Orbital is hypnotic. The first revelation is the language. Harvey’s languid prose takes you somewhere unknown, somewhere beautiful and beguiling but also strangely unsettling. Then you notice that time is upended, that all the rules of earth that you know but hardly consider are unpicked; —are absent. Because you, like the six people circling the earth, are transported into this whirring machine. You are in orbit. Here a day is sixteen days. A morning every ninety minutes. A space station observing the earth, watching a typhoon, lamenting the planet called home, recording what happens below and what happens within; —an endless cycle of experiments, observations, and routine. Six people morphing into one organism as their lives in this bubble of a world push them, more accurately float them, closer to each other to a place where dreams overlap and longings coincide. And where each of the six, ironically, captured by individual thoughts, and misgivings, are more alone than ever. They revel in the wonders of space; —the magnitude of the universe; —the mysticism of the moon, the awe of spacewalking, and the unfathomable future of life on other planets. They are in admiration of technology, while simultaneously in despair at what they observe on that precious planet, Earth. Yet, there is also reverence and wonder. A ballad to the small blue planet that sustains us and that holds so many things of beauty. From the space station nature is overwhelming; —the orange deserts, the great swathes of ocean, the ice of the polar caps, the beguiling southern auroras. Harvey’s imagining of Earth from space through the eyes of six humans from different nations as they observe an Earth that has few borders (the great rivers show, and the coasts of Europe are well lit) and a radiance that captures the planet as a whole as if you could hold it in your palm, also dives into the particular, the minuscule; —those moments that are individual and small in the scale of things (especially if you are orbiting in space). A grandmother at the market in Nagasaki, an astronaut making contact with a lonely woman on Earth via ham radio, a postcard given with love depicting a painting framing a question about viewpoint, the regret of a flippant answer, and the obsession with a disaster which becomes a ritual. These beautiful juxtapositions of the grand and the particular are caressed by Harvey's language and descriptive narrative. This is observation at its best. The observation of our planet, (triggered by the author’s watching of live feed from the ISS when suffering from insomnia), and the observation of humanity in all our glory and failure. Little wonder that this novel is Booker Prize shortlisted. Beguiling and breathless with a rhythm all its own, this is a small novel packed with ideas, a celebration of our planet, as well as a call to action for embracing and protecting all its wonder, natural and human.
He had read, he said, that Olga Tokarczuk, the author of the book he was reading and the author of many other books for which she was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, a couple of which other books he had also read, he said, was intending to stop writing books because of the pain she experienced in her spine when writing them, pain she experienced in fact as a consequence of writing them. Pain in the spine is an occupational hazard of writing books, he said, but pain in the spine is an occupational hazard of other occupations, too, writing books is not special in that regard. For instance, he said, pain in the spine is an occupational hazard of my occupation, and I frequently suffer from what could be called intolerable pain in the spine if it were not for the fact that I tolerate it somehow, sometimes with the help of morphine sulphate. Pain in the spine is an occupational hazard of my cut-and-paste occupation, he said, just as it is an occupational hazard of Olga Tokarczuk’s occupation of writing books, pain in the spine is a way in which my cut-and-paste occupation becomes intolerable other than the extent to which I tolerate it. I spend hours each day, cutting and pasting, he said, mostly metaphorically, as actions performed on a computer are generally done metaphorically rather than literally, but, it seems, he said, that most of my other non-computer actions are actually nothing more than the application of digital cut-and-paste principles to the physical world, removing objects or persons from one context and inserting them into other contexts in accordance with the desires or duties that comprise my wider existential job description, so to call it. Very occasionally, he said, he did perform literal actions of cutting and pasting using some sort of literal cutting blade and some sort of literal adhesive substance, but, he said, almost all my actions are either metaphorical cut-and-paste actions performed on the computer or meta-metaphorical cut-and-paste actions performed by the application of digital cut-and-paste principles to the physical world. He hoped that he was in the running, he said, for the 2024 Nobel Prize in Cut-and-Paste, if that prize will be awarded this year, because the pain he experienced in his spine while cutting-and-pasting made him want to stop his occupation at the highest level, just as Olga Tokarczuk was wanting to stop her occupation of writing books at the highest level. In fact, he said, the pain in his spine made him want to stop his cut-and-paste occupation even if he could not do so at its highest level, he would like to stop it at any level, Nobel Prize in Cut-and-Paste or not, he said, he would like to stop, but not, perhaps, after all, to write books. Maybe to spend more time reading books, he said after a little thought, maybe if I had the time I would read more books and read them better, more and better, he repeated as if more and better were some sort of ideal in themselves. Certainly, he said, my career in cut-and-paste and my other activities which are actually no more than the application of digital cut-and-paste principles to the physical world, leave me very much less than a good amount of time for reading and certainly nowhere near enough for reading well. When asked whether he thought the reading of books was in itself a form of cut-and-paste, the cutting of words from the page and the pasting of these into his brain, or into his mind, or whatever he might choose to call it, and, by extension, whether all awareness is nothing more than the cutting of experience and the pasting of it into the brain or mind, he affected not to understand the question and suggested that there was in any case no such thing as the mind and that the whole idea of inside-and-outside was an illusion resulting from the reading of literature, the very thing he had just said he wanted to have more time to do. At least by now I might have finished the book that I am reading, if I had spent and had more time to spend reading it, he said. This was not much of an assertion, he admitted, though he was reading to a deadline and had fallen short and would inevitably fall short of the reading performance to which he was committed, entirely, he admitted, through his own fault, both in the committing and in the