Everyone is smothered by their role: “If a woman has no purse we will imagine one for her.” “Everyone tries to figure out how to overcome the embarrassment of existing,” but the real struggle is “not between actor and actor. It’s between actors and the stage.” Boyer’s poems provide subtle and often surprising insights into the relationships between individuals and their roles, desires and scripts, personal and societal misfortunes, struggle and survival, despair and surprising joy. Can writing effect real change? “I thought to have a name was to become an object,” writes Boyer. “I thought I was a charlatan. I was mistaken. I was not a charlatan, I was a search term.”
Chose your new book from the newest of the new books:
All Fours by Miranda July $37
A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey. With July's wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman's quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectations while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrilling.
“A giddy, bold, mind-blowing tour de force by one of our most important literary writers. Funny, honest, rich with the energy of the mind, All Fours will jump-start your relation to language and cause you to think anew about the nature of desire.” —George Saunders
”All Fours is profound and bawdy and deeply human, a brilliant work of art from a completely blown open and fearless mind.” —Emma Cline
Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan $26
This tender and fierce novel set in the societal trauma of the Sri Lankan civil war has been awarded the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war subsumes Sri Lanka, her dream takes her on a different path as she watches those around her, including her four beloved brothers and their best friend, get swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. She must ask herself: is it possible for anyone to move through life without doing harm?
”V.V. Ganeshananthan's novel Brotherless Night reveals the moral nuances of violence, ever belied by black-and-white terminology.” —The New York Times
”A beautiful, brilliant book: tender and fierce as it is mournful. It is unafraid to look directly at the worst of the violence and erasure we have perpetrated or allowed to happen, but is insistent that we can still choose to be better.” —Danielle Evans
”With immense compassion and deep moral complexity, V. V. Ganeshananthan brings us an achingly moving portrait of individual and societal grief. "I want you to understand," the narrator of Brotherless Night insists, and by the end of this blazingly brilliant novel, we do: that in a world full of turmoil, human connections and shared stories can teach us how — and, as importantly, why — to survive.” —Celeste Ng
Mary and the Rabbit Dream by Noémi Kiss-Deáki $36
Mary Toft was just another eighteenth century woman living in poverty, misery and frequent pain. Mary Toft was the kind of person overlooked by those with power, forgotten by historians. Mary Toft was nothing. Until, that is, Mary Toft started giving birth to rabbits... In Mary and the Rabbit Dream, Noemi Kiss-Deaki reimagines Mary's strange and fascinating story — and how she found fame when a large swathe of England became convinced that she was the mother of rabbits. Mary and the Rabbit Dream is a story of bodily autonomy, of absurdity, of the horrors inflicted on women, of the cruel realities of poverty and the grotesque divides between rich and poor. It is a story told with exquisite wit, skill and a beautiful streak of subversive mischief.
“One of those novels that seemingly arrives from nowhere, fully-formed, as odd, disturbing and lingering as the most vivid of fever dreams. To create something so playfully provocative, subversive and gripping displays a rare literary talent. I’ve certainly never read anything like it.” —Benjamin Myers
“In Mary and the Rabbit Dream, Noémi Kiss-Deáki transforms the tale of Mary Toft into a stinging, witty critique of the oppressions heaped upon the bodies of impoverished women. This is a brave debut, one told with courage and wit, one which dissects a ruthless system of class and gender – and lays bare the concentric circles of power that still govern our world.” —Selby Wynn Schwartz
“Noémi Kiss-Deáki’s style is astonishing – hypnotic, poetic, persistent, wild, blazing and marvellous. As the novel unfolds you simply can’t believe what is happening – it’s outrageous, it’s cruel, it’s unfathomable and yet – it’s the way of the world. Here is Mary Toft’s tale, retold in dazzling prose that is both exquisite and furious. Noémi Kiss-Deáki reimagines the possibilities for historical fiction and Mary and the Rabbit Dream is utterly original and utterly brilliant." —Victoria Mackenzie
The Picnic: An escape to freedom and the collapse of the Iron Curtain by Matthew Longo $40
In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists did the unthinkable- they entered the forbidden militarised zone of the Iron Curtain — and held a picnic. Word had spread of what was going to happen. On wisps of rumour, thousands of East German 'holiday-makers' had made their way to the border between Hungary and Austria and packed the nearby camping sites, awaiting an opportunity, fearing prison, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The highest state authorities were choosing to turn a blind eye — but that could change at any moment. The stage was set for the greatest border breach in Cold War history — that day hundreds would cross from the Communist East to the longed-for freedom of the West. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union — the so-called end of history — all would flow from those dramatic hours. Drawing on dozens of original interviews with those involved — activists and border guards, escapees and secret police, as well as the last Communist prime minister of Hungary — Matthew Longo reconstructs not only this remarkable event but also its complex and bittersweet aftermath. Freedom had been won but parents had been abandoned and families divided. Love affairs faltered and new lives had to be built from scratch. The Picnic is the story of a moment when the tide of history turned. It shows how freedom can be both dream and disillusionment, and how all we take for granted can vanish in an instant.
Winner of the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Writing (non-Fiction)
”Longo covers the Picnic at ground level, evoking the dramatic events in vivid colour. Anecdotes and impressions are woven through the historical narrative, providing an insight into how deeply this history still matters today. The chain of events in 1989 and its historical context are outlined with clarity and verve. The narrative is spiked with Longo's commentary and anecdotes from his trips, making The Picnic a deeply personal account of a fascinating milestone of Cold War history.” —Katja Hoyer, Telegraph
Choice by Neel Mukherjee $37
A publisher, who is at war with his industry and himself, embarks on a radical experiment in his own life and the lives of those connected to him; an academic exchanges one story for another after an accident brings a stranger into her life; and a family in rural India have their lives destroyed by a gift.
These three ingeniously linked but distinct narratives, each of which has devastating unintended consequences, form a breathtaking exploration of freedom, responsibility, and ethics. What happens when market values replace other notions of value and meaning? How do the choices we make affect our work, our relationships, and our place in the world? Neel Mukherjee's new novel exposes the myths of individual choice, and confronts our fundamental assumptions about economics, race, appropriation, and the tangled ethics of contemporary life. Choice is a scathing, compassionate quarrel with the world, a masterful inquiry into how we should live our lives, and how we should tell them.
”Choice is funny, horrible, ironic, damning, affecting and deadly serious.” —Financial Times
”In his dazzling new novel, Neel Mukherjee dissects how economics rules our lives and impoverishes our souls. Choice is by turns comic, lyrical and heartbreaking. It burns brightly with fierce intelligence, with wisdom and compassion, and achieves what so few novels even attempt: it makes the reader think deeply about how we've come to live this way, at what cost, and about those who pay the greatest price.” —Monica Ali
”In each panel of this masterful triptych exquisite prose gradually crescendos to jaw-dropping revelations. Possessed of great moral seriousness, Choice is also very funny in its satirical excoriation of the obsession with calculating life in purely economic terms in so many realms of contemporary life. It is, in short, a deeply human novel, and a humane one. We come to realize that a human life is not simply the result of rational choices but rather, as Mukherjee puts it, the lull between them — a rich and swaying lull, thick with love and responsibility.” —Namwali Serpell
A Body Made of Glass: A history of hypochondria by Caroline Crampton $40
"There is a twilight zone between illness and health, and that's where I dwell." An ache, a pain, a mysterious lump, a strange sensation in some part of your body, the feeling that something is not right. The fear that something is, in fact, very wrong. These could be symptoms of illness. But they could also be the symptoms of hypochondria — an enigmatic condition that might be physiological or psychological or both. Caroline Crampton tells the story of hypochondria, beginning in the age of Hippocrates and taking us right through to the wellness industry today. Along the way, we encounter successive generations of doctors positing new theories, as well as quacks selling spurious cure-alls to the desperate. And we meet those who have suffered with conditions both real and imagined, including Moliere, Darwin, Woolf, Freud, Larkin, and Proust (whose symptoms and sensitivities gradually narrowed his life to the space of his cork-lined bedroom). Crampton also examines the gendered nature of the medical response, the financial and social factors at play, and the ways in which modern technology simultaneously feeds our fears and holds out the promise of relief. Drawing on Crampton's own experience of surviving a life-threatening disease only to find herself beset by almost constant anxiety about her health, A Body Made of Glass explores part of the landscape of illness that most memoirs don't reach: the territory beyond survival or cure, where body and mind seem locked in a strange and exhausting kind of dance. The result is both a fascinating cultural history of hypochondria and a moving account of what it means to live with this invisible, elusive and increasingly wide-spread condition.
