Aotearoa's best books for children — 2024

These wonderful books have just won their categories at the 2024 NEW ZEALAND BOOK AWARDS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS.
Read what the judges had to say, and then click through to our website to grab your copies (or to get us to send them to the children or young adults of your choice). These books are selling fast, but more stock of all of them is on its way!

 

MARGARET MAHY BOOK OF THE YEAR

Nine Girls — Written by Stacy Gregg (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Pūkeko, Ngāti Maru Hauraki) (Published by Penguin Books)

In Nine Girls Stacy Gregg masterfully weaves comedy, fantasy and history together in a profound exploration of the complexity of identity in Aotearoa New Zealand through the experiences of a young Māori girl finding her place in the world. Historical events are woven into the fabric of the story, grounding her personal journey in a broader socio-political context. Vivid characters animate a fast-paced, eventful narrative with plot twists and emotional highs and lows.
This book celebrates Māori identity, pays tribute to Aotearoa’s rich history, and testifies to the power of storytelling. Nine Girls is a taonga for readers of all ages, resonating long after the final page is turned.

 

CATEGORY WINNERS

PICTURE BOOK AWARD

Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai — Written by Michaela Keeble with Kerehi Grace (Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Ngāti Porou), and illustrated by Tokerau Brown (Published by: Gecko Press)

Paku Manu Ariki Whakatakapōkai is groundbreaking, deeply creative, and completely original. The story comes from the mouth of a child, and the illustrations are a direct window to the imagination, or maybe to the reality of a child’s mind as they make sense of their identity, whānau, culture, and other big questions.
This is a sophisticated picture book that can be enjoyed by all ages. An inspirational read that will encourage our tamariki and mokopuna to tell their own stories, with their own voices, it deserves to become an Aotearoa bookshelf classic.

 

WRIGHT FAMILY FOUNDATION ESTHER GLEN AWARD FOR JUNIOR FICTION

Nine Girls — Written by Stacy Gregg (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Pūkeko, Ngāti Maru Hauraki) (Published by: Penguin, Penguin Random House)

Using the thread of storytelling, Nine Girls weaves together an exploration of the complexity of identity, the resonance of history, and the transformative power of friendship. Comic action, magical realism, and social history are skilfully combined in this captivating coming-of-age story. Vivid and well-developed characters populate a fast-paced, eventful narrative as we follow the young protagonist’s journey to discovering her Māori identity. Te ao Pākehā and te ao Māori are equally uplifted as the text explores our bicultural history.
Poignant and profound, affirming and authentic, this book is rich with themes of identity, friendship, and cultural heritage – a taonga from a masterful storyteller.

 

YOUNG ADULT FICTION AWARD

Catch a Falling Star — Written by Eileen Merriman (Published by: Penguin Books)

Catch a Falling Star is a masterclass in writing that bravely tells the story of Jamie Orange, a complicated and endearing young man who struggles with mental health issues while juggling school work, relationships, and performing in the local musical.
Eileen Merriman has skilfully and sensitively captured Jamie’s journey, allowing readers to step in and experience it alongside him. The result is a remarkably authentic portrayal of his escalating problems, fraught with frenetic energy and leading to a horrifying climax. This book is significant for teens today who may relate to the issues Jamie faces, and better understand them through reading his story.

 

ELSIE LOCKE AWARD FOR NON-FICTION

Ultrawild: An Audacious Plan to Rewild Every City on Earth — Written and illustrated by Steve Mushin (Published by: Allen & Unwin)

In Ultrawild, Steve Mushin leads us on a deadly serious quest to design our way out of climate change. He presents out-there concepts that are ingenious, technically plausible and often humorous – but it’s the way they are communicated that gives this book the wow factor. Pages are filled to the brim with detailed illustrations of his designs, speech bubbles, arrows, calculations, and full-page spreads that show what these rewilded cities could look like. This book about futuristic design is itself an object of outstanding design.
Ultrawild encourages readers to see the explicit connection between creativity and science, and as Steve Mushin puts it, to think ludicrous thoughts and have revolutionary ideas.

 

RUSSELL CLARK AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATION

Patu: The New Zealand Wars — Illustrated and written by Gavin Bishop (Tainui, Ngāti Awa) (Published by: Puffin Books)

In Patu: The New Zealand Wars, Gavin Bishop has brought everything in his considerable artistic arsenal to bear on this most difficult and fundamental part of our colonial history, with the ambition and control of an illustrator at the height of their mastery.
A complex and wide-ranging story is told clearly and accessibly at least as much through the illustrations as it is through the words, and most importantly it is told with power. In what is not just a historical recounting, the stark compositions and limited colour palette speak to a deeply personal tale; one of mamae discovered, mamae long felt, and mamae yet to be healed.

 

WRIGHT FAMILY FOUNDATION TE KURA POUNAMU AWARD FOR TE REO MĀORI

Nani Jo me ngā Mokopuna Porohīanga — Written by Moira Wairama and illustrated by Margaret Tolland (Published by: Baggage Books)

Nani Jo me ngā Mokopuna Porohīanga is a beautifully written story about the special memories and bonds that are made when we are intentional in our relationships. Opening with childlike bubbly energy and using repetitive language to capture younger audiences, Nani Jo and her mokopuna guide us through the spiritual and emotional experiences of life.
This taonga uses inclusive language to convey the significance of stories, their role in helping us make sense of our world, and the importance of poroporoaki to the grieving process. It is in itself a journey of creating and sharing stories that will live on in generations to come.

 

N.Z.S.A. BEST FIRST BOOK AWARD

Tsunami — Written and illustrated by Ned Wenlock (Published by: Earth’s End Publishing)

As a graphic novel Tsunami is exemplary, with the language of comics intrinsic to its understanding and impact. The toy-like characters with their clean simple lines invite readers to identify with them, even as their diagrammatic performance of the story's central tragedy distances readers from them – thus seamlessly reflecting the book's themes of alienation and the need for connection.
Tsunami respects the ability of its audience to handle ambiguity, to rise to meet its challenges and to find its rewards, however unsettling the journey may be. This is a book that lingers after the reading, and seems destined to be studied and discussed for a long time to come.

 
Book of the Week: WHAEA BLUE by Talia Marshall

Talia Marshall’s memoir-journey is undertaken in old cars, pauses to doss on sofas throughout the motu, and moves through place and through time until the two blur and reconfigure into a single substance, the living and the dead pushing past each other in the urgency of their stories. Marshall has a rare gift to look straight at difficulties or embarrassments from which most of us look away, and the poignancy and humour of her observations and phrasing draw us to discover humanity in places of damage, tragedy, awkwardness or uncertainty. Whether clambering the uphill slopes of Aotearoa’s less-than-shiny nowadays, peeling the layers of history and experience that make the whenua of Te Tau Ihu, encountering Te Rauparaha through her tīpuna Tūtepourangi, or dealing with the unwanted attentions of troubled or troubling men, Marshall finds strength in the women who precede her, walk by her side, or karanga to her from the future.

SECOND PLACE by Rachel Cusk — reviewed by Stella

Cruelty is never too far from the surface of Rachel Cusk's novel, Second Place. M owns an idyllic home on the marshland with her second husband Tony. They have rescued the land and built a home for themselves in this remote and abundant place, and share it, that is the cottage—the Second Place—by invitation. M has been fascinated by the art of L since an early encounter with his work in Paris after a nightmarish experience on a train, an experience that the reader is never fully informed about, yet the spectacular—a devil, metaphorical or real—remains as a threat throughout. So when M, after years of obsession with L, finally convinces the artist to come and stay, to retreat and paint, her expectations, as you can anticipate, are high. Her expectations of fulfilment, creatively and psychologically, are painfully ridiculous in a middle-aged, privileged sense. What does she expect from this special bond with L? When L arrives—by private jet of a friend’s cousin—with said friend in tow, the beautiful and young Brett, M is miffed. You can’t help but feel little empathy for her. Her desires are unreasonable and ethically questionable, let alone uncomfortable. M’s obsession with a self-seeking, seemingly loathsome and churlish fading artist is misguided at best. Add to the mix M’s daughter Justine and her German boyfriend Kurt, arrived from Berlin as their jobs pack in due to a downward economy (and Covid—although this isn’t mentioned by Cusk), and the perfect pressure cooker for a melodrama is set. The novel is told as to ‘Jeffers’ by letter. We never meet Jeffers and have little knowledge of who Jeffers is and why he plays such an important role as confidant to M. What we can decipher later, from the afterword, is that the novel is inspired by Mabel Dodge Luhan’s memoir Lorenzo in Taos, published in 1932 (there’s a contemporary review in the New York Times archive) about D.H.Lawrence’s stay at her artist retreat in New Mexico. Here too, is a story of obsession and delusion, and letters to Robinson Jeffers about Mabel’s experience with the Lawrences. Yet you don’t need to know this to find the writing compelling, the prose poised and the content both farcical (the storyline of Kurt deciding to be a writer and his ‘reading’ is priceless) and unsettling. It will make you squirm. This is a novel about ownership—who owns whom—and the power or agency of one over the other or the ideas of the other. M will come to despise L and L already despises M, and sets out to destroy her. Yet his ability to do so is compromised by his own weakness, according to M. And here lies the dilemma: the narrator. You can’t like her. Her complete preoccupation with herself and her property, whitewashed, much like the walls of the cottage, with a veneer of care, is revealed in her asides to Jeffers and by her knowing attitude about the creative process within the isolation of someone basically just talking to themselves. Yet, the novel reverberates within its cliches and set-ups to bring the reader to the eye-watering conclusion that Cusk has cleverly played a game of cards where most of the best cards are hers—and the reader is in second place.