falling short of the commitment. Not that the task was remotely a burden he said, or not a heavy one, the novel he was reading was an enjoyable one, a satire of the misogyny inherent in the literary canon, a novel bulging with the twitterings of men proclaiming ersatz profundities on the world and its operations as men tend to do in, for instance, so-called great novels of ideas. In fact, he said, he had read that Olga Tokarczuk had cut and paste portions of the actual dialogue directly from several such great novels of ideas in which men proclaim upon the world and upon its operations and in which women have a role so narrow that they are hardly seen at all. Perhaps they are thankful for that, he said, perhaps not being seen is in itself a liberation, if seen from the other side, not being seen and not therefore being known preserves the possibilities of nature from the confines of knowledge, so to call it, he thought. Certainly in this novel, a sort of mirror to Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, a sort of reflection caught by an excess of light upon some surface inadvertently shiny, is written with such perfect lightness that the intended profundities of the so-called great novels of ideas will here-ever-after be seen as nothing but the twitterings of clowns, if it is true that clowns twitter, the chirrupings of ignoramuses, or ignorami, perhaps, he wondered. Who could be content hereafter, in literature or in life, with the vapidity and narrow knowledge here so eloquently lampooned? “To be a man means learning to ignore whatever causes trouble. That’s the whole mystery,” writes Olga Tokarczuk in this book, he said. To know is to achieve an ignorance, he said, for the world is not either one thing or another thing, but both one thing and another thing and everything in between, he said. Convenience makes liars of us all. In this novel by Olga Tokarczuk, he said, the conversations, if we could call them that, that make a farce of the great ideas of its characters are rather passively witnessed by one Mieczysław Wojnicz, seemingly a young man staying at a Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the health resort of Görbersdorf in 1913, just before the Great War of Men, while he and the other residents of the Guesthouse wait for rooms to become available at the main sanitorium in Görbersdorf, rooms that never, it seems, become available because nobody ever gets better. Death is inside each of them, he said, but it is scrupulously denied and mostly it does not seem to affect them much except for when it does. Knowing, or thinking to know, he said, is inseparable from illness, both as consequence and cause, knowing, so to call it, he said, is just the scrupulous denial of death. “Here there are only the living. The dead disappear, and we have no further interest in them. We disregard death,” he said, quoting the novel once more. There is no cemetery in Görbersdorf, despite it all, he said. What is the illness, he asked, though it was not clear who he was asking, that can never be cured by what takes place in a novel if that illness is not inherent in the novel itself? Mieczysław Wojnicz does not contribute to the conversations, so to call them, but is more or less subjected to them, as he is to all that he sees, and he is uncomfortable when it seems that he himself may be seen, unlike the other guests, who are continually polishing themselves to be seen, he observed, polishing themselves and striving to define how the world should see them and be seen. There is nothing more ludicrous than that, he said, there is nothing more ludicrous or more common everywhere than that. But, he said, occasionally in the text a voice breaks in, another tone of voice, though it is unclear just whose voice this may be, he said, often at the ends of chapters, or at other places in the text, a transcendent voice not limited to a person but a kind of fluid transpersonal awareness of rotting and sprouting, detail without definition, very different from the literary twitterings of the clowns, if clowns do twitter, the voice of all that is excluded from their clownish theories of the world, or unreachable by their clownish theories and thereby preserved from them, chthonically active, neither one thing nor another but somehow borderless, both one thing and the other and everything in between. All my cutting and pasting, he said, just reinforces the borders across which I cut and paste, I will cut and paste no more, he said. At least, no more today.
Rachel Cusk's remarkable novel has just been awarded the 2024 GOLDSMITHS PRIZE (for works that expand the horizons of the novel form). In this book, Cusk continues her project of kicking away traditional novelistic crutches to force herself and her readers to engage differently with fiction and to the ‘real world’ to which it relates. Forensic in approach and coolly crystalline in style, Parade 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, distill, and complicate issues of narrative, character, gender politics (especially as transacted in the arts), the irreconcilable ambivalence of intergenerational relations, the problem of subjectivity, and the performance of power and persona that both characterises and occludes collective life on both the personal and societal scales. Undermining our expectations of cohesion on personal, artistic and societal levels — 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. {Thomas}
“Examining the life of the artist and the composition of the self, Rachel Cusk’s Parade exposes the power and limitations of our alternate selves. Probing the limits of the novel form and pushing back against convention, this is a work that resets our understanding of what the long form makes possible.” —Abigail Shinn, Chair of Judges, Goldsmiths Prize
"Every sentence in Parade seems to grapple with an idea. People die, perspective shifts, scenery changes, and yet there remains a clear, sharp line of thought that holds the reader. In effortlessly beautiful prose Cusk challenges the conventions of the novel form as well as addressing the relationship between literature and visual art, and of how each can exist alongside the ordinariness of life. Parade is a ferociously illuminating novel that embraces the exquisite cruelty of the world at this present moment." —Sara Baume, judge, Goldsmiths Prize
The Booker Prize 2024 will be announced on the 12th November (GMT). Read the shortlist. All in stock now! The perfect summer reading pile. Click through to find out more:
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The Royal Free by Carl Shuker $38
Equal parts workplace comedy, home invasion thriller and literary conundrum, The Royal Free is an exuberant, dark, wildly entertaining novel about death and copy editing — by the author of the acclaimed A Mistake (now a film by Christine Jeffs). James Ballard is a recently bereaved single father to a baby daughter, and a medical editor tasked with saving the 'third oldest medical journal in the world', the Royal London Journal of Medicine, from the mistakes no one else notices — the misplaced apostrophes, the Freudian misspelling, the wrong subtype of an influenza strain (H2N1 or H5N1?). His job is utterly boring, but — or so he tells himself — totally crucial: the Royal London is a stronghold of care for the human body, a bastion of humanism in a disintegrating world. In the London outside of the office, the prognosis for the body politic is bad: civic unrest is poised on the brink of riots. Attempting to grieve for his lost young wife, while haunted by a group of violent North London teenagers in a collapsing city, James is brought to crisis. [Paperback]