”Clarity and beauty combine with terror and dark comedy — essential reading for everyone who has a body.” —Lucy Worsley
”A thoughtful and touching examination of what it means to be well. Crampton's unflinching honesty and skill with words make for a tender and often heart-breaking history of medicine. Every medical professional should read this book.” —Subhadra Das
Vertigo: The rise and fall of Weimar Germany, 1918—1933 by Harald Jähner $40
Germany, 1918 — a country in flux. The First World War is lost, traditional values are shaken to their core, revolution is afoot and the victory of democracy beckons. Everything must change with the times. The country is abuzz with talk of the 'new woman', the 'new man', 'new living' and 'new thinking'. What follows is the establishment of the Weimar Republic, an economic crisis and the transformation of Germany. A triumphant procession of liberated lifestyles emerges. Women conquer the racetracks and tennis courts, go out alone in the evenings, cut their hair short and cast the idea of marriage aside. Unisex style comes into fashion, androgynous and experimental. People revel in the discovery of leisure, filling up boxing halls, dance palaces and the hotspots of the New Age, embracing the department stores' promise of happiness and accepting the streets as a place of fierce battles. So much of this short burst of life between the wars seems amazingly modern today, including, amidst a frenzy of change, the backlash from those who did not see themselves reflected in this new culture. Little by little, deep divisions in society began to emerge. Divisions that would have devastating consequences, altering the course of the twentieth century and the lives of millions around the world.
”Vertigo is outstanding. Harald Jahner's gift for illuminating the big picture with telling detail gives the reader an uncanny sense of what it was actually like to be present in Germany during the Weimar Republic. This is history at its very best.” —Julia Boyd
Analogue: A field guide by Deyan Sudjic $70
Covering sound, vision, communication and information, Analogue: A Field Guide is an evocative trip through an era of innovative design, profiling 250 classic objects from radios to turntables, TVs to cameras, and typewriters to telephones. Along the way, it surveys all the iconic brands as well as the technological developments that have made these devices possible. There is a growing nostalgia for physical, real-world interaction with design and technology and a desire to reconnect with both things and people, something that has been eroded by the digital revolution. The wide-ranging approach of this book enables it to show the deeper cultural and social significance of the analogue era, with the authority to convince those who know a lot about each category and the breadth to attract the non-specialist. Ideal for those nostalgic for physical media, as well as those who collect, use and maintain these older technologies. Impressive.
The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada (translated from Japanese by David Boyd) $30
Asa's husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family's home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for work, and tries to find interesting ways of killing time. One day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole — a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. This is the first in a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape filled with eccentric characters and unidentifiable creatures, leading her to question her role in this world, and eventually, her sanity.
”A great book.” —Patti Smith
”Surreal and mesmerizing.” —New York Times
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad $26
After years away from her family's homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. On her arrival, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new. When Sonia meets the charismatic Mariam, a local director, she joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing with a dedicated, if competitive, group of men — yet as opening night draws closer, it becomes clear just how many obstacles stand before the troupe. Amidst it all, the life she once knew starts to give way to the exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home. New papernack edition.
”Enter Ghost retells Hamlet for now, dropping its readers deep into the contemporary tensions of the West Bank, asking crucial and layered questions. Hammad is a calm and vital storyteller, a writer of real rhythmic grace.” —Ali Smith
”How can a production of Hamlet in the West Bank resonate with the residents’ existential issues? Enter Ghost is a beautiful, profound meditation on the role of art in our society and our lives.” —Monica Ali
”Beautifully written, poignant yet forceful, thoughtful and thought provoking, but above all challenging the reader to respond to the question facing the characters in the novel: how to live under occupation while preserving your dignity and humanity? Hammad answers this question through taking us into the hearts and minds of the characters in the novel and through that into the heart and mind of Palestine.” —Azar Nafisi
The King’s Witches by Kate Foster $38
Denmark, 1589. Princess Anne is betrothed to King James VI of Scotland — a geo-political royal marriage designed to forever unite the two countries. But first, she must pass the trial period: one year of marriage in which she must prove herself worthy of being Scotland's new Queen. If the King and the Scottish royal court find her wanting, she faces disgraced and permanent exile. Determined to fulfil her duties to King and country, Anne resolves to be the perfect royal bride. Until she meets Lord Henry. By her side is Kirsten, her loyal and pious lady's maid. But whilst tending to Anne's every need, she has her own motives for the royal marriage to be a success . . . On the other side of the border in North Berwick, a young housemaid by the name of Jura is dreaming of a new life. With an abusive master and a soured relationship with a young farmer's son, she secretly practises the charms taught to her by her mother. When the tension reaches breaking point, Jura makes a run for it: to Edinburgh. But it isn't long before she finds herself caught up in the witchcraft mania that has gripped the capital, and her freedom and her future are on the line. Will Anne, Kirsten and Jura be able to save each other, and in doing so save themselves?
A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter (translated from German by Jane Degras) $33
In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be a relaxing trip, a chance to 'read thick books in the remote quiet and, not least, sleep to my heart's content', but when Christiane arrives she is shocked to realise that they are to live in a tiny ramshackle hut on the shores of a lonely fjord, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, battling the elements every day, just to survive. At first, Christiane is horrified by the freezing cold, the bleak landscape the lack of equipment and supplies... But as time passes, after encounters with bears and seals, long treks over the ice and months on end of perpetual night, she finds herself falling in love with the Arctic's harsh, otherworldly beauty, gaining a great sense of inner peace and a new appreciation for life. New edition.
The Dream Factory by Steph Matuku, illustrated by Zak Ātea Komene $22
An amazing building rises on the edge of town — it's the dream factory. Every night, it sends out magical mist. Flying cars, flower cakes and talking tigers fill people's dreams. And the next day, the people make those dreams come true. But when a kereru flies into the dream factory, and a feather floats into a cog, everything goes terribly wrong.
The Further Adventures of Miss Petitfour by Anne Michaels, illustrated by Emma Block $23
Miss Petitfour enjoys having adventures that are 'just the right size' for a 'single, magical day’. With her sixteen cats and the aid of a tablecloth as a makeshift balloon, Miss Petitfour soars — which is to say, she rises high in the air and flies — over her charmingly eccentric village, encountering adventures along the way. One never knows where the wind will take her in this delightfully seasonal collection of magical outings: perhaps to the aid of dearly loved friends and neighbours, including a hapless handyman and an onion-loving baby, or to a coconut-confetti parade, or in search of keys, lucky charms or even simply the perfect tablecloth for her next flight. A witty, whimsical, beautifully illustrated collection of tales that celebrate language, storytelling and all the pleasures of life, large and small.