NEW RELEASES (9.8.24)

Click through to our website for your copies.

Whaea Blue by Talia Marshall $40

Polly and Wiki and all the other kuia ride on the roof of Kerry’s Toyota Corona with its navy blistered bonnet. They do this for all the moko; they are everywhere and roam inside us as they keep weaving the net and it’s no small thing that only a few slip through. Time and whakapapa slowly unravel as Talia Marshall weaves her way across Aotearoa in a roster of decaying European cars. Along the way she will meet her father, pick up a ghost, transform into a wharenui, and make cocktail hour with Ans Westra. Men will come — Roman, Ben, Isaac — and some go. Others linger. And it is these men — her father, Paul, and grandfathers Mugwi Macdonald and Jim; her tīpuna Nicola Sciascia, tohunga Kipa Hemi Whiro, Kupe himself — who she observes as she moves backwards into the future. With her ancestor Tūtepourangi she relives Te Rauparaha’s bloody legacy, and attempts and fails to write her great historical novel. But it is her wāhine, past and present, who carry her, even as the ground behind her smoulders. Tempestuous and haunting, Whaea Blue is a tribute to collective memory, the elasticity of self, and the women we travel through. It is a karanga to and from the abyss. It is a journey to peace.  
”This is a wild road trip, frightening and funny. You can taste all the food, see all the ghosts, hear the ancestors. It’s a masterclass in honesty. It’s one for the wāhine. Through Marshall’s extraordinary storytelling I saw and laughed with the people she loves, and cried for those she wished had stayed.” —Becky Manawatu 
Whaea Blue is a fiercely original memoir with a fresh Māori perspective, scanning the record of inter-iwi hatreds, curses, war, and colonial aftershocks. In the process, she crafts a complex personal relationship to Māori identity. No one is spared in this droll, lyrical memoir, least of all the author herself. Marshall dives fearlessly into the darkest topics – pain, loss, abandonment, violence, death, madness, war — and comes up with a testament you won’t forget.” —John Dolan
”Marshall’s whirlwind prose effortlessly slams the reader with neck-snapping speed from laughter to sorrow to recognition to disbelief and then back again. An uncommonly good debut by an author who is as original as she is undeniable.” —Victor Rodger

 

Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking by Han Smith $40

The almost daughter is almost normal, because she knows how to know and also not know. She knows and does not know, for instance, about the barracks by the athletics field, and about the lonely woman she visits each week. She knows — almost — about ghosts, and their ghosts, and she knows not to have questions about them. She knows to focus on being a woman: on training her body and dreaming only of escape. Then, the almost daughter meets Oksana. Oksana is not even almost normal, and the questions she has are not normal at all. Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking is the story of a young woman coming of age in a town reckoning with its brutal past, for readers of Milkman and A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.
“Eloquently oblique and profoundly empathetic, dredging up meanings from under the river that runs over undesired histories. Han Smith slides round the side of the unsayable by turning language over to its silver side.” —Selby Wynn Schwartz
”Kaleidoscopic and beguiling. A singular and thrilling debut that shows what happens when objective truth and meaning are drowned in the shifting river of history and politics.” —Andrew McMillan
”Strange, intriguing, exhilarating.” —Camilla Grudova
”Intimate, intricate, and ultimately irresistible. Smith's unforgettable style builds a political-personal narrative that resounds to the drumbeat of resistance and rebellion.” —Ruby Cowling
”Like being in a hall of mirrors where you think you've caught Smith's eye but it's just a reflection. When something slips into view between the glass, you get that uncanny feeling you're staring back at yourself. A mysterious quest of excavation.” —Jen Calleja

 

Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seichō Matsumoto (translated from Japanese by Beth Cary) $30

Tokyo, 1960. As the first rays of morning light hit the rails at Kamata Station, a man's body is found on the tracks: blood-stained, disfigured and unrecognisable. With only two leads — a distinctive accent and a single word, "kameda" — senior inspector Imanishi Eitaro is called in to solve the puzzle. Accompanied by junior detective Yoshimura, he crosses Japan in search of answers, determined to uncover the secrets of this gruesome crime. With no suspect, no evidence and no witnesses, the two quickly reach a dead end. But, before long, a series of strange coincidences reopen the unsolved case: a young woman scatters pieces of white paper out the window of a train; an actor, on the verge of revealing an important secret, drops dead of a heart attack; and Inspector Imanishi investigates... A fascinating glimpse into 1960s Japanese society. This is one of Seicho Matsumoto's best-loved of his many novels. A nice edition.
”This reminds me of John le Carre's writing. It's a moment of transition in Japan; new ideas are spreading, new contexts are forming. There's traditional beauty still, but modernity is yammering to be let in. Highly recommended.” —Nick Harkaway

 

Rēwena and Rabbit Stew: The rural kitchen in Aotearoa, 1800—1940 by Katie Cooper $50

The rhythms and routines of country life are at the heart of this compelling account of the rural kitchen in Aotearoa. Historian Katie Cooper explores how cooking and food practices shaped the daily lives, homes and communities of rural Pakeha and Maori throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Delving into cooking technologies, provisions, gender roles and hospitality, the story of the rural kitchen highlights more than just the practicalities of putting food on the table.
”This book is a fantastic addition to rural history, with a compelling perspective and a fresh set of concerns about place, dwelling, and movement in and around rural spaces. The book brings both an intimacy and a vulnerability to rural life plus a strong sense of rural robustness. Visually, this is an extraordinary collection. The images themselves tell a compelling story.” —Jane McCabe

 

A Man Holds a Fish by Glenn Busch $75

A retrospective survey of 79 extraordinary images, chosen by the photographer himself, and beautifully presented in a large-format book. Almost other-worldy, and striking in their humanity and emotional affect, the images in this resonant book bear returning to again and again. Busch left school at 14 and spent his early years working as a manual labourer in many different places around Australia and New Zealand. His passion for photography began with the viewing of the work of Hungarian photographer Brassai and his understanding of the medium was helped through a chance meeting with John B Turner. Throughout his career, Busch has focused on capturing the essence of daily life, often exploring themes of community, work and identity. His influential projects include Working Men, You Are My Darling Zita, The Man With No Arms and Other Stories, My Place and the ongoing Place In Time documentary project.
”In the early 1970s, the social documentary tradition was the reigning, respectable approach, and Busch's work remains foundational, even after half a century retaining a vividness and force in its resistance to any tendency to idealise in his portraiture, as this book so clearly attests.” —Peter Ireland

 

The World of James Joyce (and Other Irish Writers): A 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle by Michael Kirkham, with text by Joseph Brooker $45

Step into Dublin on 16 June 1904 with Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and a host of other characters. Spot Joyce himself along with fellow Irish writers as you explore the world of Ulysses.
"Challenging, but easier to finish than Ulysses." —VOLUME customer

 

The Girls in the Red House Are Singing by Tracey Slaughter $30

our task is to sing in this killer place — but how does the body go on singing, in pain, in isolation, in dead-end love? Tracey Slaughter’s new collection of poems begins with the sequence that won the £10,000 Manchester Poetry Prize in 2023, ‘opioid sonatas’, which travels the jagged aftermath of a high-speed crash, charting the fallout of grief and the body’s long-term struggles with dosage and damage. The sequence ‘psychopathology of the small hotel’ haunts the rooms of stale, no-exit adultery, watching the trade-offs the body makes to dull its pain. ‘the girls in the red house are singing’ tunnels back into childhood and teenage years, to face the echoes of violence left unvoiced — and confront the legacy of rape culture. ‘nudes, animals & ruins’ circles the emptied streets during lockdown, listening for the sounds the body makes when it must survive alone.
”Haunting and harrowing, yet executed with such forceful luminous brilliance. We kept reading the poems aloud, revelling in the breath-taking momentum, beautiful language, and galloping rhythmic quality. Outstanding.” —Malika Booker, Manchester Poetry Prize judge, 2023

 

Becoming Tangata Tiriti: Working with Māori, Honoring the Treaty by Avril Bell $30

Becoming Tangata Tiriti brings together twelve non-Māori voices — dedicated professionals, activists and everyday individuals — who have engaged with te ao Māori and have attempted to bring te Tiriti to life in their work. In stories of missteps, hard-earned victories and journeys through the complexities of cross-cultural relationships, Becoming Tangata Tiriti is a book of lessons learned. Sociologist Avril Bell analyses the complicated journey of today's partners of te Tiriti o Waitangi, and asks: Who are we as tangata tiriti? How do we identify in relation to Māori? What are our responsibilities to te Tiriti? What do we do when we inevitably stumble along the way? This concise paperback acts as a guide for those just beginning their journey towards a Tiriti-based society — and is a sound refresher for others well along the path.
”Based on interviews with twelve non-Maori New Zealanders, Bell expertly weaves their narratives with existing writing, exploring what it means to be a good ally to Māori in contemporary times. To call it a 'how-to manual' would be too reductive but it does offer a pragmatic set of tools for those willing to do the work. Through teasing out the ways in which non-Māori have engaged with te ao Māori, and the often layered and nuanced complexities these engagements create, the book offers an invitation to Pākeha and, in fact, all non-Māori to be part of the conversation around what makes us New Zealanders — and how we might move forward in ways that are just and that enhance the mana of Māori and non-Māori alike. An easy-to-read book that should be compulsory reading for anyone concerned about our country's future.” —Rebecca Kiddle