”His understanding of how texts are formed and how they can be abused, his awareness of a decaying city and a decaying health system, and his ability to produce terror all add up to a kind of genius. Shuker in top form.” —NZ Listener
Toi te Mana: An indigenous history of Māori art by Deidre Brown, Ngarino Ellis, and Jonathan Mane-Wheoki $100
A landmark account in words and pictures of Māori art, by Māori art historians, covering everything from Polynesian voyaging waka to contemporary Māori artists. In 600 pages and over 500 images, this very impressive volume invites readers to climb on to the waka for a remarkable voyage — from ancestral weavers to contemporary artists at the Venice Biennale, from whare whakairo to film, and from Te Puea Herangi to Michael Parekowhai. The authors explore a wide field of art practice: raranga (plaiting), whatu (weaving), moko (tattoo), whakairo (carving),rakai (jewellery), kakahu (textiles), whare (architecture), toi whenua (rock art), painting, photography, sculpture, ceramics, installation art, digital media and film. And they do so over a long time period — from the arrival of Pacific voyagers 800 years ago to contemporary artists in Aotearoa and around the world today. Through wide-ranging chapters alongside focused breakout boxes on individual artists, movements and events, Toi te Mana is a waka eke noa — an essential book for anyone interested in te ao Māori. [Hardback]
Slender Volumes by Richard von Sturmer $38
Slender Volumes locates the cypress trees of Buddhist folklore in Onehunga and the teachings of the Zen tradition along its foreshore. Elaborating on kōans collected by poet-philosopher Eihei Dōgen, each poem fastens centuries and distances together to find insight in everyday things: seagulls on a handrail, insects drinking from a pan of water, sump oil glistening in a white bucket. Clear-sighted and compassionate, Slender Volumes recovers what it means to be intimate with our surroundings and to meet the particulars of our world with perfect curiosity. Very nicely written and produced. [Paperback with French flaps]
/slanted by Alison Glenny $30
A field guide to the spirit and endeavours of Edwardian mountaineer Freda Du Faur (1882–1935), the first woman to summit Aoraki Mount Cook, the highest peak in the Southern Alps of Aotearoa New Zealand. Through flights of verse, pages of concrete visual poetry, and fragments of archival materials, this new collection is glistening with newness on every page.
”/slanted is to me three things: one; a finely-made poetry of the eye, which becomes simultaneously and intensely a poetry of the ear and the echo, two; an historical poetry interested in the language of prior texts, and three; a deeply civilisational poetics, because it approachesEnglish through a non-Western and anti-imperialistic lens. Combining these three things, Glenny is a marvellous and challenging Antipodean experimentalist.” —A.J. Carruthers
”Glenny is as devoted to the ridges and valleys of the line and letter as her collection’s real-life muse and subject, climber Freda Du Faur, is to scaling the peaks. /slanted brings together paraphrase, erasure, shape and LANGUAGE poetry in an elliptical, challenging book. This is poetry that knows the power of form—of ordering, arrangement, selection—a collection that knows the power of placing one foot after another.” —Jake Arthur
”/slanted feels created by hand and by foot. The hardened heels, the ice-cut steps and the glacier-wear (in this case, skirts!) are palpable, while the snow and stalactites and steep-angled slopes sprawl like obstacles across the page. Through it all, Freda Du Faur treads slowly over two-faced mountains, a “sporting female” battered by altitude and her time in history, straining to see but never knowing what she means to us now. Climbing becomes poetry, and poetry a way of climbing up and out of the past.” —Laura Williamson
Paper Boat: New and selected poems, 1962—2023 by Margaret Atwood $60
Tracing the legacy of a writer who has fundamentally shaped our contemporary literary landscapes, Paper Boat assembles Atwood's most vital poems in one volume. In pieces that are at once brilliant, beautiful and hyper-imagined, Atwood gives voices to remarkably drawn characters — mythological figures, animals and everyday people — all of whom have something to say about what it means to live in a world as strange as our own. 'How can one live with such a heart?' Atwood asks, casting her spell upon the reader, and ferrying us through life, death and whatever comes next. Walking the tightrope between reality and fantasy as only she can, Atwood's journey through poetry illuminates our most innate joys and sorrows, desires and fears. Spanning six decades of work — from her earliest beginnings to brand new poems — this volume charts the evolution of one of our most iconic and necessary authors. [Hardback]
”What a book of magic Paper Boat is a bright and cornucopic life force of a book. It resounds with the acuteness of Atwood's wisdom, the warmth of her cold eye, her uniquely lit courage.” —Ali Smith, Guardian
Future Jaw-Clap: The Primitive Art Group and Braille Collective story by Daniel Beban $50
Future Jaw-Clap tells the story of a highly influential movement in New Zealand music: the self-made musicians of pioneering free jazz ensemble Primitive Art Group, who carved out their own radical musical language in the cold, hard reality of 1980s Wellington, and have gone on to richly diverse careers in music. From their beginnings as ‘the punks of jazz’ in small clubs and the anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid protests of the early 1980s, through the heyday of the Braille Collective's many colourful groups, self-released records and intersections with dance, theatre and visual arts, to the Six Volts providing music for the iconic album Songs From the Front Lawn, and beyond, these musicians and the many others they have drawn into their orbit have done much to shape the music of Aotearoa. Based on a deep oral history project and extensive archival research, and illustrated with photographs and other items, Future Jaw-Clap is a portal into an extraordinary musical world of free music in Aotearoa. [Flexibound]
”Astounding and illuminating.” —Thurston Moore
”Wonderful.” —Nick Bollinger
”A must-read.” —Mike Nock
”Everyone who wants to start a band in Aotearoa should read this book.” —Don McGlashan
Last month, Primitive Art Group released a new double LP, 1981–1986, from Amish Records, available from Flying Out. This gatefold, 2XLP combines the group’s only two albums, consisting of one LP of Five Tread Drop Down cuts plus 'Cecil Likes to Dance', a never-before-released live recording from Thistle Hall (1984) and the full 1985 LP Future Jaw-Clap.