Birds Aren't Real: The true story of mass avian murder and the largest surveillance campaign in U.S. history by Peter McIndoe and Connor Gaydos $35
Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? You haven't, have you? No one has, not in many, many years. They used to be everywhere. That's because they come out of the factory as adults. In the 1970s, the United States government killed off the entire bird population and replaced them with robotic bird replicas that are used for mass surveillance. Bird drones that recharge on power lines and leave 'liquid tracking devices' on your car are omnipresent while the American people live in blissful ignorance. Until now. In Birds Aren't Real, whistleblowers Peter McIndoe and Connor Gaydos trace the roots of a political conspiracy so vast and well-hidden that it almost seems like an elaborate hoax. These hero Bird Truthers have risked life and limb to spread the word, to free America and prevent other countries' governments from enacting a similar scheme.
A selection of books from our shelves.
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Read an exclusive interview with David Coventry, about his novel Performance.
12 July 2024
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part — or protective — of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?
The background in a painting of Pierre Bonnard often assumes more importance than the foreground, overwhelming the subject with the force of greater light and colour. Bonnard’s work, according to critic Roberta Smith, is remarkable for “the heat of mixed emotions, rubbed into smoothness, shrouded in chromatic veils and intensified by unexpected spatial conundrums and by elusive, uneasy figures.” Gabriel Josipovici’s subtle, disconcerting and remarkable novel, Contre-Jour: A triptych after Pierre Bonnard, is written in a similar way, against the light, a work of obsessive background that at once conceals and reveals its subject. The first and longest of the three sections of the novel is addressed bitterly by a young woman to her estranged mother, lamenting that she was forced to leave the family house, pushed out of the all-consuming relationship between her mother and her father, an artist who obsessively works to turn life into art, making him a passive but controlling observer, sketching and painting everything around him and draining them of autonomy and meaning. “‘Nothing stands still, nothing opens itself to our gaze but always retreats, vanishes, turns into something else,’” the daughter reads in her father’s notebook. The daughter returns again and again to the moment when she realised her exclusion from her parents’ relationship, when, as a child, she came into the bathroom where her mother was lying in the bath and noticed her father in the corner sketching, excluding her by his gaze. “Though your eyes are open,” she accuses her mother, “ and you must have seen me, you did not react to my presence. But perhaps you didn’t see me. Perhaps it is only in my memory that your eyes are open.” In one moment, which was no different perhaps from many other moments (incidentally, Bonnard repeatedly painted his wife Marthe de Méligny in the bath after they moved from Paris to the south of France in 1939 and before her death in 1942), in a moment that was merely an iteration of an obsessively repeated super-moment, the daughter realises that “it was not possible for the three of us to be together.” Could this moment, so like so many other moments, have been different? “Should a word have been said then, by me, by you, by him, which, unsaid, made all speech between us impossible ever after?” The gaze that binds her parents into the relationship from which art is produced, the relationship that excludes all else, is the gaze that nullifies the daughter. “And do you know what that made me feel? Not just that I was not wanted, but that I did not exist, I had never existed and I would never exist.” The words come “as if I had nothing to do with the words I speak to you. As if there were not spoken by me but to me or at me or in me. In my head. In my mouth. Wherever it is that words resound. In some space or place where words resound.” The daughter realises that the gaze simultaneously sustains and nullifies its object, her mother, and that the mother’s complicity in the obsessively visual relationship was a way of destroying both herself and monopolising her husband. “When you turned your face to the wall and cried he sat there in the corner sketching.” Obsession defers depression. “What you wanted, I think, as time went by, was to disappear entirely, to efface yourself from his presence. There was something that was killing you in his even-handed depiction of everything around him.” The second section of the novel is addressed by the mother to the daughter, whom she blames for their estrangement, and with whom she has many times attempted contact. “I have written you letters and posted them at the corner of the street. Why do you never reply?” The mother is stricken by the impossibility of a relationship with her daughter, impossibility within herself as much as in the daughter or the situation: “Where does it come from, this love one is supposed to give?” In the same way that the father has written in his notebook, of his art, “I want my people to be bathed in time as the impressionists bathed them in light,” the novel shows its characters overwhelmed by the temporal medium in which everything takes place, and the characters are depicted not so much against light (contre-jour) as against time (contre-temps). “You wake up and things have changed but you know that things have been changing for a long time,” the mother says. Despite the capturing of moments (“When he is not sketching me I wonder if I am really there.”), or perhaps because of this, time is always the overwhelming, unresolvable problem. “‘How to paint what happens when nothing happens?’ he used to say. I knew what he meant,” the mother says. “Nothing happens and nothing happens and nothing happens and all of a sudden there is a whole life gone and you realise that all those nothings were in fact everything.” The mother tells of a visit to her daughter’s apartment, which went so improbably well that we begin to suspect what is eventually manifestly the truth: the daughter does not exist and has never existed. The daughter is the delusional creation of the ‘mother’, but a creation that cannot receive or return love. “Oh my daughter. Whom I never had. For whom I longed. … If I had had you all the world would have been different. Even if things had been bad between us. It would have been different if I had had a daughter. Not this great emptiness. This great silence.” Reality, without the daughter, is intolerable, and, towards the end, we learn of the reason for the move from Paris to the countryside, and for the seemingly obsessive attention given by the artist to his subject: “Why could we not go on living in a fourth floor flat? Because of the animals? No. Because I tried to jump out of the window.” The daughter, the voice of the daughter, the daughter who exists only as a voice, the voice of the entire first section of the novel (the voice who said, “I had never existed and I would never exist. … I have nothing to do with the words I speak to you. As if there were not spoken by me but to me or at me or in me. In my head. In my mouth. Wherever it is that words resound,” &c), is a product entirely of the ‘mother’s’ mind, just as it is, in turn, a product, along with the ‘mother’s’ voice, of the author’s mind (and, by extension, of the reader’s mind). If the daughter exists, to the extent that she exists, and it cannot be said that she does not exist, in the way that all fiction exists, for the saddest of reasons in the mother’s mind, what does this tell us about the author’s mind (and, by extension, the reader’s mind)? What does this tell us about the mental operations that, when not overwhelming our sanity, we call fiction? The third and last section of the novel is a very short, sad and straightforward letter from the artist informing a friend of his wife’s death. It constitutes the only ‘objective’ element in the novel.
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Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin $40
The story of two couples who live in the same apartment in north-east Paris almost fifty years apart. In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is processing a recent miscarriage. Her husband, David, takes a job in London so she spends days obsessing over renovating the kitchen while befriending a younger woman called Clementine who has moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective called les colleuses. Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology while hoping to get pregnant. But Henry isn't sure he's ready for fatherhood. Both sets of couples face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy, against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy. The characters and their ghosts bump into and weave around each other, not knowing that they once all inhabited the same space. A novel in the key of Eric Rohmer, Scaffolding is about the bonds we create with people, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways that people we've known live on in us; and about the way that the homes we make hold communal memories of the people who've lived in them and the stories that have been told there.