 

Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid $38

A reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare's most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her. The Lady knows the stories: that her eyes induce madness in men. The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his warrior ways behind when he comes to the marriage bed. The Lady knows his hostile, suspicious court will be a game of survival, requiring all of her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive. But the Lady does not know her husband has occult secrets of his own. She does not know that prophecy girds him like armour. She does not know that her magic is greater, and more dangerous, and that it will threaten the order of the world. She does not know this yet. But she will.
”Reid takes one of Shakespeare's most interesting antiheroes and endows her with vulnerability, power and depth: a protagonist who's neither flower nor serpent, but something both more magical and more human. This is a darkly gorgeous feast of a book, rich with irony and invention. I was spellbound from the very first page.” —Freya Marske
Lady Macbeth is a dark, elegant, heart-stirring novel, beautifully written, rich with the history of language and of medieval Scotland. This tale of a tortured, appealing, resourceful woman carves its own life from the Scottish play in a unique and powerful way. I loved every page.” —Louisa Morgan

 

The Museum of Failures by Thrity Unrimgar $37

Remy Wadia left India for the United States long ago, carrying his resentment of his mother with him. He has now returned to Bombay to adopt a baby from a young pregnant girl — and to see his elderly mother for the first time in several years. Discovering that his mother is in the hospital, has stopped talking, and seems to have given up on life, he is struck with guilt for not realizing just how sick she has become. His unexpected appearance and assiduous attention revives her and enables her to return to her home. But when Remy stumbles on an old photograph, shocking long-held family secrets surface. As the secrets unravel and Remy's mother begins communicating again, he finds himself re-evaluating his entire childhood, his relationship to his parents, and his harsh judgment of the decisions and events long hidden from him, just as he is on the cusp of becoming a parent himself. But most of all, he must learn to forgive others for their failures and human frailties.
”There's no powder keg like a family secret. And when it explodes, nothing in the past is ever as it was, and nothing in the future is ever the same. The Museum of Failures is a symphony of secrets and lies, love and hate, regret and forgiveness.” —Marlon James

 

The West: A new history of an old idea by Naoíse Mac Sweeney $30

We tend to imagine Western Civilisation as a golden thread stretching from classical antiquity to the countries of the modern Western world. But what if this is wrong? Told through the lives of fourteen fascinating historical figures — including a formidable Roman matriarch, an unconventional Islamic scholar, an enslaved African American poetess and a British prime minister with Homeric aspirations — archaeologist and historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney charts how the idea of The West was invented, how it has been used to justify imperialism and racism, and why it is no longer ideologically fit for purpose today. New paperback edition.
”One by one she takes on hoary old myths, explodes them with panache, and leaves us instead with a richer, fuller understanding of epochs, worldviews and fascinating individuals from the past.” —Guardian

 

A Language of Limbs by Dylin Hardcastle $38

The first love of a teenage girl is a powerful thing, particularly when the object of that desire is her best friend, also a girl. It's the kind of power that could implode a family, a friendship, a life. On a quiet summer night in Newcastle, 1972, a choice must be made: to act upon these desires, or suppress them? To live an openly queer life, or to try desperately not to? Over the following three decades, these two lives almost intersect in pivotal moments, the distance between them at times drawing so thin they nearly collide. Against the backdrop of an era including Australia's first Mardi Gras and the AIDS pandemic, we see these two lives ebb and flow, with joy and grief and loss and desire, until at last they come together in the most beautiful and surprising of fashions. A Language of Limbs is about love and how it's policed, friendship and how it transcends, and hilarity in the face of heartbreak - the jokes you tell as you're dying and the ways laughing at a funeral softens the edges of our grief.
”A life-affirming, deeply felt novel of the decisions we make and the lives that unspool from them. To read A Language of Limbs is to be reminded of the power of queer joy and community. I loved it.” —Hannah Kent
”Poetic, fresh and mesmerising, Hardcastle's work is like nothing I have ever read. A Language of Limbs is full of feeling; a love story about the family we make ourselves. Upon finishing this book I was overwhelmed by a sense of, more. I am desperate for more stories like this.” —Jessie Stephens
”Dylin Hardcastle's novel carried me away like a tidal current. Expansive across time, yet intimate in its focus, A Language of Limbs is that rare book that's equally poetic and propulsive — with twin protagonists who are impossible to shake. Nothing short of an instant queer classic.” —Benjamin Law

 

Into the Sideways World by Ross Welford $19

When twelve-year-olds Willa and Manny hear of a mysterious animal prowling their town, they are determined to prove it is real. Following the creature into a cave one full moon, they are swept into an alternate, ideal, world – one where pollution and conflict have been conquered decades ago and even their own families seem happier. But when they return, no one believes them. So, with a global war looming in their own world, their quest for proof of the Sideways World becomes ever-more urgent, in a nail-biting race against time. And Willa and Manny will have to make an impossible decision: because once you find a perfect world, can you ever leave it behind?

 
Volume Focus: EVERYTHING IN PLACE
AN ATTEMPT AT EXHAUSTING A PLACE IN PARIS by Geroges Perec — reviewed by Thomas

You’re soaking in it, he thought, not for the first time. Could he quote David Hume, he wondered, and say, All there is is detail and anything else is conjecture, no, he could not quote Hume, at least not accurately, with that particular sequence of words, though of course he could not be certain that Hume did not say or think such a thing. The thought stands though, he thought, or the words that seemed at least to him to convey the thought, not that anyone reading the words would be in a position to judge the distance, if any distance is possible, between the thought and the words he wrote, but this is a whole other story and already he had come unfortunately quite far from that about which he purposed to write, he carefully wrote. All there is is detail, actually, he qualified deliberately, and we use these details to construct the sad narratives of our lives, or happy narratives, why not, though it would be more accurate to say that the narratives choose the details and not the other way round, neurology will back me up on this, he thought, no footnotes forthcoming, the narratives choose the details and not the other way round, he wrote, living and reading are not so different after all, the damage or whatever to the brain is the same whatever other harms may be avoided. Reality is produced by our failure to reach the actual, he wrote, but who he wondered could he pin this quote on. Anybody’s guess. A novel is more or less full of details, if there’s such a thing as more than full, in fact literature is all detail of one sort or another, supposedly all relevant and chosen by the authority, the reader has no business to think that there’s anything more, but also, he thought, no business to think that there isn’t anything more, in any case in the world of detail that we’re soaking in we assume there is more than those morsels of which we are aware, though in fact there may not be and no experiment can relieve us of this possibility, how claustrophobic, but let us assume for the sake of argument, if you want an argument, or for the sake of the opposite of claustrophobia, whatever that is, agoraphobia perhaps, the terrifying infinitude of possibility from which we protect ourselves with stories, to not be overwhelmed, that if we could let down our stories just for a moment we could expose ourselves to other details, unstoried or unstoried-as-yet, which could support quite other stories and all that attaches to those, or whatever. For three days in October in 1974 Georges Perec challenged himself to *merely observe* whatever passed before him in Saint-Sulpice, recording his observations as fast as he could write, except for when he was ordering coffee or Vichy water or Bourgueil. Observing without presupposing a story gives an equivalence to all details, the oridinary and what Perec calls the infraordinary are full participants in a thoroughly democratic ontology, every detail shines with significance even if it signifies nothing beyond its own existence. Almost it is as hard a discipline to stop a story suggesting itself as it is to suspend the stories we bring, although, I suppose, he thought, any story that suggests itself is in fact a story I have somehow brought with me even if I was unaware that I had it on board, which is interesting, he thought, in itself. No conjectures! Of course Perec cannot write fast enough, time, whatever that is, moves on or whatever it is that it does, the moment is torn away before he can catch much of it, the limits of his capacities affect his ability to observe, he is overwhelmed by his task but not destroyed so not in fact overwhelmed, so many details are suppressed by practicality, there must be some story taking place, the story of the observing I, of the capacities and the limitations that make up Georges Perec perhaps. Why these details and not other details given that we generally assume there to be a limitless amount of details *out there*, are we to conclude that every attempt at objectivity is autobiography, someone’s story, by necessity, at best. Subjectivity is a product of time, he thought, or produces time, whatever that is, the progression of our attention through a certain set of details, the constraining force that suppresses all but the supporting details, the readable details or at least the ones that we read, in either literature or life, the subjectivity that burdens us with personhood and other what we could call spectres of the temporal. He couldn’t get all the infraordinary down, he wrote, referring to Perec, Perec made an attempt at exhausting a place in Paris but his attempt was doomed to fail, just as it was revealing possibilities which made it a success it failed, due to time, due to the particular set of limitations that passes in this instance for Perec, he couldn’t get more of the infraordinary down without stopping time, without removing himself or at least seeming to, without taking a place, a small place, perhaps of necessity a fictional place but I’m not sure of this, without taking a place and truly exhausting it, stopping time, recording every infraordinary detail and watching them vibrate with the potential for unrealised story, without in other words sitting down and writing, soon after writing this book, his masterwork of detail, Life, A User’s Manual, he wrote.