Petroglyphs by Craig Foltz $30
US Ex-pat Craig Foltz’s latest collection continues his interrogation of language, space and time. More than simple time stamps, these Petroglpyhs chart the inner workings of consciousness via the examination of mythical creatures, strip malls and various bodies of water. The form of these works morph and dissolve over time. A book becomes paper. Becomes fire. Becomes ashes. Sometimes it is only through the prism of an unimagined other that we can fully locate ourselves. [Paperback]
”In the poems of Petroglyphs, Craig Foltz is like a burlesque artist who begins the act wearing dozens of layers and strips down until he is covered by only the most strategically-placed phrases. The book’s three sections—by turns expansive, lapidary, and fragmentary—show how a great deal of what we ‘know’ can be summoned up by mere suggestion, and that attempts at explanations don’t necessarily make things clearer.By the end you’ll feel naive for having believed in stable concepts in a world where there are curious semantic slippages, where ‘practical experience is no substitute for practical experience’.” —Erik Kennedy
”This is poetry that makes me want to write poetry. Causation and correlation tease apart like pulled jackfruit; a phrase could be a ladder ora riptide. Dextrous, inquisitive and rich—swap where are we going? for how are we having this much fun?” —Ya-Wen Ho
”This is a sparkling work, transporting the reader through layers of biology, paleontology and deep time. The only constant is an overarching imagination, transforming itself, sentence by sentence, into something wonderful and strange.” —Richard von Sturmer
”1. Affixes of lithic matter escape morphology. 2. Meaning buckles under the pressure of cellular mysticism. 3. Taxonomy spreads limbic.4. Under a microscope, a diatom may appear as a smooth pebble or an aperture of light. 5. Poets are advised to bring a headtorch, waterproof footwear and to mind the stalactites.” —Toyah Webb
Living Things by Munir Hachemi (translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches) $28
Living Things follows four recent graduates — Munir, G, Ernesto, and Álex — who travel from Madrid to the south of France to work the grape harvest. Except things don't go as planned: they end up working on an industrial chicken farm and living in a campground, where a general sense of menace takes hold. What follows is a compelling and incisive examination of precarious employment, capitalism, immigration, and the mass production of living things, all interwoven with the protagonist's thoughts on literature and the nature of storytelling. [Paperback]
"Startling, compulsive, and vibrant; Living Things reads like an ignition. The most honest thing I've read in a long time about being young and alive in a beautiful, horrible world." —Dizz Tate
"Living Things dips blithely in and out of genres and packs more ideas in its lean frame than seems possible. It's a novel posing as a journal posing as a meditation on the function of the journal that playfully interrogates form and content in art, what it means to write, and what it means to care or not care about anything, or about everything. Munir Hachemi is a magician, and his marvellous book, deftly translated by Julia Sanches, defies adequate description." —James Greer
An Absence of Cousins by Lore Segal $28
Ilka Weisz is in need not just of friends but 'elective cousins'. She has left her home in New York to accept a junior teaching post at the prestigious Concordance Institute, a liberal college in bucolic Connecticut. But how can she, a Jewish refugee from Vienna, find a new set to belong to - a surrogate family? Might the Shakespeares — the institute's director and his wry, acerbic wife — hold the key? In these interlinked New Yorker stories, Lore Segal evokes the comic melancholy of the outsider and the ineffectual ambitions of a progressive, predominantly WASP-ish institution. Tragedy and loss haunt characters as they plan an academic symposium on genocide, while their privileged lives contrast starkly with those on a derelict housing project next door. [Paperback]
Into a Star by Puk Qvortrup (translated from Danish by Hazel Evans) $38
'Three in the bed. One not yet born, another dead, and I'm alive.' Puk is 26 years old, preparing for the birth of her second child, when her husband has a heart attack on his morning run. She leaves their toddler with a friend and dashes to the hospital, where Lasse lies unresponsive in a coma. He dies a few hours later. Into a Star follows Puk and her young family for one year after this tragedy, which has shattered the ordinary life she thought she would live, as she finds her way slowly through the enormous grief and, eventually, out the other side. With remarkable dignity, candour and attention to the domestic details that make us human, Puk Qvortrup invites us into the hardest moments of her life. And she reveals, amid the devastation, a powerful thread of hope. [Paperback]
"Into a Star is a luminous meditation on loss and renewal. Despite the heart-breaking subject matter, it filled me with a sense of life’s beauty, and of the unexpected paths we take to happiness.” —Hermione Thompson
”Into A Star is written with an immediate simplicity that it's impossible to resist. A private tragedy reminiscent of Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights. But Puk Qvortrup writes younger, more exposed, more from the body.” —Svenska Dagbladet
New Stories by Owen Marshall $38
Accidental meetings, unexpected turns in the road, job offers that take you into new territories- our lives seem arbitrary and unpredictable. In Marshall’s latest collection of short stories , people teeter on the brink of experience. From murder to an affair, to a promotion or a breakdown, the array of vivid characters aren't always aware of what they encounter, not sure whether they are being given an opportunity, a challenge, a temptation, a lesson, or just another day to get through. Meanwhile, feelings of fear, lust, curiosity and frustration simmer beneath the surface. Will the people grasp what life throws at them? [Paperback]
The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank $35
We all used to be something else, and we will all be something new again in the worlds to come. Written in an effort to ward off existential dread, and to find new understandings and consolations for those similarly afflicted, The Chthonic Cycle is an eccentric and brilliantly curated tour through time, in which fascinating objects glint and spark and the transience of humanity flickers. At the heart of Una Cruickshank’s debut are Earth’s interlocking cycles of death and reuse. The blood of a billion-year-old tree emerges from the sea as a drop of amber; 4,756,940 pieces of Lego float towards the Cornish Peninsula; a giant squid’s beak passes through a whale’s intestines into bottles of Chanel No. 5. The violence of colonisation underpins some of the transformations illuminated here, as we follow wave after wave of ruin and remaking. This is a rare kind of writing, both galaxy-sweeping and microscopically specific. The Chthonic Cycle reminds us to be chastened and scared by our world — its mind-bending age, the insane complexity of its systems, the violent upheavals and mass extinctions — as well as to be awed.