”Scaffolding is a quietly incendiary disquisition on desire and containment, on the bonds that make and unmake us. It seized me wholly — a powerful testament to the idea that what we want might obliterate us, and fearlessly reckons with the equally high stakes of pretending otherwise.” —Daisy Lafarge
”Scaffolding is absolutely a novel of ideas. The prose is as well crafted as Elkin's nonfiction leads us to expect, and the characters are very finely developed. Not every good essayist should write a novel, but we should be glad Lauren Elkin did.” —Guardian
Sight Lines: Women and art in Aotearoa edited by Kirsty Baker $70
From ancient whatu kakahu to contemporary installation art, Frances Hodgkins to Merata Mita, Fiona Clark to Mataaho Collective, Sight Lines tells the story of art made by women in Aotearoa. Gathered here are painters, photographers, performers, sculptors, weavers, textile artists, poets and activists. They have worked individually, collaboratively and in collectives. They have defied restrictive definitions of what art should be and what it can do. Their stories and their work enable us to ask new questions of art history in Aotearoa. How have tangata whenua and tangata tiriti artists negotiated their relationships to each other, and to this place? How have women used their art-making to explore their relationships to land and water, family and community, politics and the nation? With more than 150 striking images, and essays by Chloe Cull, Ngarino Ellis, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Rangimarie Sophie Jolley, Lana Lopesi, Hanahiva Rose, Huhana Smith and Megan Tamati-Quennell alongside the author, Sight Lines is a bold new account of art-making in Aotearoa through 35 extraordinary women artists.
The Invisible Doctrine: The secret history of Neoliberalism (and how it came to control your life) by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison $32
Neoliberalism — do you know what it is? We live under an ideology that preys on every aspect of our lives — our education and our jobs; our healthcare and our leisure; our relationships and our mental wellbeing; the planet we inhabit — the very air we breathe. So pervasive has it become that, for most people, it has no name. It seems unavoidable, like a natural law. But trace it back to its roots, and we discover that it is neither inevitable nor immutable. It was conceived, propagated, and then concealed by the powerful few. It is time to bring it into the light — and, in doing so, to find an alternative worth fighting for.
”This brave book borders on being a page turner — 'The Secret History of Neoliberalism' is really the ultimate crime novel, one in which we all play a part.” —Kevin Anderson
”Incisive, illuminating, eye-opening-an unsparing anatomy of the great ideological beast stalking our times.” —David Wallace-Wells
”The Invisible Doctrine is everything you need. Monbiot and Hutchinson have written the definitive short history of the neoliberal confidence trick.” —Yanis Varoufakis
”Read it, get angry, demand better!” —Gaia Vince
Ædnan: An epic by Linnéa Axelsson (translated by Saskia Vogel) $55
In Northern Sámi, the word Ædnan means the land, the ground, the earth. In this majestic verse novel, Linnea Axelsson chronicles the fates of two Indigenous Sámi families, telling of their struggle and persistence over a century of colonial displacement, loss and resistance. It begins with Ristin and Ber-Joná, who are trying to care for their troubled young sons while migrating their reindeer herd in northernmost Scandinavia during the 1910s. The coming of the Swedes brings new borders that lay waste to Sámi customs and migration paths – and mean devastating separation for this family. In the 1970s, Lise grapples with how she was forced to adapt to Swedish society, haunted by her time in a ‘nomad school’ where she was deprived of her ancestors’ language and history. Lise’s daughter, Sandra, seeks to reclaim that heritage, becoming an activist struggling for reparations from the Swedish state. As one generation succeeds another, their voices interweave and form a spellbinding hymn to lands and traditions lost and reclaimed. Written in sparse, glittering verse that flows like a current, Ædnan is a profound and moving epic of Sámi life.
”Crystalline — reads like poetry and myth at once. There are intricate layers of beauty and meaning here in sparse clusters across a vast new landscape as I've never read before. The music of this book is old, and it is new, and it is old.” —Tommy Orange
”Mesmerising. A beautiful, poetic weaving of language, character and place. Evocative and heart-breaking.” —Audrey Magee
”A soul-gripping and enthralling journey into what it feels like to be othered in your own land. Axelsson offers us a profound invitation into understanding what it means to be deeply intertwined with nature.” —Lola Akinmade Akerstrom
”A sharp-edged tale in verse of colonial suppression, resistance, and survival.” —Kirkus Reviews
A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux (translated from French by Tanya Leslie) $25
On 7 April 1986, Annie Ernaux's mother, after years of suffering from Alzheimer's disease, died in a retirement home in the suburbs of Paris. Shocked by this loss which, despite her mother's condition, she had refused to fathom, Ernaux embarks on a daunting journey back through time in an effort to recover the different facets of a woman whose openness to the world and appetite for reading created the conditions for the author's own social ascent. Mirroring A Man's Place, in which she narrates her father's slow rise to material comfort, A Woman's Story explores the ambiguous and unshakeable bond between mother and daughter, its fluctuation over the course of their lives, the alienating worlds that separate them and the inescapable truth that we must lose the ones we love. In this quietly powerful tribute to the last thread connecting her to the world out of which she was born, Ernaux attempts to do her mother the greatest justice she can: to portray her as the individual she was.
”Ernaux's genius, here as elsewhere, is in using her own experiences to bring into consciousness our painful unknown knowns, through a deeply relatable, hyper-personal objectivity.” —Lucy Sweeney Byrne, Irish Times
”What emerges is something that verges on the mystical: Ernaux writes as though she is not writing but unearthing something that already exists.” —Lucy Thynne, The London Magazine
”The writing itself in A Woman's Story is truly exquisite. Annie Ernaux is a master of the form: her crisp sentences and plain style manage to convey the story so clearly, leaving the reader in no doubt of its genuineness. At the same time, this purity of language transmutes the most difficult emotions with highly effective results.” —Gosia Buzzanca, Buzz
”The author of one of the most important oeuvres in French literature, Annie Ernaux's work is as powerful as it is devastating, as subtle as it is seething.” —Edouard Louis, author of Change
”Infinitely original. A Woman's Story is every woman's story. [Its] power rests not in the drama of its main event but in moments that might escape unnoticed, if not for a writer desperate to recapture every last image that her memory reluctantly yields of a lost loved one.” —New York Times
Bad Archive by Flora Feltham $35
In these deftly woven essays Flora Feltham explores the corners where her memories are stashed: the archive vault, her mother’s house, a marriage counsellor’s office, the tip and New World. She takes us on a frenzied bender in Croatia, learns tapestry and meets romance novelists, all while wondering how families and relationships absorb the past, given everything we don’t say about grief, mental illness or even love. Most importantly, she asks, how do you write about a life honestly – when there are so many flaws in the way we record history and, more confrontingly, in the way we remember? Bad Archive is a lucid, continually surprising, funny and at times bracingly personal essay collection.
”Flora is just so smart and funny and these essays have so much heart. Her idiosyncratic, warm and wry voice moves seamlessly across time and space.” —Rose Lu
Empireworld: How British imperialism has shaped the globe by Sathnam Sanghera $40
2.6 billion people are inhabitants of former British colonies. The empire's influence upon the quarter of the planet it occupied, and its gravitational influence upon the world outside it, has been profound — from the spread of Christianity by missionaries to nearly 1 in 3 driving on the left side of the road, and even shaping the origins of international law. Yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things. Travelling the globe to trace its international legacies — from Barbados and Mauritius to India and Nigeria and beyond — Sanghera demonstrates just how deeply British imperialism is baked into our world. From the author of the excellent Empireland (which examines how the legacies of imperialism are evident in modern Britain).