WALL by Jen Craig — reviewed by Thomas

She has come back to Australia to clear out her father’s house following his death. Her father was a hoarder so his house is very full. Of many sorts of things. Some of the contents are decaying. Some of the contents are carefully ordered. Others not ordered at all. Carefully disordered, even, if this is possible. This is what remains of her father; her memories of him cannot be untangled from the foibles she now perceives in herself. They are not dissimilar. Or were not dissimilar. Being similar. She thinks of herself as an artist; that is to say, she is therefore an artist, and others also think of her as an artist. Her art doesn’t sound particularly good, but it takes up a lot of her time. Which is something. I suppose she makes art in which other people can perceive the qualities that they look for in art, not that these are related to the qualities she herself perceives in her art, particularly, not that it matters. She is most well-known, not that she is well-known, for a three-person piece of student performance art about their anorexia, a piece that was misperceived, or rather misdetermined, if there is such a word, by others, who assumed conceptual dominion, if that is not too strong a word, over it, which, I suppose, is the anorectic predicament. The person who most misdetermined the work was their tutor, her one-time and seemingly enduring art mentor, so to call him, now a gallerist, whom she badly wants to impress or make use of, which is the same thing, despite his dubious qualities and ludicrous name, or because of them. She wants to make another work, her own work, about anorexia, and to call it ‘Wall’, a work this time determined by her, but she doesn’t know how to do this; perhaps this is impossible, perhaps a self-determined work could never say anything much about anorexia. Anyway, she has come back to Australia and had the idea of making the entire contents of her father’s house into an artwork, not the anorectic artwork, transporting, sorting and displaying it in a gallery. This has been done before, however, so it is not exactly a new idea. Also, she doesn’t have the time or the energy or the stickability to achieve it, and, in any case, it is not as if the contents of her father’s house say in themselves much about her father; rather it is the way that they are packed into the house, some of the contents carefully ordered, others not ordered at all, carefully disordered, even, if such a thing is possible, that comprise the person that was her father. And, of course, she is not dissimilar, or is similar, herself. It is not her thoughts, of which the words in this book are a fair example, that comprise her; many of these thoughts are thoughts that come to her from others, who knows where thoughts come from, detritus and happenstance; it is the bundling of the thoughts, the way they are arranged, their syntactical relationships, that comprise a person. Not that she can perceive herself as a person; she can only be perceived by others. She exists, if that is not too strong a word, only in the ideas had of her by others, as do we all, and the ideas had by others are seldom anything but misperceptions or, rather, misdeterminations, if there is such a word, or, even better, mispresumptions, there is surely no such word, at least until now, which brings us back to the anorectic predicament: what, if anything, of ourselves is not determined by others? Without the ideas that others have of her, we know, she can barely be said to exist. The words we read have ostensibly been written by her to someone, presumably her partner, back in London, and this determining ‘you’ both dominates the text and the form of her existence, so to call it, the bundling of her thoughts, therein, and is as well the mesh against which she can push herself and see what, if anything, and maybe there’s something, gets through. She has come back to Australia to clear out her father’s house. As soon as she arrives there it is obvious to her that she will never make the intended “post-war manifestation of twenty-first century anxiety on a suburban Australian scale” based on Song Dong’s famous artwork; she immediately orders a skip and begins to throw the contents of the hallway onto the lawn. By the end of the book she has only begun to enter and to clear out her father’s house; she has only begun to enter and to clear out the contents of her mind, so to call it, so bound up as it is with the foundational idea of her father, she is a hoarder just like him, a mental hoarder, and to throw the contents out onto the lawn in preparation for the skip, both the objects and the thoughts, if I can force the metaphor, not that this is a metaphor. All accumulations, things crammed into houses, thoughts crammed into minds, function in similar ways, are hoarded and dispersed in similar ways, are susceptible in similar ways to our sifting and sorting and also to our failure or refusal to sift and to sort. Jen Craig’s syntactically superb sentences are the best possible intimations of the ways in which thoughts remain stubbornly embedded in their aggregate when we attempt to bring them into the light.  

KAIROS by Jenny Erpenbeck — reviewed by Stella

KAIROS by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated from German by Michael Hofmann)

What is this idea of utopia? Or fortune? Or a moment that passes ungraspable? In Jenny Erpenbeck’s International Booker Winner, Kairos, the personal and the political are intertwined. It's the late1980s and the GDR is on its last legs. The society, with its face to the East but its ears and eyes impacted by the sounds, smells and occasional taste of the West, is unravelling. Katharina and Hans meet on a crowded bus. When the former leaves the bus, he follows. It’s raining and the underpass gives them shelter. Katharina is 19, a student, intelligent and attractive. Hans, a writer, is married and in his 50s. It’s not his first infidelity, but it is her first love. Whatever way you view this relationship, the power lies with Hans. The cards he holds control the situation, and even when his wife temporarily kicks him out, all remains on his terms. The borrowed apartment is an idyll — a moment of pretend. Hans will always return to his wife, and his loveless marriage. The duplicity is startling. On the family summer holiday, Katharina is close at hand in the country awaiting Hans’s bike rides and afternoon retreats from his family. She waits for him, dresses, and behaves as he instructs. And this obedience to his desires, despite her misgivings, only accelerates over the following years as the relationship becomes increasingly chaotic, with Hans’s manipulation and violence at its centre. What draws them together is a moment, and what will pull them asunder is that also, a moment. For it is Katharina’s supposed betrayal that strikes them both down. The moment that slipped by cannot be grasped again. And here, in the tumult, is East Germany. Erpenbeck lets us travel back — walk the streets, visit the cafes and theatres — to the fascination of a possibility which became a lie. Here is the idea of a better society, stretched taut. For here, look askance, we see the manipulation and the malice of political structures that fail to live up to the dream. Erpenbeck gives us an allegorical novel of ordinary lives and an intense relationship. Kairos is a book of two boxes. Archives. Notes, receipts, journals and diaries. Cassette tapes (of accusations), books and records. Threaded into the novel are authors, plays, music, architecture; shaping and forming our awareness of place and time. The first box/section is a meeting of minds and hearts, of a relationship with possibilities and the hopes of a society that is comfortable in its own skin. The second, an awareness that all is not right — deceit and despair, and recklessness, have created a chaos which is all-encompassing, personally and politically. The novel draws you in, despite your misgivings about the relationship, and Erpenbeck’s language is emotionally taut. There is a crispness in her sentences, reflecting the excitement of this new thing. As chaos ensues, Erpenbeck again uses language, tone and pace, to best advantage to relay a bone-weariness, but also the disturbance and confrontation of revolt, and the opposing inclination to hang tightly on to the status quo. Here the passages are longer, the sentence structure more convoluted, and doubt is creeping along the lines. The final pages are ambiguous, but surprisingly satisfying.

Book of the Week: ENLIGHTENMENT by Sarah Perry

Sarah Perry’s new novel explores conjunctions of love, faith, and science, as her characters are pulled together, apart, and together again, moved by forces as inexorable as those that underlie the bodies they observe astronomically. What constitutes freedom in this world, and what releases us into the wonder that is our own existence? “Extraordinary and ambitious. What Perry has done in this layered, intelligent and moving book is to construct a kind of quantum novel, one that asks us to question conventional linear narratives and recognise instead what is ever-present in Perry's luminous vision of Essex: truth, beauty and love.” —Observer

NEW RELEASES (2.8.24)

New books for a new month. Choose and read something new:

Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel by Yoko Tawada (translated from German by Susan Bernofsky) $36

Also available as Spontaneous Acts $35

Patrik, who sometimes calls himself ‘the patient’, is a literary researcher living in Berlin, a city just coming back to life after lockdown. Though his beloved opera houses are open again, Patrik cannot leave the house and hardly manages to get out of bed. He is supposed to give a paper at a conference in Paris, on the poetry collection Threadsuns by Paul Celan, but he can't manage to get past the first question on the registration form: "What is your nationality?" As Patrik attempts to find a connection in a world that constantly overwhelms him, he meets a mysterious stranger. The man's name is Leo-Eric Fu, and somehow he already knows Patrik… Yoko Tawada's novel unfolds like a lucid dream in which the solace of friendship, reading, conversation, music, of seeing and being seen weave a life together across decades, languages, and cultures, and reaches out to all of us who find meaning and even obsession in the words of those before us.
”A keen observer of cultural and linguistic dislocation, Tawada has absorbed a kind of anti-language from Celan, a deeply affecting, sui generis diction unmoored from nationality or obvious tradition." —Dustin Illingworth, New Left Review
"The varied characters in Tawada's work — from different countries, of different sexes and species — are united by the quality that Walter Benjamin describes as 'crepuscular': none has a firm place in the world, or firm, inalienable outlines." —Rivka Galchen, The New York Times Magazine
"Yoko Tawada conjures a world between languages. She is a master of subtraction, whose characters often find themselves stripped of language in foreign worlds." —Julian Lucas, The New Yorker
Tawada’s Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel reads almost like a cautionary tale: this is what happens if you devote your life to poetry. Celan’s poems are Patrik’s only confidants. His girlfriend is long gone. A mysterious stranger, the trans-Tibetan angel of the title, lifts his spirits by seeking him out at a café with a gift: a German medical text that Celan once annotated on his quest for new language. This is Tawada's pandemic novel, which is never addressed directly—but it explains why so many buildings are closed, and why Patrik’s desire for connection has a hysterical, unresolved urgency.” —Dan Piepenbring, Harper's
"Tawada is interested in language at its most elusive or incomprehensible." —Natasha Wimmer, The New York Review of Books