”Rich and lyrical, gorgeous and astonishing, scientific and poetic — this stunning collection has left me smiling, looking afresh at the world. I loved this book for its intensity and curiosity and its vivid language.” —Rebecca Priestley
”Una Cruickshank reaches across the history of life on Earth to hold a mirror up to our lives. With exacting precision, charisma and curiosity, The Chthonic Cycle casts light on the links between everything in the vast web of earthly delights, putting each of our lives in the perspective of deep time and the ever-present cycles of evolution and extinction. Every page of this rich and illuminating debut is a feast.” —Ash Davida Jane
Nights Out at Home: Recipes and stories from twenty-five years as a restaurant critic by Jay Rayner $55
”For the past twenty-five years, I have been reviewing restaurants across Britain and beyond, from the humblest of diners to the grandest of gastro-palaces. And throughout I've been taking the best ideas home with me to create glorious dishes for my own table. Now I get to share those recipes with you.” In Nights Out at Home, Jay Rayner's first cookbook, the award-winning writer and broadcaster gives us delicious, achievable recipes inspired by the restaurant creations that have stolen his heart over the decades, for you to cook in your own kitchen. With sixty recipes that take their inspiration from restaurants dishes served across the UK and further afield, Nights Out at Home includes a cheat's version of the Ivy's famed crispy duck salad, the brown butter and sage flatbreads from Manchester's Erst, miso-glazed aubergine from Freak Scene and instructions for making the cult tandoori lamb chops from the legendary Tayyabs in London's Whitechapel; a recipe which has never before been written down. It also features Jay's irresistible, MasterChef Critics-winning baked chocolate pudding with cherries, and his own personal take on the mighty Greggs Steak Bake. Seasoned with stories from Jay's life as a restaurant critic, and written with warmth, wit and the blessing, and often help, of the chefs themselves, Nights Out at Home is a celebration of good food and great eating experiences, filled with dishes to inspire all cooks. [Hardback]
”A fantastic collection of heart warming, full-flavoured recipes from one of Britain's leading food writers. A must buy for anyone who loves food, restaurants and cooking.” —Tom Kerridge
”Jay has a way with words, but he's also a dab hand in the kitchen. This book is not just a collection of food memories but also of recipes that make you want to roll up your sleeves and start cooking.” —Michel Roux
Lily, Oh Lily: Searching for a Nazi ghost by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman $37
Some family stories, fragments of their lives, continue to nag and haunt us. Lily Hasenburg was just such a figure in Holman's growing years. She was whispered into his ear by grandmother Eunice — in memorable stories of her older sister, who married and moved to Germany at the turn of the 20th century, and was later caught up in the Nazi web spun around Adolf Hitler. Unable to shake loose this story, Holman pursued her to Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden. Here, we have an account of his pilgrimage; the kind of family history we might bury, and forget — to our loss. [Paperback]
”Holman travels, learns German, encounters the lost who were always right there. Lily, Oh Lily is family memoir at full stretch, made with love, yearning and just a hint of reproach. A wise, timely, beautiful read.” —Diana Wichtel
The Horse: A galloping history of humanity by Timothy Winegard $45
The Horse is an epic history that begins more than 5500 years ago on the windswept grasslands of the Eurasian Steppe when the first horse was tamed and an unbreakable bond with humans was forged — a bond that transformed the future of humanity. Since that pivotal moment, the horse has carried the fate of civilisations on its powerful back. For millennia it was the primary mode of transport, an essential farming machine, a steadfast companion and a formidable weapon of war. With its unique combination of size, speed, strength, and stamina, the horse has influenced every facet of human life and widened the scope of human ambition and achievement. Horses revolutionised the way we hunted, traded, travelled, farmed, fought, worshipped and interacted. They fundamentally modified the human genome and the world's linguistic map. They determined international borders, moulded cultures, fuelled economies, and decided the destinies of conquerors and empires. And they were vectors of lethal disease and contributed to lifesaving medical innovations. Horses even inspired architecture, invention, furniture and fashion. From the thundering cavalry charges of Alexander the Great to the streets of New York during the Great Manure Crisis of 1894 and beyond, horses have been integral to both the grand arc of history and our everyday lives. [Paperback]
Jewish, Not Zionist by Marilyn Garson $30