”If you thought Empireland was beautifully written, this follow up takes you even further on an extraordinary, entertaining and eye-opening journey around the globe.” —Sadiq Khan
”Essential and absorbing reading for those not afraid to encounter diligently researched, complex, and often contradictory truths about colonial rule and its legacies.” —Alan Lester
”This is a ground-breaking and eye-opening book, that everyone should read. Written with wit, nuance and academic rigour; it is a long overdue look at Empire and its effect on the world.” —Kavita Puri
What Does Israel Fear from Palestine? by Raja Shehadeh $23
A poignant, incisive meditation on Israel's longstanding rejection of peace, and what the war on Gaza means for Zionism. When apartheid in South Africa ended, dismantled by internal activism and global pressure, why did Israel continue to pursue its own apartheid policies against Palestinians? In keeping with a history of antagonism, the Jewish state established settlements in the Occupied Territories as extreme right-wing voices gained prominence in Israeli government, with comparatively little international backlash — in fact, these policies were boosted by the Oslo Accords. Condensing this complex history into a lucid essay, Raja Shehadeh examines the many lost opportunities to promote a lasting peace and equality between Israelis and Palestinians. Since the creation of Israel in 1948, known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe, each side's perception of events has strongly diverged. What can this discrepancy tell us about Israel's undermining of a two-state solution? And will the current genocide in Gaza finally mark a shift in the world's response? With graceful, haunting prose, Shehadeh offers insights into a defining conflict that could yet be ameliorated.
”In his moral clarity and baring of the heart, his self-questioning and insistence on focusing on the experience of the individual within the storms of nationalist myth and hubris, Shehadeh recalls writers such as Ghassan Kanafani and Primo Levi.” —New York Times
”Shehadeh is a great inquiring spirit with a tone that is vivid, ironic, melancholy and wise.” —Colm Toibin
”A buoy in a sea of bleakness.” —Rachel Kushner
Slim Volume by James Brown $25
A slim volume of verse, like a bicycle, offers us fresh and joyful and sometimes troubling ways of seeing the world. James Brown’s eighth collection of poems begins in childhood and moves through education, jobs and the essential unremarkable activities that occupy our lives – before arriving in a post-apocalyptic future, where the nights run late and down to the wire. The poems are ever-alert to the minutiae of power, the thrill of the unexpected, and the shiny potential of an ending. Always compelling, funny, heartening, Brown speaks volumes even when claiming to have little to say.
”James Brown makes the process of reading feel effortless, but always rewards active attention. Like Stevie Smith, he can sometimes seem to be waving and drowning at the same time.” —Bill Manhire
”How gifted Brown is at the craft of poetry, the game of word and sounds on the page that are tidy and tight and clever and cool. And also how he lifts aside that cleverness to show us the tender inner self, the moist soft core of James Brown and his world.” —Anna Livesey
Get the Picture: A mind-bending journey among the inspired artists and obsessive art fiends who taught me how to see by Biana Bosker $40
In Cork Dork, Bianca Bosker trained her insatiable curiosity, journalist's knack for infiltrating exclusive circles and eye for unforgettable characters on the wine world as she trained to become a sommelier. Now she brings her smart yet accessible sensibility along for a ride through another subculture of elite obsessives. In Get the Picture, Bosker plunges deep inside the world of art and the people who live for it: gallerists, collectors, curators and, of course, artists themselves — the kind who work multiple jobs and let their paintings sleep soundly in the studio while they wake up covered in cat pee on a friend's couch. As she stretches canvases until her fingers blister, talks her way into A-list parties full of billionaire collectors, has her face sat on by a nearly naked performance artist and forces herself to stare at a single sculpture for an hour straight while working as a museum security guard, she discovers not only the inner workings of the art-canonisation machine but also a more expansive way of living. The book encompasses everything from colour theory to evolutionary biology, and from ancient cave paintings to Instagram as it attempts to discern art's role in our culture, our economy and our hearts.
”In Get the Picture — curious but not nave, gossipy but generous, critical but admiring, hilarious but profound — Bosker probes the human thirst for art, examines the addictive high it gives and rescues the unfashionable idea of beauty, of the pleasure of creation, from the theorists and the marketeers. This book is sheer pleasure: the best book I've ever read about contemporary art.” —Benjamin Moser
”This book freaked me out. Bosker's accessible, conversational spelunking into the world of contemporary art so powerfully rehydrated the PTSD in me between the little kid artist I once was with the self-consciously constricted thinker I became in art school that at one point I simply had to put it down, shaken. If you've ever wondered 'what happened' to art — galleries, critics, collectors — and, of course, artists — then this book is a very companionable start. It's also very funny, to say nothing of very vivid. And, confoundingly, very, very difficult to put down.” —Chris Ware
The Lodgers by Holly Pester $40
“What it said to me was that I was here again, I was back, back from the great nowhere of somewhere else, returned, all too officially, to the whereabouts of Moffa.” After a year away, a woman arrives back in her hometown to keep an eye on her wayward mother, Moffa. Living in a precarious sub-let, she is always on edge, anticipating a visit from the landlord or the arrival of the other resident. But her thoughts also drift back to the rented room she has just left, now occupied by a new lodger she has never met, but whose imagined navigations within the house and home become her fascination. The minor dramas of temporary living are prised open and ransacked in Holly Pester's irreverent reckoning with those who house us. This is a story about what it means to live and love within and outside of family structures.
”Holly Pester is a genius and The Lodgers gets into everything that matters.” —Kate Briggs
”There is no one better than Holly Pester at communicating the eerie, sometimes hilarious and often hallucinatory experience of modern precarity. This is a novel for the age and for generation rent: a captivating and unforgettable account of how economic circumstance can lead to a feeling of being only half alive.” —Nathalie Olah
”With tang and pith in every sentence, The Lodgers speaks to a generational epidemic of rootlessness and porous selfhood with vital wit and utter originality.” —AK Blakemore
The Hunger Between Us by Marina Scott $25
In a city ruled by hunger, the black market is Liza’s lifeline, where she sells or steals whatever she can get her hands on just for enough food to survive. Morality, after all, has become a fluid thing during the brutal year her city has been under siege. But when Liza's best friend proposes that they go to the secret police, rumored to give young women food in exchange for ‘entertainment’, Liza thinks there surely must be some other way. Then her friend disappears, and Liza devises a plan to find her, entangling herself with two dangerous young men—one a member of the secret police, the other forced to live underground—and discovering there are some lines that should never be crossed.
"A fast-paced and atmospheric historical thriller. In this rare portrayal of the fight for survival inside the necropolis that was Leningrad between 1941 and 1944, its protagonists and the formidable enemy they face--starvation--add up to a ravishing, unforgettable portrait of an era." —The Historical Novel Society
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Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, classicist and translator. In Wrong Norma, variously described as prose poems or prose pieces, she is confronting writing and ideas. She allows thoughts to take the lead, to follow the other, in sometimes bewildering, sometimes illogical ways to paces where juxtapositions and contradictions segue into each other with a wonderful ‘wrongness’. And what is the idea of wrong? Her description of this project (as most of her published works are: she makes a handmade book, which is then produced as a facsimile by her publisher) is elusive and offers a brief explanation: “...a collection of wrings about different things..” And this collection is wide-ranging in subject matter, from swimming to snow, Joseph Conrad and Emily Dickinson, riffs on Socrates and violence, observations on poverty and displacement, a piece of writing by the Sky, in fact a week-long journal, my favourite being a conversation on Wednesday with Godot, and an image essay reimagining the meeting of the German philosopher Heidigger and the Jewish writing Paul Celan in 1966. Re-reading any one of these prose pieces is submerging. (The idea of suubmerging also links strongly to the first piece on swimming, so desire to be in water, out of air). They are endlessly curious, striving forward, to what one is never completely sure, and this makes them compelling. You return to discover something new and surprising each time, and it makes you ask questions rather than look for answers. In this work, Anne Carson seems to be asking questions and there are these wonderful scrap paper interludes between each piece. Some with merely a faintly typed comment or questions. Others that are dialogue, questions and answers, the questions often repeated, the answers varied — are they questions put to a host of visitors or characters or the author talking to herself? These repetitive questions include: “ Do you like the films of Eric Rohmer?”, followed by “Do you like jam?”, as if asking these simultaneously is a given. The other question that pops up repeatedly is “ What is yor philosophy of time?” With answers variously being: “I’m quite sure we’ll surrender” to “ how it’s sweet and how it’s moving” and “ a shallow closet with narrow bench and a rope to pull you up”. Are the recipients answering this question or even hearing it? Or are we always in conversation at cross purposes? Many of the text peices are reflecting on the process of writing. What is language, and how does it work? When translation is evoked, what happens to the text, whether this is translating yourself or others? Perspective and observation can be wrong and this wrongness leads to discoveries. Anne Carson calls these pieces wrong and enjoys herself. These is intelligent and playful writing. There is much here to amuse, as well as provoke thinking. But who or what is Norma? There is a reference in one piece to Norma Desmond, a character played in a film by Gloria Swanson, but I wondered if here the translator in Carson comes to the fore. Norma in latin can mean rule or pattern; in Greek, examiner. In an interview with Paris Review, Carson describes writing like seeing and following a fox. “I think about it as something that arrives in the mind, and then gets dealt with if it’s interesting. It’s more like a following of something, like a fox runs across your backyard and you decide to follow it and see if you can get to where the fox lives. It’s just following a track.”