 

Célina by Catherine Axelrad (translated from French by Philip Terry) $38

By the age of fifteen, Célina has lost her father to the sea, a brother to suicide, a sister to tuberculosis, her virginity to a wolfish man at the inn where she was waitressing, and the job at the inn when another servant informed on her. In the Channel Islands of the 1850s, Alderney is not yet the tourist paradise filled with luxury cars it is today. When the chance arises to leave and work in Hauteville House for the Victor Hugo household during their exile in Guernsey, it is Célina's first glimpse of a different kind of life. Axelrad sheds a new light on the complexity of Hugo’s persona, and on the sexual and class dynamics at play in the proprietary, yet strangely tender relationship between the maid and le grand homme. A fictional recreation based on Hugo’s Guernsey Diaries and on letters from his wife, Célina is a miniature literary monument to a forgotten life cut short.
”Pitch-perfect, and so light yet so profound. All of Axelrad's books have at their centre a silent, vulnerable young woman, but also one who is tough and resilient, totally unsentimental but deeply responsive and intelligent. How such a person emerges out of such apparent silence is the wonder of her work. Célina is as quiet and devastating a novel as I have read in a long time. Unforgettable.” —Gabriel Josipovici
”Seen through Célina’s eyes, told with her curiosity, her wonder, her sharp observations, what we witness unfolding here is not so much Victor Hugo’s life as that of the young narrator. We see the intelligence she brings to bear, playing her few cards just so in a time which may be the most patriarchal in our history: the nineteenth century. Catherine Axelrad describes a quiet young woman who nevertheless hears everything, sees everything, silently appraises her lovers, picks and chooses, and escapes submission in her own way. It’s a joyful read.” —Colombe Schneck
”Living in exile in the Channel Islands, the irrepressibly philandering author of Les Misérables went through what is called his ‘Chambermaid Period’. In this moving short novel, Catherine Axelrad gives us the great man and his retinue, his house and his mania for Gothic décor, the island and the threatening sea, all through the eyes of a chambermaid—not a fantasy maid, but the real girl from Alderney whose death in 1861 saddened the whole Hugolian establishment. The poverty, ill-health and exploitation of working folk and especially of the young girls who are brought to life here deepen the understanding of what Hugo’s great novel was really about. In this lively translation by Philip Terry, Axelrad’s portrait of a normal yet unique Victorian household seen from ‘downstairs’ is a true gem.” —David Bellos
”In this remarkable book Catherine Axelrad gives speech to a young woman born in poverty and almost lost to history. Célina is restored to life, emerging as lively, courageous, complex, witty, pragmatic, and joyful. There are moments of great tenderness and longing; despite her exploitation (for relations are often complicated, as Axelrad so subtly weaves), there is a real and delicate relation between her and her master, with whom she discovers the possibility of poetic language. Célina and Célina, woman and book, haunt me.” —Sharon Kivland

 

Ask Me Again by Clare Sestanovich $38

Eva meets Jamie by chance. She is sixteen, living in middle-class Brooklyn; he is the same age, but from the super-rich of upper Manhattan. She's observant, cautious, eager to seem normal; he's bold, mysterious, eccentric. Eva's family is warm and welcoming, but Jamie avoids going home to his. Despite having little in common, they instantly forge a deep friendship. As Eva goes off to college and falls in and out of love, Jamie drops out of school and is drawn toward radical experiments in politics and religion. Their separate spheres seem to be spiralling away from each other, but it soon becomes clear that they are both circling the same question: how do you define yourself and your beliefs in a divided and unjust world?
Ask Me Again is a beautifully observed and deeply philosophical novel, which surprises and delights at every turn.” —Jenny Offill
”Rigorous, intensely observed, and brimming with the sort of elusive revelations that form the heartbeat of a life, Sestanovich's novel debut demonstrates a tremendous gift at rendering the texture of love, faith, and heartbreak with both subtlety and force. In her masterful hands, relationships condense, turn acute, and unfurl with symphonic grace across the individual arcs of characters that you can't help but carry with you long afterward.” —Alexandra Kleeman

 

A Radically Different World: Preparing for climate change by Jonathan Boston $18

Boston provides an urgent exploration of our future in the face of climate change. Focusing on the challenges of adaptation, Boston’s insightful analysis assesses the scale of impact on communities, the need for robust policy for relocation and the design of fair compensation schemes. He charts the changing landscape of residential property insurance and offers a vision for navigating our uncertain future with hope.

 

A House Built on Sand by Tina Shaw $38

Maxine has been losing things lately. Her car in the shopping centre carpark. Important work files — and her job as a result. Her marbles? 'Mild cognitive impairment', according to the doctor. Time for a nursing home, according to her daughter, Rose. Rose has her own troubles with memory: a recurring vision of a locked cupboard, claustrophobic panic. Something in the shadows. Something to do with the old family house in Kutarere. Back in that house by the beach, Maxine and Rose try to find their bearings. But they can't move forward without dealing with the past — and the past has a few more surprises in store.
”A beautiful story, this tangled yarn of dementia and love—harrowing, haunting and tender.’ —Michelle Elvy

 

Pirate Enlightenment, Or, The Real Libertalia by David Graeber $30

Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolising risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies — vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of European empire. In graduate school, David Graeber conducted ethnographic field research in Madagascar, producing what would eventually become a doctoral thesis on the island's magic, slavery, and politics. During this time, he encountered the Zana-Malata, an ethnic group made up of mixed descendants of the many pirates who settled on the island at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, Graeber's final posthumous book, is the outgrowth of this early research, written while he and David Wengrow were working on what would become their major bestseller, The Dawn of Everything. In direct conversation with that work, Graeber explores how the proto-democratic, even libertarian practices of the Zana-Malata came to shape the Enlightenment project defined for too long as distinctly European. The result is a short but sweeping exploration of the non-European origins of what we consider to be "Western" thought, and an endeavor to recover forgotten forms of social and political order that gesture toward new, hopeful possibilities for the future. [Now in paperback!]
”The chief pleasure of Graeber's writing is not that one always agrees with his arguments about the past. It is rather that, through a series of provocative thought experiments, he repeatedly forces us to reconsider our own ways of living in the present. Whatever happened in 18th-century Madagascar, Pirate Enlightenment implies, we could surely all do with a bit more free-thinking and egalitarianism in our own social, sexual and political arrangements.” —Fara Dabhoiwala, The Guardian

 

This Other Eden by Paul Harding $26

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. [Now in paperback.]
Short-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.
”Based on a relatively unknown true story, Paul Harding’s heartbreakingly beautiful novel transports us to a unique island community scrabbling a living. The panel were moved by the delicate symphony of language, land and narrative that Harding brings to bear on the story of the islanders.” —Booker judges’ citation

 

The World’s Wife and Feminine Gospels by Carol Ann Duffy Each $25

New editions of two favourite books from this beloved feminist poet.

The World’s Wife: Behind every famous man is a great woman - and from the quick-tongued Mrs Darwin to the lascivious Frau Freud, from the adoring Queen Kong to the long-suffering wife of the Devil himself, each one steps from her counterpart's shadow to tell her side of the story in this irresistible collection.

Feminine Gospels: Duffy draws on the historical, the archetypal, the biblical and the fantastical to create various visions — and revisions — of female identity. Simultaneously stripping women bare and revealing them in all their guises and disguises, these poems tell tall stories as though they were true confessions, and spin modern myths from real women seen in every aspect - as bodies and corpses, writers and workers, shoppers and slimmers, fairytale royals or girls-next-door.

“Part of Duffy's talent — besides her ear for ordinary eloquence, her gorgeous, powerful, throwaway lines, her subtlety — is her ventriloquism: from verbal nuances to mind-expanding imaginative leaps, her words seem freshly plucked from the minds of non-poets — that is, she makes it look easy.” —Charlotte Mendelson, Observer

 

WHAT by John Cooper Clarke $40

Dr John Cooper Clarke's dazzling, scabrous voice has reverberated through pop culture for decades, his influence on generations of performance poets and musicians plain for all to see. In WHAT, the original 'People's Poet' comes storming out of the gate with an uproarious new collection, reminding us why he is one of Britain's most beloved writers and performers. James Brown, John F. Kennedy, Jesus Christ: nobody is safe from the punk rocker's acerbic pen — and that's just the first poem. Hot on the heels of The Luckiest Guy Alive and his sprawling, encyclopaediac memoir I Wanna Be Yours, the good Doctor returns with his most trenchant collection of poems yet. Vivid and alive, with a sensitivity only a writer with a life as varied and extraordinary as Cooper Clarke's could summon, WHAT is an exceptional collection.