Raised in Zionism, Marilyn Garson worked four years in Gaza and let it challenge everything she thought she knew. She returned to Aotearoa seeking both Jewish community and justice in Palestine. Painfully excluded by some, she co-founded Alternative Jewish Voices to let belief fuel activism. Nationally and internationally, this story comes from the front line of a principled movement for Jewish solidarity with Palestine. Garson grew up in Canada, the youngest of four sisters in a Zionist-Jewish household. She immigrated to Hokianga in the mid-1980s. From 1998 she worked in Cambodia and Afghanistan. In 2011, she received an offer to work in the Gaza Strip—an extraordinary invitation to live among people she had been told were her enemies. Her first book, Still Lives – a Memoir of Gaza tells the story of four years, two wars, and an unlikely social enterprise. Garson returned to Aotearoa in 2015. [Paperback]
The 113th Assistant Librarian by Stuart Wilson $24
Oliver Wormwood thinks his new job in the library will be boring. Until he learns that books hold great power — and danger. By the end of his first day, Oliver has witnessed the librarian's death, been frozen by a book, met a perplexing number of cats, and fought off a horde of terrifying creatures. With only a mysterious girl called Agatha to show him the ropes, Oliver needs to learn fast — if he wants to live longer than the 112 assistant librarians before him. [Hardback]
Eleven Writers and Leaders on Democracy, And why it matters by Margaret Atwood, Mary Beard, Elif Shafak, Lea Ypi, Lola Shoneyin, Aditi MIttal, Yuan Yang, Erica Benner, Adela Raz, Kaja Kallas, and Vjosa Osmani $19
Urgent reflections on the value of democracy from eleven women writers and thought-leaders 2024 is an exceptional year for democracy. Nearly half the world's population will take part in a national election, with billions heading to the polls. It's a thrilling, unprecedented moment for change — yet democracy is also under threat. Women are at the forefront of the fight for democratic rights, as well as most vulnerable when those rights disappear. Here eleven extraordinary women — leaders, philosophers, historians, writers and activists — explore democracy's power to uplift our societies. Between its ancient origins and its modern challenges, they share a vision for a better future — one we can build together. A bit late for some but even more urgent because of this. [Paperback]
“2024 is a year of elections. But will it be remembered as a year of democracy? That is in the balance. Democracy cannot be limited to a campaign, a vote, a victory speech. It is a process - or, to be more precise, a series of processes - that go to the heart of what a society really is. It depends on our shared understandings and on our commitment to making it work.” —Juliet Riddell
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1 November 2024
Every good book experience starts with the simplest of things. An excellent board book can open a young mind to the world and their own experience in it. At VOLUME, we are always looking for interesting picture books that will surprise and delight. Board books for the very youngest start the journey of a reading life. Here are a few recently published titles:
Titiro/Look is a bilingual first words book. Another excellent title from Aotearoa children’s author and Illustrator Gavin Bishop. The design is excellent, with its arresting illustrations and clear visual information. There’s a great range of subjects, creating plenty of opportunities to expand vocabulary and create conversations, making it a perfect book for looking at, and interacting with, for parent (or grandparent) and child.
So excited to see a new addition to the playful series from creator Antonia Pesenti. Party Rhyme! is as much fun as Rhyme Cordial and Rhyme Hungry. With hairy bread and party bats it will be hard to keep the laughter and rhyming under control. But not to worry, there will be a bear hug to keep everyone feeling cosy at the end. The lift-the-flap formula works brilliantly with Pesenti’s books, and they are robust and create just the right amount of anticipation.
If you are after a sweet bedtime book, look no further than Good Night Belly Button. Reminiscent of the classic Good Night Moon, the youngster in this story is being tucked into bed, from the tips of the toes up to the chin, all snug and sleepy. This long format board book slowly raises the blanket with each turn of the page. Good night little feet, good night little calves, good night little knees…
And here’s a wonderful title now available as a board book. Press Here by designer Hervé Tullet is brilliant. It’s all about colours and movement. It is clever and interactive without any moving parts, but plenty of lateral thinking. Highly enjoyable and endlessly fascinating! It is magic?
If you are interested in a Book Subscription for a young reader, we have designed some perfect book packages. For the youngest, we recommend WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF BOOKS. We create reading subscriptions for all ages and can adjust to fit your requirements.
Not sure which appeals the most? —Use the ENQUIRE button or just email us to start a conversation.