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5 July 2024
The idea we have of the world is inextricable from the words which could either be said to describe it or to comprise it. As children, our knowledge of objects, actions and expectations is gained concurrently with the words and phrases that, at the moment of their learning, both separate these objects, actions and expectations from the undifferentiated mass of the Unknown and incorporate them into the networked mass of social constructs we think of as our world. In the novella ‘The Book of Words’, we are presented with what at first it seems a series of childhood memories presented in relation to the words that describe them, and it is not not this. As well as being a tender reminiscence of a young girl’s life, presented in crystalline present tense with all the quirks and facets of a child’s view, increasingly we find, in the same language, the trace of something horrible, something that has erased the words that could be used to describe it. People who have featured in the narrative begin to be absent from it. Awful details appear and are, initially, quickly brushed aside or overwritten by other memories. Hints of wrongness in the world beyond the family start to insert themselves into the girl’s memories, despite her resistance to them or because of her innocence about their significance. The particles of wrongness in this novella are all the more horribly wrong for having such weights of benign quotidian detail levered upon them. Language, which builds as a child learns, cracks, distorts and fragments under trauma, as does the concept of reality that it bears. As the narrative continues, it becomes increasingly horrific, increasingly hysterical, increasingly divorced from rational sense, the language distorted and abused by the horrors that it conceals. The motto “Silence is health,” innocently mentioned early on, becomes an uncomfortable call to turn the head away from that which cannot be faced. Towards the end of the novella, as the girl is given an early birthday party (and she is much older, therefore more mentally stunted, than we had imagined) and the family flee the country after what we surmise has been a political reversal, we learn that that father has been a torturer in the old regime, his activities being described in the same tone, the child’s tone, as the innocent details of the child’s life, all the more horrific for being so described: “Once you’ve connected a body to an electrical circuit the truth comes out of it like a worm.” Although not specified, details in the text suggest the complicity of the father, apparently a Nazi post-war immigrant, in Argentina’s CIA-backed ‘Dirty War’, and in the disposal of the bodies of the ‘disappeared’. “What is sick will die out. The future belongs to us,” the father declares, in ultimate futility. What future is there, though, for the narrator, whose world of words has been so malformed by the circumstances of her upbringing?
I was drawn to this novel firstly by the cover. Who can resist a typewriter? And then by the description of a story pieced together by encyclopedic entries, typewriter exercises, immigration manual snippets, and snapshot interludes. That it is also published by the interesting and excellent Transit Books and the author is Chilean all added to this one finding a place on my shelf. Ania is a woman, about 40, who is in limbo. She has quit teaching and pet-sits for a bit of cash; her father has remarried and has ‘another family’ — one which Ania feels ousts her from her place as ‘daughter’; and her boyfriend is a remote figure in this story — whether this is her perspective or a reality we never know. And this is what hooks you in — Ania always seems like she is looking in, but never really participating. Her present is something she wishes to escape from and her past haunts her yet draws her back — seems to have a hold on her. This is a story about exile and migration, about worlds cleaved between past and present but inextricably linked. It’s a tale of never quite fitting in — an exploration of what belonging is and whether it can be truly achieved if you are severed from a part of yourself (whether that be literally, as in physical space, or metaphorically, as in a mental state). When Ania's uncle Augustin dies, her father asks her to go to Argentina in his place (he is unable to leave Chile while his wife is convalescing). Crossing the mountains brings back memories of her childhood summers spent with her grandparents and extended family. Every summer she would spend months as the ‘Chilenita’ — her otherness the role cast for her. Yet she was not the only outcast. Nelida (Augustin’s mother), the young bride who came from Italy and never adjusted, spends her days in the cool of her dark room slowly subsiding into madness (or sadness). Augustin wants to escape his home but doesn’t have the courage to abandon his family, so faithfully takes his typing lessons and remains bound to his mother. He is enamoured of his friend Garigilo’s ease of being and infatuated with Ania. The reader is left to pull the threads together about the state of the relationships between these characters. It seems as though something has occurred that has had an impact on all three, yet the action, if there was one, has happened off the pages, beyond the book, and it is only a residue — an unsaid feeling — that circles beneath Ania. Returning to the town, the memories of childhood are both threatening and endearing. Here she has a role, she is the ‘Chilenita’. As she is drawn into the vortex of her own past, she thinks about her family and their life as migrants from Italy. Her childhood memories butt up against her adult knowledge. What allowed her father to find his escape, while Augustin was stuck in time and place? Why did Nelida find it so hard to adjust, and does she carry a similar burden? What is the way forward if you are an exile in your own life or mind? Costamagna’s writing effortlessly moves across characters and time. The typewriter exercise, family snapshots, and encyclopedia entries give the reader pause as well as context and are interwoven between the unfolding narrative at just the right pitch. The Touch System is a beautiful example of fine writing and intriguing themes — a novel that compulsively draws you in where you are at fingertip distance of something palpable.
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The Old Child and The Book of Words *
At once an intelligent discussion of urgent issues — from the ambivalent needs for independence and belonging that beset us individually, to our collective crises of politics, environment and climate — and an enjoyable, witty and often very funny novel that propels the reader deep into the hearts and lives of its characters, The Alternatives tells the story of four successful Irish sisters, three of whom come together to overcome their alienation from each other over the years since the deaths of the parents when they were teenagers — and decide to seek the fourth, who really doesn’t want to be found. Both deeply humane and a compelling novel of ideas.
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The Observable Universe by Heather McCalden $37
When she was a child, Heather McCalden lost her parents to AIDS. She was seven when her father died and ten when she lost her mother. Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1990s, her personal devastation was mirrored by a city that was ground zero for the virus and its destruction. Years later, after becoming a writer and an artist, she begins to research the mysterious parallels between the histories of AIDS and the internet. She questions what it means to 'go viral' in an era of explosive biological and virtual contagion and simultaneously finds her own past seeping into her investigation. While connecting her disparate strands of research — images, fragments of scientific thought, musings on Raymond Chandler and late-night Netflix binges — she makes an unexpected discovery about what happened to her family and who her parents might have been. Entwining an intensely personal search with a history of viral culture and an ode to Los Angeles, The Observable Universe is a prismatic account of loss calibrated precisely to our existence in a post-pandemic, post-internet life.