 

Leonardo Forever by Richard Yaxley $20

In the summer of 1465, fourteen-year-old Annalisa de Torriano reluctantly travels with her family to her father’s new estate near the village of Vinci. Although she misses her privileged life, and the wealthy Matteo, in magnificent Florence, Annalisa is soon entranced by the freedom the countryside offers—and by the brilliant and charming young King of the Forest, Leonardo da Vinci, who, alongside his beloved companion Dante, quickly befriends her. Mesmerised by Leo’s intelligence and beauty, an infatuated Annalisa starts to dream of a different life. But her dreams are an illusion, and as her relationship with Leo unfolds, it is Dante who will change all their lives forever.

 
PARADE by Rachel Cusk — 'reviewed' by Thomas

A puzzle, he said, noticing that I was attempting a rather easy and common sort of puzzle, one which I nonetheless was finding challenging, possibly due to the fact that he was observing me, a puzzle I was in any case doing only to fill in the time as I waited for him to stop talking, a puzzle is a poor sort of puzzle because everyone recognises it as a puzzle, he said, unlike language, which is a stronger sort of puzzle because it is not obvious whether it is a puzzle or not. I knew better than to ask him what he meant by this statement, partly because I didn’t really want to encourage him to deliver one of his long-winded explanations but mainly because I knew that once he had made a statement like that he would deliver one of his long-winded explanations whether he was asked to explain it or not; it seemed not to occur to him that any long-winded explanation delivered by him might not be received with the enthusiasm with which it was delivered. At least it was good to see him enthusiastic. He had just finished reading Rachel Cusk’s new novel, Parade, and was now, it seemed, ready to explain it to me, although not yet having finished it had not stopped him explaining it to me as he was reading it, or at least from frequently exclaiming about it in such a way that was not sufficiently coherent to pass as an explanation, not that his explanations were in themselves generally in any case coherent. Parade, he explained, splices a series of observations by a narrator who exists only as a gap in the text with a carousel of ‘biographical’ sketches of artists (fictional — all named ‘G’ — but often sharing qualities and trajectories with identifiable artists in the ‘real world’) to explore, distil, and complicate issues of narrative, character, gender politics (especially as transacted in the arts), the irreconcilable ambivalence of intergenerational relations (here he made that irritating gesture in the air with both hands about and throughout the phrase as if to indicate that if anybody were to transcribe the phrase they should put it in inverted commas (even though italics would be to my mind more appropriate)), the problem of subjectivity, and the performance of power and persona that both characterises and occludes collective life on both the intimate and societal scales, or so he said. Parade, he said, continued Cusk’s project of the ‘Outline Trilogy’, of withdrawing the narratorial involvement from the novel, sometimes perfecting an entirely non-participatory, characterless ‘we’, without assuming, or presuming, really, access to the minds of any of the characters other than as evidenced by their actions or their words. “To see without being seen: there was no better definition of the artist’s vocation,” he read suddenly from a place he had marked in the book. Cusk achieves a wonderfully clean and perfectly flat style, he said, achieving an impeccable neutrality, almost an anonymity, on the most passionate and involving subjects, reporting conversations without contributing to them, but from a near perspective, like the parent in the novel filming her child in the school play so closely and so exclusively that, at least in her representation of it, the play itself made no sense other than that contingent upon the performance of her child. “Pure perception that involves no interaction, no subjectivity, reveals the pathos of identity,” he read again, or had memorised, or was pretending to read or to have memorised in order to give his opinions more authority. There is no self, no absolute, no identity, no definitive, he shouted, I think now lost to his own metastasising speculations, at best only barely suppressed, no self, no absolute, no identity, no definitive other than as they exist in language! There are no persons, no characters, he said, and I think he was referring to our lived reality as much as to the book that he had read. It reminds me, he said, calming a little, of Nathalie Sarruate's Planetarium, in that persons are unimportant or are at least shown to be entirely constructed by phrases and thoughts and attitudes clustering together and adhering to each other, a phenomenon that is more the province of language than a property of any living actuality. Again, the impulses, motivations and attitudes that may or may not exist in the unconscious, so to call it, he said, or in the preconscious, and we cannot say anything about these states, which cannot be said even to be states because to do so would be to make them or at least their existence to some extent conscious, he claimed, these impulses, motivations and attitudes require and are also formed by the language that is used to express them in order to be expressed. Was he even making sense, I wondered, but he did not pause, seemingly untroubled by such a possibility. Cusk’s practice, kicking away the novelistic crutches, so to call them, he said, removing the distractions of plot, the illusions of character, or at least by demonstrating that plot is a distraction and character an illusion, helps us to see more clearly, to be both present and not present, both involved and uninvolved, both when reading a novel and when reading our own lives, for want of a better term to call them. Language contains the inclinations, he said, that we usually and by mistake apply to persons. I suppose that this is what he may have meant when he spoke of language being a puzzle of a stronger sort, but he did not give me a chance to ask him this. Undermining our expectations of cohesion on personal, artistic and societal levels, he continued, and with regard to the forms of what we think of as fiction, Parade provokes and enlivens the reader’s own literary faculties and makes them an active participant in this exercise of awareness and destabilisation. I exercised my concentration, finished my rather easy and common sort of puzzle, which at least was readily identifiable as a puzzle, and left the room despite his continuing explanation. 

CHICANES by Clara Schulmann — reviewed by Stella

Chicanes by Clara Schulmann (translated from French by Naima Rashid, Natasha Lehrer, Lauren Elkin, Ruth Diver, Jessica Spivey, Jennifer Higgins, Clem Clement and Sophie Lewis) 

Chicanes is a collection of short pieces about voice and women’s experience. Schulmann dips and pivots, captures, and lets fly. She delves into literature and classics, art and film, exploring how women use their voice and how they are used (or stigmatised) by their voice. Her digressions move against each other building questions and ideas under the chapter headings ‘On/Off’, ‘Breathing’, ‘Fatigue’, ‘Overflowing’, ‘Speed’, and ‘Irritation’. The essays and snippets are both personal and critical (feminist theory and art critique are bundled here nicely, without being too pointy-headed; in other words, you can take it as you find it or investigate further), angry, and amusing. Taking her watching (cinema) and reading (essays and fiction), Schulmann drives us, never in a straight line, so we can observe her thinking about voice — its physical, emotional and intellectual power — and its cultural significance. How are women through their voice portrayed in films? Are they mostly silent/ screaming/ husky or simpering? How do women use their voices to protest and complain about inequality? Is it subtle? A pointed yet subtle change in mode or a tirade of small irritations (no time, too many family demands, commonplace sexism at work)? There are so many ideas packed into these short pieces, and they point in further directions and diversions. She quotes writers and draws up a map by which we can navigate her thinking out loud — about voice and in voice. In French the title is Zizanies which translates as discord or disharmony. When we say the word ‘voice’ we are likely to think of harmony or articulation. Yet if we think about the idea of voice as Schulmann has in the context of gender, discord is more than appropriate. The English language title, Chicanes: a sharp double bend, likely with some obstacle; is an apt descriptor also. Interestingly, there are several translators (one for each section), each with their ‘own voice’ interpreting Clara Schulmann’s interpretations. This observation by the author of language and tone (voice) by other writers/artists and then in turn via interpretation gives readers in English another level of voice. And then, in turn, we use our voice in its imperfect way, to reflect our emotional and cultural condition. The book is immersive and curious in the best possible way.

THESE POSSIBLE LIVES by Fleur Jaeggy — reviewed by Thomas

The desire to understand must not be confused with the desire to know, especially in biography. Too often and too soon an accretion of facts obscures a subject, plastering detail over detail, obscuring the essential lineaments in the mistaken notion that we are approaching a definitive life. Such a life could not be understood. Instead a whittling is required, a paring from the mass of fact all but those details that cannot be separated from the subject, the details that make the subject that subject and not another, the details therefore that are the key to the inner life of the subject and the cause of all the extraneous details of which we are relieved the necessity of acquiring (unless we find we enjoy this as sport). Jaeggy, whose fictions remain as burrs in the mind long after the short time spent reading them, has here written three biographies, of Thomas De Quincey, John Keats and Marcel Schwob, each as brief and effective as a lightning strike and as memorable. Jaeggy is interested in discovering what it was about these figures that made them them and not someone else. By assembling details, quotes, sketches of situations, pin-sharp portraits of contemporaries, some of which, in a few words, will change the way you remember them, Jaeggy takes us close to the membrane, so to call it, that surrounds the known, the membrane that these writers were all intent on stretching, or constitutionally unable not to stretch, beyond which lay and lies madness and death, the constant themes of all Jaeggy’s attentions, and, for Jaeggy, the backdrop to, if not the object of, all creative striving. How memorably Jaeggy gives us sweet De Quincey’s bifurcation, by a mixture of inclination, reading and opium, from the world inhabited by others, his house a place of “paper storage, fragments of delirium eaten away by dust”, and poor Keats, whose “moods, vague and tentative, didn’t settle over him so much as hurry past like old breezes,” and Schwob, with his appetite for grief tracing and retracing the arcs of his friends’ deaths towards his own. These essays are so clean and sharp that light will refract within them long after you have ceased to read, drawing you back to read them again. Is the understanding you have gained of these writers something that belongs to them? Too bad, you will henceforth be unable to shake the belief that you have gained some access to their inner lives that has been otherwise denied.