“When what is distant disappears, what is near tenderly draws nearer,” said Robert Walser, according to Carl Seelig, about walking in the fog. Walser’s collar is crooked, or worn, or both, he carries his furled umbrella under his arm along the mountain path, his hat is battered, the band torn, he is wearing a suit, somewhat raffish, somewhat the worse for wear, but he has no overcoat. Walser does not feel the cold, says Seelig. He enjoys the clouds, the rain. He distrusts clarity. Walser enjoys his walks with Seelig but asks Seelig not to call for him on any day but Sunday, so as not to disturb the routine of the asylum, in Herisau. There he assembles paper bags with glue, sorts beans and lentils, cleans the rooms. “It suits me to disappear,” says Walser, according to Seelig, “as inconspicuously as possible.” Even from his early days, according to Seelig, who did not know Walser in his early days and so must have had this information from Walser, or possibly another source, though no other source suggests itself, Walser took long walks to overcome the effects of nightmares. Or anxiety. Or the panic that results from the inability to engage. Not that Walser suffers from the inability to engage, exactly, though he seldom talks without prompting, not even to Seelig, says Seelig. Seelig spends little time with Walser in the asylum, but instead on the mountain paths, walking in the cloud, and in the rain, the best weather, to the small village inns where they enjoy this wine or that, or beer, or cider, and cutlets, or fried eggs, or dumplings, or cheese pies, whatever they are, or meatloaf, and pommes frites, or cabbage, or mashed potatoes and peas and white beans. Seelig records it all, afterwards, each detail of the walk and of the food and the drink and the waitresses, and every word that Walser speaks, we suppose, or, anyway, at least the essentials. With great equivalence. Off they walk again together, over the ridge, around the base of the mountain, Switzerland has many ridges and many bases of mountains, to clear their heads after the wine, and then to catch the train that will return Walser to the asylum and Seelig to wherever Seelig lives. Walser “harbours a deep suspicion of the doctors, the nurses, and his fellow patients, which he nonetheless skilfully tries to hide behind ceremonial politeness,” says Seelig, who either observes Walser more frequently than is recorded or has this information from the doctors. Seelig becomes, after all, Walser’s guardian after the deaths of Walser’s brother Karl and his sister Lisa. He republishes Walser’s work. To no avail. But Seelig is invisible to us, through making Walser visible when Walser doesn’t want to be visible. Seelig is Walser’s Boswell. Seelig is the narrator of Walser now that Walser narrates nothing. “Restraint is my only weapon,” says Walser, narrates Seelig. The restraint that made Walser significant as a writer is no different from the restraint that stopped him writing. “The less plot a writer needs, and the more restrained the setting, the more significant his talent,” says Walser, the author of, first, novels, then stories, then feuilletons, then microscripts approximating a millimeter in height in pencil on tiny scraps of paper, hidden about his person, in the Asylum in Waldau, unrecognised as actual writing until after his death, until they were deciphered in the 1990s, then nothing. When he first meets Seelig, because Seelig admires Walser's writing, Walser has already stopped writing. He has written nothing since he left Waldau and entered Herisau. Walser blames Hitler. Or society. Or the new superintendent at Waldau, according the Seelig. Walser blames editors, critics, other writers, according to Seelig. Walser’s work was admired by Kafka. He was admired by Benjamin, Sebald, Bernhard and Handke, according to them. To mention only a few. One critic called The Tanners “nothing more than a collection of footnotes,” according to Walser, according to Seelig. The Assistant was true, which is a surprise, at one time you could visit the advertising clock designed by Tobler, says Walser, says Seelig. Walser wrote the book in six weeks. The world changed. Walser changed, or he failed to change. He was celebrated and then increasingly ignored. He found it hard and then harder to get his work published. Even in the newspapers. “I could not perform for society’s sake,” says Walser, of his failure, according to Seelig, “All the dear, sweet people who think they have the right to criticise me and order me around are fanatical admirers of Herman Hesse. They are extremists in their judgement. That’s the reason I have ended up in this asylum. I simply lacked a halo, and that is the only way to be successful in literature,” says Walser to Seelig, according to Seelig, not without bitterness. Writing can only be done if it is the only thing done. Once, Walser alternated his writing with jobs as a servant or as a clerk, for money, for the time to write. Now he does not write. He wants to disappear. “It is absurd and brutal to expect me to scribble away even in the asylum. The only basis on which a writer can produce is freedom. As long as this condition remains unmet, I will refuse to write ever again,” says Walser, as recorded by Seelig. Walser’s turning away is from writing and from life. Walser's ceremonial politeness is his way of not existing, or of existing in his own absence. He is distant and withdrawn. He likes long walks, alone, we find out later, or with Seelig. He talks with Seelig, a little, when prompted, but not with others. As far as we know. The withdrawal that gives his writing such brilliance is the withdrawal that makes life unlivable, in the end, or at some point some way before the end, when one lets go of something, it is uncertain what, that everyone else grasps, naturally, or, more commonly, desperately, whatever it is, that keeps them clutching their lives. Walser, says Seelig, failed to take his own life, on more than a single occasion. His sister showed him the asylum at Waldau. He could think of no option but to enter. He did what was expected. He is diagnosed, when the term becomes available, as a catatonic schizophrenic, whatever that means, but his enjoyment of the walking, of the scenery, of the food and more especially the drink, and of the waitresses, seems genuine, at least through the eyes of Seelig, who knows him better than anyone, who sought him out because of his work and befriended him in the asylum and who accompanies him on long walks, who records everything and is sympathetic and transparent, at least to us, so that there is no reason to doubt Walser’s small and simple pleasures as they are recorded by Seelig, an affectionate man, on the level of smallness and simplicity at which they are experienced by Walser, who has set about perfecting smallness and simplicity until it resembles so very little it is almost nothing. Who is the sworn enemy of his own individuality. Who shows no emotion when told of the death of his brother, whom he loves, who refuses to break his routine to visit his sister, whom he loves, when she lies dying and asks him to come. “I too am ill,” says Walser, says Seelig. He doesn’t want to do what the other patients in the asylum aren't doing. He has an intestinal ulcer. “Must I be sick?” he asks the doctor, “Are you not satisfied to have me here in good health?” He refuses the operation. Just as well. “Is it true that you destroyed four unpublished novels?” asks Seelig. “That may be,” answers Walser, according to Seelig. Seelig says that Walser’s brother’s wife Fridolina had been told by Walser’s sister Lisa that Walser had destroyed a photograph of himself that had been taken by his brother Karl. “That may be,” answers Walser, records Seelig. Walser is convinced of his failure. At least of his inability to perform as he is expected to perform, to be successful as a writer, though he has an ambivalence towards success, to live even an ordinary life. Everything must be made smaller. “The snow has now turned to hail,” describes Seelig, of the weather. Walser carries steadfastly on. A life is full of details, even when those details are small, or insignificant, if there is such a thing as insignificant. If you wish to disappear you pay attention to the small. You have relinquished everything else and are relinquishing that too, with great care. The doctor says Walser has a disease of the lungs. It affects his heart. He should not leave the asylum grounds, says the doctor, according to Seelig. Walser accompanies Seelig to the train. The next time they walk, Walser does not walk well, says Seelig. He tires and stumbles. It seems there is not much of life left. Almost nothing. One day Walser goes for a walk. They find him later, face-up in the snow.