”McCalden's sequence of itemized yet interlocking chapters — many less than a page long — is so surprising that this debut book feels revelatory. She hires a private investigator to look into the life of her father, about whom she knows very little. This gives her story drive — rare in a collection of vignettes. But it becomes clear that for McCalden the facts of the past are not really important: what matters is grappling with how we live now, with contagion and loss in the digital age. —Ellen Peirson-Hagger, New Statesman
”A gifted writer's brilliantly innovative approach to autobiographical non-fiction, syncing a narrative of profoundly personal emotion with the invention and evolution of today's cyberspace.” —William Gibson, author of Neuromancer
”Part meditation on loss, AIDS, and viral transmission, part howl of grief and fury, The Observable Universe spells out better than anything else I've read the transformative power of the internet. It felt like Maggie Nelson's The Red Parts meets Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror, and is easily the equal of both.” —Gavin Francis, author of Adventures in Human Being
”It isn't pain itself that inspires great art; it's the frenzied avoidance of pain that pushes an artist to do something, anything, other than feel pain. This book is what arises from that practice: the artifact of one writer's solitary, complicated grief. With every carefully, thoughtfully written page, one feels the unwritten grief thudding behind it, beautiful and monstrous. And in the end there's no true story, no solution to the mystery, no final coherence. But there is this marvelous book.” —Sarah Manguso, author of 300 Arguments
A Cage Went in Search of a Bird: Ten Kafkaesque stories by Ali Smith, Tommy Orange, Naomi Alderman, Helen Oyeyemi, Keith Ridgway, Yiyun Li, Charlie Kaufman, Elif Batuman, Leone Ross, and Joshua Cohen $38
What happens when some of the most original literary minds of today take an idea, a mood or a line from Kafka’s work and use it to spark something new? From a future society who ask their AI servants to construct a giant tower to reach God; to a flat hunt that descends into a comically absurd bureaucratic nightmare; to a population experiencing a wave of unbearable, contagious panic attacks, these ten specially commissioned stories are by turns mind-bending, funny, unsettling and haunting. Inspired by the visionary imagination of a writer working one hundred years ago, they speak powerfully to the strangeness of being alive today.
”This inspired anthology demonstrates the enduring influence of Franz Kafka's fatalistic worldview and mordant humour. These stories will do the trick for the Kafka-curious and diehard fans alike.” —Publishers Weekly
Urban Aotearoa: The future for our cities edited by David Batchelor and Bill McKay $18
A critical look at the evolution of New Zealand’s cities, at a crtitical time. Moving past the country’s rural image, the book addresses the realities of its urban majority, questioning suburban spread and exploring options for smarter living. A range of contributors provide insights that span housing trends, Māori urban development, Pacific design, climate action and more. This BWB Text is a straightforward look at how cities work and how they can change for every New Zealander interested in the future of our urban spaces. Contributors: Ben Schrader, Shamubeel Eaqub, Selena Eaqub, Anthony Hōete, Lama Tone, Jane Higgins, Paul Dalziel, John Tookey, Morten Gjerde.
The Ministry of Time by Keliane Bradley $38
In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as '1847' — Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as 'washing machine', 'Spotify' and 'the collapse of the British Empire'. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more. But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?
”Holy smokes, this novel is an absolute cut above! Exciting, surprising, intellectually provocative, weird, radical, tender and moving. I missed it when I was away from it. I will hurry to re-read it. Make room on your bookshelves for a new classic.” —Max Porter
”An outrageously brilliant debut. This is already the best new book I will have read next year>” —Eleanor Catton
”Kaliane Bradley writes with the maximalist confidence of P. G. Wodehouse, but also with the page-turning pining of Sally Rooney. It's thought-provoking and horribly clever — but it also made me laugh out loud.” —Alice Winn
”Conceptually brilliant, really funny, genuinely moving, written in the most exquisite language and with a wonderful articulation of the knotty complexities of a mixed-race heritage.” —Mark Haddon
”Sly and illusionless in its use of history, lovely in its sentences, warm — no, hotter than that — in its characterisation, devastating in its denouement. A weird, kind, clever, heartsick little time-bomb of a book> —Francis Spufford
Her Side of the Story by Alba de Céspedes (translated from Italian by Jill Foulston) $37
Looking back over her life, Alessandra Corteggiani recalls her youth during the rise of fascism in 1930s Rome. A sensitive child, she was always alert to the loneliness and dissatisfaction of her mother and the other women in their crowded apartment block. Observing how their lives were weighed down by housework and the longing for romance, she became determined to seek another future for herself. This conviction will lead her to rebel against the expectations of her family, rail against the unjust treatment of women and seek to build a life with an anti-fascist professor. As her independence grows, so too does resistance against it - even from those closest to her. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the partisan struggle in the Second World War, Her Side of the Story is a devastating story of one woman's determination to carve her own path.
”Reading Alba de Cespedes was, for me, like breaking into an unknown universe: social class, feelings, atmosphere.” —Annie Ernaux
”De Cespedes's novel anticipates the candid confessionals of writers such as Deborah Levy, Sheila Heti and Rachel Cusk. Formally precise, psychologically rich, and suffused in suspicion and suspense.” —Financial Times
”While I'm writing, I confine myself to occasionally reading books that keep me company not as entertainment but as solid companions. I call them books of encouragement, like those by Alba de Cespedes.” —Elena Ferrante
”Recently rediscovered, her work has lost none of its subversive force.” —New York Times
The Fight for Freshwater by Mike Joy $40
Mike Joy is recognised in New Zealand as a leading freshwater ecologist and a fervent advocate for the preservation of waterways. However, the journey that led him to these influential roles is as winding and unique as the rivers he strives to protect. His story is not just about academic success and public profile, but also personal discovery, challenge and resilience. Before setting foot in academia, Mike’s early life included a surprising range of occupations, including time on farms – the very industry that would later be a particular target of his academic activism. It wasn’t until his early thirties that he decided to pivot towards academia, enrolling at Massey University. This memoir provides a rare first-hand look at the pressures and challenges faced by those who dare to raise their voices, especially when debating issues as crucial as the health and future of New Zealand’s waterways. At a perilous time for our universities, it is also an inspirational account of staying true to academia’s function as ‘critic and conscience’ for our society. More urgent now than ever.
Everything That Moves Moves Through Another edited by Jennifer Cheuk $95
A landmark anthology that brings together the creative work of twenty-seven mixed-heritage creatives from across Aotearoa. Weaving together a range of artistic mediums and giving space to both emerging and experienced creatives, this anthology lays the groundwork for deeper and more empathetic conversations around the experience of mixed-heritage individuals. Through an open call for contributors in 2023, this publication was created in response to the lack of authentic representation for biracial, mixed-heritage and multi-ethnic individuals living in Aotearoa. Everything That Moves, Moves Through Another features photography, comics, essays, poetry and multimedia art from a range of creative practitioners (listed below). The publication also includes an original introduction written by mixed Malaysian-Chinese poet, Nina Mingya Powles. This project showcases the importance of independent publishing and collective creativity in platforming diverse stories and voices. Everything That Moves, Moves Through Another explores the book as an object wherein communities can converse with one another, and different artistic mediums can converge on the page. Contributions from: Nina Mingya Powles, Kim Anderson, Cadence Chung, Kàtia Miche, Damien Levi, Jefferson Chen, Ivy Lyden-Hancy, Jessica Miku 未久, Ruby Rae Lupe Ah, Ying Yue Pilbrow, Emma Ling Sidnam, Jimmy Varga, Jill and Lindsey de Roos, Daisy Remington, Chye-Ling Huang, Evelina Lolesi, Eamonn Tee, Emele Ugavule, Harry Matheson, kī anthony, Maraky Vowells, Dr Meri Haami and Dr Carole Fernandez, Kechil-kechil chili padi, Nkhaya Paulsen-More, Yani Widjaja, Chyna-Lily Tjauw Rawlinson, romesh dissanayake, Jake Tabata.