Book of the Week: KAIROS by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated by Michael Hofmann)

“An expertly braided novel about the entanglement of personal and national transformations, set amid the tumult of 1980s Berlin. Kairos unfolds around a chaotic affair between Katharina, a 19-year-old woman, and Hans, a 53-year-old writer in East Berlin. Erpenbeck’s narrative prowess lies in her ability to show how momentous personal and historical turning points intersect, presented through exquisite prose that marries depth with clarity. She masterfully refracts generation-defining political developments through the lens of a devastating relationship, thus questioning the nature of destiny and agency. Kairos is a bracing philosophical inquiry into time, choice, and the forces of history.” — International Booker Prize judges' citation [Now in paperback!]

NEW RELEASES (26.7.24)

Jumping out of the carton and into your hands. Click through to our website to secure your copies:

Woman, Life, Freedom by Marjane Satrapi et al $65

Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis, returns to graphic art with this collaboration of over 20 activists, artists, journalists, and academics working together to depict the historic uprising, in solidarity with the Iranian people and in defense of feminism. On September 13th 2022, a young Iranian student, Mahsa Amini, was arrested by the religious police in Tehran. Her only crime was that she wasn't properly wearing the headscarf required for women by the Islamic Republic. At the police station, she was beaten so badly she had to be taken to the hospital, where she fell into a deep coma. She died three days later. A wave of protests soon spread through the whole country, and crowds adopted the slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom" — words that have been chanted around the world during solidarity rallies. In order to tell the story of this major revolution happening in her homeland, Marjane Satrapi has gathered together an array of journalists, activists, academics, artists, and writers from around the world to create this powerful collection of full-color, graphic-novel-style essays and perspectives that bear witness. Contributing artists: Joann Sfar, Coco, Mana Neyastani, Catel, Pascal Rabate, Patricia Bolanos, Paco Roca, Bahareh Akrami, Hippolyte, Shabnam Adiban, Lewis Trondheim, Winshluss, Touka Neyastani, Bee, Deloupy, Nicolas Wild, and Marjane Satrapi. 3 expert perspectives on Iran: long-time journalist for Libération and political scientist Jean-Pierre Perrin; researcher and Iran specialist Farid Vahid; and UC Berkeley historian Abbas Milani, Director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University. Woman, Life, Freedom demonstrates that this is not an unexpected movement, but a major uprising in a long history of women who have wanted to affirm their rights.
 "A small miracle of lively, serious and joyful intelligence." —Elle (France)
"Each comic in this anthology might also function as a small lantern, an opportunity to illuminate yet another aspect of daily Iranian life and resistance under the current regime." —The Markaz Review

 

The Secret of Cooking: Recipes for an easier life in the kitchen by Bee Wilson $70

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. The Secret of Cooking is packed with solutions for how to make life in the kitchen work better for you, whether you are cooking for yourself or for a crowd. Wilson shows you how to get a meal on the table when you're tired and stretched for time, how to season properly, cook onions (or not) and what equipment really helps. The 140 recipes are doable and delicious, filled with ideas for cooking ahead or cooking alone, and the kind of unfussy food that makes everyday life taste better.
”A lifetime of kitchen wisdom here.” —Nigel Slater
”A truly remarkable cookbook that will change lives.” —Rachel Roddy
”It's not often that a genuinely game-changing cook book comes out, but this accomplished, approachable and helpful book — its writing as nourishing as the recipes — is most definitely it. Quite frankly, there's not a kitchen that should be without a copy of The Secret of Cooking.” —Nigella Lawson
”There is wisdom, and notes from a lifetime of reading, thinking, cooking and eating here. And it's not just about food but about how we live, and how we look after ourselves and each other>” —Diana Henry
”The very acest book — so utterly lovely and so utterly necessary.” —Jeremy Lee
”Bee Wilson seems to help me in my moments of crisis — both when I'm struggling to find the right words and when I've got creative fatigue. The Secret of Cooking reminds us to cut ourselves some slack. Bee focuses on probability rather than possibility. The book is brimming with clever tips, handy shortcuts and substitutions, with 15 pages devoted to the versatile and underrated box grater (NB it really isn't just for cheese).” —Yotam Ottelenghi
”It is my Book of the Year, across any genre — packed to the absolute gills with invaluable advice, hints and tips, so reassuring and warm in tone that you feel actual love for the author, and, of course, also full of fantastic, achievable, home-kitchen friendly recipes that I guarantee will immediately become part of your repertoire.” —India Knight
”I don't need a lot of convincing to pick up a pan, but Wilson's tips are so clever, her recipes so tempting, and her vignettes of family life so candid, that this is a book I can read for pleasure alone.” —Niki Segnit
”This book is the perfect cooking companion and Bee Wilson is the ultimate kitchen friend: smart, funny, conscientious and patient, this is a book you'll want to spend time with, in and out of the kitchen.” —Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer

 

The Raven’s Eye Runaways by Claire Mabey $25

A gripping fantasy quest set in a parallel medieval world. Three friends and a one-eyed raven find themselves up against the rulers who restrict the gifts of writing and reading to an elite few. They must go on a wild and unpredictable rescue mission. Who and what will they meet along their way? And what is the terrible truth behind everything they think they know about their world?  
”As delicate as it is potent, The Raven's Eye Runaways is a hot, pungent pot of tea. With every gulp, you'll be transported to a heady, haunting world where words are a currency reserved for the few, and paid with the price of spilled blood. A feverish love letter to the written word, I dare you to read it — you will be bewitched!” —Graci Kim 
”Sparky and spooky, humorous and luminous.” —Elizabeth Knox
”I adored it.” —Rachel King
”A beautiful, warm and assured debut.” —Hera Lindsay Bird
”Claire Mabey writes like a dream.” —Anna Smaill

 

Marrow, And other stories by Sloane Hong $35

A collection of short comics by Sloane Hong, brought into print for the first time. Although varied in content, each story explores how we relate to each other and the world around us — through grief, love and our innate curiosity of the unknown. Plagued with intrigue and often unsettling, these gloriously stylish panels peel back layers of the human psyche, exposing them, throbbing and pulsating, for all to see.

 

Greek Lessons by Han Kang (translated from Korean by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won) $26

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight. Soon they discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it's the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages. Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish — the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to one another. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity — their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to expression. Now in paperback.
”By turns love letter to and critique of language itself, Greek Lessons is a brief yet, in its concision and finesse, lapidary work. One of Han's most intimate works.” —Financial Times
”In Greek Lessons Kang reaches beyond the usual senses to translate the unspeakable. Han Kang turns the well-worn idea of the mind-body disconnect into something fresh and substantial.” —Los Angeles Times
”This novel is a celebration of the ineffable trust to be found in sharing language. Han is an astute chronicler of unusual, insubordinate women.” —The New York Times
”Han Kang is a writer like no other. In a few lines, she seems to traverse the entirety of human experience.” —Katie Kitamura
”Han Kang's vivid and at times violent storytelling will wake up even the most jaded of literary palates.” —Independent

 

Night of Power: The betrayal of the Middle East by Robert Fisk $50

Following The Great War for Civilisation, this posthumous volumes is a chronicle of Fisk's trademark rigorous journalism, historical analysis and eyewitness reporting. Fully immersed in the Middle East and skeptical of the West's ongoing interference, Fisk was committed to uncovering complex and uncomfortable truths that rarely featured on the traditional news agenda.
”Every sentence of Robert Fisk radiates his loathing of wars and the inevitable dehumanisation they produce, which makes his (sadly) last book an everlasting warning, beyond its value as a meticulous historical recount and analysis of today's events.” —Amira Hass, journalist, Haaretz
”In his attentive, careful, detailed, historically grounded reporting — and in this remarkable posthumous book, which deserves to be widely read — the voices of people demanding freedom are given space, recognition, and dignity. This is an exemplary and deeply human work of both journalism and history.” —Anthony Arnove
”Even after 20 years, we still don't know the full depths of the strategic bankruptcy and moral depravity of America's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. Legendary journalist Robert Fisk's Night of Power is essential reading to understand the full extent of the crime that was the Iraq war.” —Trita Parsi

 

Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy $28

Claire Kilroy takes readers deep inside the early days of motherhood. Exploring the clash of fierce love with a seismic shift in identity, Kilroy conjures the raw, tumultuous emotions of a new mother, as her marriage strains and she struggles with questions of equality, autonomy, and creativity. Soldier Sailor is a tale of boundless love and relentless battle, a bedtime story to a son, Sailor, recounting their early years together. Spending her days in baby groups, playgrounds, and supermarkets, Soldier doesn't know who she is anymore. She hardly sees her husband, who has taken to working late most nights. A chance encounter with a former colleague feels like a lifeline to the person she used to be but can hardly remember. Tender and harrowing, Kilroy's book portrays parenthood in all its agony and ardent joy.
"Oh this novel! Powerful beyond description. I read it in a day, holding my breath, heart bursting. This is essential reading for anyone who has ever felt swallowed alive by caring for a child, and essential reading for everyone who hasn't." —Barbara Kingsolver
"The most vivid account I've ever read of how difficult it is to cope with the demands of an infant. Through a prism of love and despair, Kilroy's narrator illuminates how a baby can tear away at a woman's sense of self, as her needs disintegrate in the face of her child's interminable demands.., if a woman chooses to devote herself to ensuring her child's wellbeing, then someone needs to take care of her too." —John Boyne