The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov (translated from Bulgarian by Angela Rodel) $28
Using the myth of the Minotaur as its organising image, the narrator of Gospodinov's novel constructs a labyrinth of stories about his family, jumping from era to era and viewpoint to viewpoint, exploring the mindset and trappings of Eastern Europeans. Both moving — such as with the story of his grandfather accidentally being left behind at a mill — and very funny — see the section on the awfulness of the question "how are you?" — The Physics of Sorrow is a book that you can inhabit, tracing connections, following the narrator down various ‘side passages’, getting pleasantly lost in the various stories and empathising with the sorrowful, misunderstood Minotaur at the center of it all.
Bethlehem: A celebration of Palestinian food by Fadi Kattan $65
Franco-Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan celebrates the hidden parts of Bethlehem, his home, conjuring the colours and smells of its market and spice shops and introducing readers to the local farmers and artisans with whom he works to find the perfect ingredients and shares his love of culinary experimentation. Fadi’s inspiration comes from these food artisans, who grow the grapes, mill the wheat, make the olive oil, and most importantly, pass down the generational food knowledge. His loving profiles of these people are accompanied by his own recipes, some passed down, some from his restaurants in Bethlehem and London. Learn to stuff grape leaves with Nabulsi cheese, slow roast lamb seasoned with fenugreek and cardamom, roll labaneh in nigella seeds, and make Mouhalabieh, a milky pudding scented with mastic and pistachios.
Space Rover (‘Object Lssons’ series) by Stewart Lawrence Sincliar $22
In 1971, the first lunar rover arrived on the moon. The design became an icon of American ingenuity and the adventurous spirit and vision many equated with the space race. Fifty years later, that vision feels like a nostalgic fantasy, but the lunar rover's legacy paved the way for Mars rovers like Sojourner, Curiosity, and Perseverance. Other rovers have made accessible the world's deepest caves and most remote tundra, extending our exploratory range without risking lives. Still others have been utilized for search and rescue missions or in clean up operations after disasters such as Chernobyl. For all these achievements, rovers embody not just our potential, but our limits. Examining rovers as they wander our terrestrial and celestial boundaries, we might better comprehend our place, and fate, in this universe.
Sarn Helen: A journey through Wales, past, present, and future by Tom Bullough, with illustrations by Jackie Morris $28
Sarn Helen — Helen's Causeway — is the old Roman Road that runs from the south of Wales to the north. As Bullough walks the route, sometimes alone, sometimes in company, he describes the changing landscape around him and explores the political, cultural and mythical history of this country that has been so divided, by language and by geography. Running alongside this journey is the story of Bullough's engagement with the issue of the climate crisis and its likely impact on the Welsh coastline. Sarn Helen is at once a vivid and immersive portrait of a nation, and a resonant meditation upon the way in which we are shaped by place and in turn shape the places — potentially irrevocably.
”Vital, and urgent with concern. You cannot leave this book without its message thundering in your head. It is not enough to walk old routes. This was. Now what?” —Cynan Jones
”A profound and beautiful portrait of Wales. With great charm and learning, Tom Bullough walks us through the country's leafy backways, its deep pasts, the sparkling shards of its identity, its vanishing rural traditions and its fragile ecology.” —Philip Marsden
Heartsease by Kate Kruimink $38
“I saw my mother for a long time after she died. I would see her out windows, or in the corner of my eye. Always in the periphery, always a dim blur, but unmistakably my mother, the herness skating through every line and flicker.” Charlotte ('Lot') and Ellen ('Nelly') are sisters who were once so close a Venn diagram of the two would have formed a circle. But a great deal has changed since their mother's death, years before. Clever, beautiful, gentle Lot has been unfailingly dutiful — basically a disaster of an older sister for much younger Nelly, still haunted by their mother in her early thirties. When the pair meet at a silent retreat in a strange old house in the Tasmanian countryside, the spectres of memory are unleashed. Heartsease is a sad, sly and darkly comic story about the weight of grief and the ways in which family cleave to us, for better and for worse.
”Sharp, gorgeous and unforgettable.” —Robbie Arnott
Clive and His Babies by Jessica Spanyol $18
Meet Clive — and his imagination! Clive loves his dolls. He enjoys playing with them, and sharing them with his friends. A gentle, affectionate book, celebrating diversity and challenging gender stereotypes.
Big Ideas from Literature: How books can change your life $50
This book is an exploration of the ideas found in books, that teach children through the stories they tell. Books can be powerful, helping us through tricky times, offering us wisdom we haven't learnt yet, showing us that there are people like us, or showing us the opposite, that other people live very different lives. Books can be a friend when you need one the most and you can use them to help and inspire others too. Big Ideas from Literature helps children discover key ideas that lots of different books are trying to teach through the stories they tell - and helps a growing child develop empathy and resilience. This book teaches children (and adults!) about the history of literature, from the first ever story that was written down to the invention of books just for children. The best children's books become our dearest friends and companions. Children discover characters from a diverse range of books — including Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan and The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams — and learn how these stories can help them better understand the world around them.
In the same series: Big Ideas for Curious Minds.
Goodbye Eastern Europe: An intimate history of a divided land by Jacob Mikanowski $25
An epic history of the 'other' Europe, a place of conflict and coexistence, of faith and folklore. Eastern Europe is more than the sum total of its annexations, invasions and independence declarations. From the Baltics to the Balkans, from Prague to Kiev, the area exuded a tragicomic character like no other. This is a paean for a disappearing world of movable borders, sacred groves and syncretism. And an invitation to not forget.
”Do not rush to bid farewell to eastern Europe until reading this book. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this very personal story of the place that one can't find on the map pays tribute to the origins of the experiences, cultures and ideas that continue to shape political and ideological battles of the modern world.” —Serhii Plokhy
”This wonderful book is a firework display: an unforgettable flash of forgotten past. Mikanowski shows that the vast regions between Germany and Russia are not just a zone of blood and tragedy, but of marvellous human vigour and resilience.” —Neal Ascherson
A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal $25
On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of secrets. Her prestigious tearoom transforms into an illegal bloodhouse by dark, catering to the vampires feared by society. But when her establishment is threatened, Arthie is forced to strike an unlikely deal with an alluring adversary to save it-and she can't do the job alone. Calling on some of the city's most skilled outcasts, Arthie hatches a plan to infiltrate the dark and glittering vampire society known as the Athereum. But not everyone in her ragtag crew is on her side, and as the truth behind the heist unfolds, Arthie finds herself in the midst of a conspiracy that will threaten the world as she knows it.
”A Tempest of Tea is a masterpiece, filled with phenomenal prose, impeccable world building, and a mesmerizing found-family cast embarking on the heist of their lives! Hafsah Faizal has written the kind of book you can't stop thinking about. If you like vampires, romance, and kick-ass characters with magic weapons, unique talents, and dangerous secrets, look no further and you'll be delighted! —Ali Hazelwood
Wisdom from the Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben $30
A beautifully illustrated hardback collection of insights from The Hidden Life of Trees. Discover the operations of the forest ecosystem where themes of communication, resilience, beauty, age, family, society and survival tie into our human world. With rich yet easy-to-understand language and evocative artwork from all over the world, this book highlights the interconnectedness of our world — and celebrates trees!