 

Mask by Sharrona Pearl $23

From the theater mask and masquerade to the masked criminal and the rise of facial recognition software, masks have long performed as an instrument for the protection and concealment of identity. Even as they conceal and protect, masks — as faces — are an extension of the self. At the same time, they are a part of material culture: what are masks made of? What traces do they leave behind? Acknowledging that that mask-wearing has become increasingly weaponised and politicised, Sharrona Pearl looks at the politics of the mask, exploring how identity itself is read on this object. By exploring who we do (and do not) seek to protect through different forms of masking, Sharrona Pearl's long history of masks helps us to better understand what it is we value.
”Masking is, as Sharrona Pearl wisely observes, a complicated enterprise: masks can protect and buffer even as they diminish, eviscerate, and lie. With a historian's rigor and a human's candor, Pearl addresses all of this and more. From public health to performance and ritual, Mask interrogates the personal, public, and inevitably paradoxical ways we both conceal and reveal our increasingly imperiled selves.” —Jessica Helfand

 

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie $25

In the year of 1413, two women meet for the first time in the city of Norwich. Margery has left her fourteen children and husband behind to make her journey. Her visions of Christ which have long alienated her from her family and neighbours, and incurred her husband's abuse have placed her in danger with the men of the Church, who have begun to hound her as a heretic. Julian, an anchoress, has not left Norwich, nor the cell to which she has been confined, for twenty-three years. She has told no one of her own visions and knows that time is running out for her to do so. The two women have stories to tell one another. Stories about girlhood, motherhood, sickness, loss, doubt and belief; revelations more the powerful than the world is ready to hear. Their meeting will change everything. Vivid and humane, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain cracks history open to reveal the lives of two extraordinary women. New paperback edition.
”A tiny marvel, tenderly illuminating the inner lives of Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich.” —Guardian
”Electrifying — This slim novel is a pocket epic; you will read it in no time but be thinking about it for ages after. You feel in every sentence the weight of history pressing down on and confining these women.” — Frank Cotterell-Boyce, Guardian
A beautiful book. I loved it. Margery and Julian are both so alive. The invisible balancing and weighing MacKenzie has done across the whole to bring them dialogue with each other and to bring the reader into emotional and spiritual connectedness with them is just so brilliant. And it's funny. It warmed my heart.” —Max Porter

 

To the City: Life and death along the ancient walls of Istanbul by Alexander Christie-Miller $40

Caught between two seas and two continents, with a contested past and an imperiled future, Istanbul represents the precipitous moment civilizations around the world are currently facing. To the City seamlessly blends two narratives: the fears and hopes of the present-day inhabitants, and the story of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II's siege and capture of the city in 1453. That event still looms large in Turkey, as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan like a latter-day sultan invokes its memory as part of his effort to transform Turkey in an echo of its imperial past. Istanbul stands at the centre of the most pressing challenges of our time. Environmental decay, rapacious development and a refugee crisis are straining the city to breaking point, while its civil society gutters in the face of resurgent authoritarianism. Yet, the city has endured despite centuries of instability. Christie-Miller introduces us to people who are experiencing the looming crisis and fighting back, sometimes triumphing despite the odds. Walking along the crumbling defensive walls of Istanbul and talking to those he passes, Christie-Miller finds a distillation of the country's history, a mirror of its present, and a shadow of its future.
”The author is a sensitive and patient presence, piecing together these stories over many pages. Spending time at a teahouse, an animal shelter and a former Dervish hall that is now an academic institution, he brings to life the rich variety of these neighbourhoods. While Christie-Miller's focus remains on the streets surrounding the walls, his characters offer broader insights into Turkey's social and political make-up. He is also sensitive to the poetry of his surroundings, captured in moments of lyrical precision.” —Financial Times

 

Father and Son: A memoir about family, the past, and mortality by Jonathan Raban $40

On 11 June 2011, three days short of his sixty-ninth birthday, Jonathan Raban suffered a stroke which left him unable to use the right side of his body. Learning to use a wheelchair in a rehab facility outside Seattle and resisting the ministrations of the nurses overseeing his recovery, Raban began to reflect upon the measure of his own life in the face of his own mortality. Together with the chronicle of his recovery is the extraordinary story of his parents' marriage, the early years of which were conducted by letter while his father fought in the Second World War.
”A beautiful, compelling memoir. Father and Son is an exquisite, sometimes lunatic tension between powerful emotions and carnage on one side, and on the other, the conventional codes of what must remain unsaid. This, Raban's final work, is a gorgeous achievement." —Ian McEwan

 

Inheritance: The evolutionary origins of the modern world by Harvey Whitehouse $40

Every human being is endowed with an inheritance. A set of ancient biases — forged by natural selection and fine-tuned by millennia of culture — that shape every facet of our behaviour. For countless generations, this inheritance has been taking us to ever greater heights — driving the rise of more sophisticated technologies, more organised religions, more expansive empires. But now, for the first time, it is failing us. Suddenly, we find ourselves on a path to destruction.Here, a leading anthropologist offers a sweeping account of how our inheritance has shaped humanity's past and future. Unveiling a pioneering new way of viewing our collective history — one that weaves together psychological experiments, on-the-ground fieldwork, and big data — Harvey Whitehouse introduces three evolved biases that shape human behaviour everywhere — conformism, religiosity, and tribalism. He recounts how our tools for managing these biases have catalysed the greatest transformations in human history — the birth of agriculture and the invention of kingship, the rise and fall of human sacrifice and the creation of the first crusading empires. And he takes readers deep into the modern-day tribes — from Indonesian terrorist cells to Libyan militias to American ad agencies — that show how our three biases are now spiralling out of control.Above all, he argues that only by understanding our ancient inheritance can we solve our thorniest modern problems, whether violent extremism, political polarisation or environmental catastrophe. The result is a powerful new perspective on the human journey; one that transforms our understanding of where we have been and where we are going.
”A bold and sweeping analysis that ranges widely through time, across geographies and through different kinds of human societies. A book of rare ambition and scope.” —Peter Frankopan
”A compelling, thoughtful, nuanced, and ultimately hopeful new perspective on our history, present crises, and future potential. This book is a masterpiece - important, thought-provoking, and great fun to read.” —Kate Fox

 

The Wrong Shoes by Tom Percival $22

There's a bunch of kids in there and suddenly they're all looking at me like someone who can actually do something, not just some weirdo with the wrong shoes and a rubbish coat . Will has the wrong shoes – he's always known it but doesn't know how to change it. Navigating the difficulties of home and school when you feel you stick out is tough, but finding confidence with the help and empathy of friends can be all you need to see the way. A sensitive exploration of the experience of child poverty.
”Reading fiction is about walking in the shoes of people whose lives are very different to ours and allowing more readers to see themselves in stories. The Wrong Shoes is the perfect example of both — the right book at the right time.” —Tom Palmer

 

Of Jade and Dragons by Amber Chen $23

Eighteen-year-old Aihui Ying dreams of becoming a brilliant engineer just like her beloved father - but her life is torn apart when she arrives a moment too late to stop his murder, and worse, lets the killer slip out of reach. Left with only a journal containing his greatest engineering secrets and a jade pendant snatched from the assassin, Ying vows to take revenge into her own hands.Disguised as her brother, Ying heads to the capital city, and discovers that the answer to finding who killed her father lies behind the walls of the prestigious Engineers Guild - the home of a past her father never wanted to talk about. With the help of an unlikely ally - Aogiya Ye-yang, a taciturn (but very handsome) young prince - Ying must navigate a world fraught with rules, challenges and politics she can barely grasp, let alone understand.But to survive, she must fight to stay one step ahead of everyone. And when faced with the choice between doing what's right and what's necessary, Ying will have to decide if her revenge is truly worthwhile, if it means going against everything her father stood for…

 

Newspaper by Maggie Messitt $23

Newspaper is about more than news printed on paper. It brings us inside our best and worst selves, from censorship and the intentional destruction of historic record, to partisan and white supremacist campaigns, to the story of an instrument that has been central to democracy and to holding the powerful to account. This is a 400-year history of a nearly-endangered object as seen by journalist Maggie Messitt in the two democratic nations she calls home — the United States and South Africa. The ‘first draft of history’, newspapers figure prominently through each movement and period of unrest in both nations — from the first colonial papers published by slave traders and an advocate for press freedom to those published on id cards, wallpaper, and folio sheets during civil wars. Offices were set on fire. Presses were pushed into bodies of water. Editors were run out of town. And journalists were arrested. Newspaper reflects on a tool that has been used to push down and to rise up, and a journey alongside the hidden lives that have harnessed its power.

 

Good Night, Belly Button by Lucie Brunellière $22

A delightful interactive board book! Baby is ready to sleep so it's time to say good night — all the way from toes to nose! With each new blanket-page longer than the previous one, the cosy check blanket gradually covers the baby's whole body. One by one, we say good night to little feet, little ankles, little knees... And what about you, little eyes — are you ready to close?