On short-listing Charlotte Wood’s STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL for the 2024 Booker Prize, the judges said: “Sometimes a visitor becomes a resident, and a temporary retreat becomes permanent. This happens to the narrator in Stone Yard Devotional — a woman with seemingly solid connections to the world who changes her life and settles into a monastery in rural Australia. Yet no shelter is impermeable. The past, in the form of the returning bones of an old acquaintance, comes knocking at her door; the present, in the forms of a global pandemic and a local plague of mice and rats, demands her attention. The novel thrilled and chilled the judges — it’s a book we can’t wait to put into the hands of readers.”
A selection of books from our shelves.
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Invisible dogs by Charles Boyle $36
“They ran wild in packs. They spread disease. They fouled the pavements. They kept us awake and then infected our dreams. They bred faster than rabbits. They laughed at the police. Whole districts became no-go areas. Finally the government took action: they were rounded up and slaughtered and buried in pits and now there are no dogs.” Invisible Dogs is the travel diary of an English writer invited to a country in which there are no dogs — but he keeps seeing them, vanishing around corners. There are rumours of dogs gathering in the mountains, preparing for an assault on the city. [Paperback with French flaps]
“Invisible Dogs is such a direct, lucid text that the reader might mistake it for a simple record of a visit to an authoritarian country. But Boyle’s wry and wiry prose, an invisible dog in itself, makes an eye contact you can’t break and produces thereafter a quietly deadly picture of the viewed and the viewer, the destination and the traveller.’” —M. John Harrison
”Funny, sinister, thought-moving like light, subtly then increasingly terrifying. Its intelligence reads like relief. Its determination not to language- or life-launder leaves it and the experience of reading it clean and cleansing re the shining and the very dark and the strangeness of us.” —Ali Smith
”I can’t think of a wittier, more engaging, stylistically audacious, attentive and generous writer working in the English language right now.” —Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
"The eponymous absence of dogs is not, it turns out, actually an absence — just an act of collective bad faith. The dogs are still there, but the locals have agreed to pretend they aren’t. Though Mike knows what’s going on — ‘It’s the things they are not telling us that we should be paying attention to’ — he’s soon all-too-willing to toe the official line. As for the narrator, his apparent superiority to his hosts soon erodes: ‘I told the journalist that in my country it’s not dogs but beggars that are invisible.’ Eventually, the pair tire of answering inane questions about their writing and appearing at official events; they start to explore for themselves, visiting off-grid street markets — and losing their hosts’ trust. Invisible Dogs is a layered book. To paint it as one big Swiftian metaphor about the ease with which we accept the erasure of the most vulnerable, or a simple parable about the smiling removal of freedoms of recent years, wouldn’t be enough. It also contains satirical meta-swipes at the fact that, as writers, ‘we were all in sales’, a subtle portrait of the paranoia induced by surveillance, and more besides. Boyle has created something dread-making, with real elegance.’ —Declan Ryan, Daily Telegraph
Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn $35
Contradictions, misunderstandings, oppositions, enigmas, provocations, challenges — these messy troubles are the stuff of life. In Pretty Ugly, Gunn reminds us of her unparalleled acumen in handling ambiguity and complication, which are essential grist to the storyteller's mill. These 13 stories, set in New Zealand and in the UK, are a testament to Gunn's ability to look directly into the troubled human heart and draw out what dwells there. Gunn's is a steady, unflinching gaze. In this collection, Gunn practises 'reading and writing ugly' to pursue the deeper (and frequently uncomfortable) truths that lie under the surface, at the core of both human imagination and human rationality. Each story is an exquisite, thorn-sharp bouquet. [Paperback]
”I am fully in love with Kirsty Gunn's stories. They hit the heart of life so truly it makes me quiver.” —Jane Campion
”Fiercely conflicting energies are in play in these sparkling stories, as Kirsty Gunn at once lavishly evokes and savagely destroys the worlds of propriety and respectable community.” —Tim Parks
A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre (translated from French by Mark Hutchison) $37
Hailed in Le Point as a “masterpiece of simplicity, emotion and elegance”, this novel is the story of an intense friendship between the Narrator and his close childhood friend, Fanny, who suffers from profound psychological disorders. A series of short scenes paints the portrait of a strong-willed and tormented young woman battling many demons, and of the narrator’s loving and anguished attachment to her. Serre poignantly depicts the bewildering back and forth between hope and despair involved in such a relationship, while playfully calling into question the very form of the novel. Written in the aftermath of the death of the author’s younger sister, A Leopard-Skin Hat is both the celebration of a tragically foreshortened life and a valedictory farewell. [Paperback]
”The story of Fanny and the Narrator is a story about our impulse to understand one another and about the way in which unknowability is what makes someone interesting; it is about, in fact, the relationship between unknowability and the desire to know, neither existing without the other, as a narrator does not exist without a story nor a story without a narrator. Exuberantly anti-realist and avowedly fictional.” —The Brooklyn Rail
”In her ability to dip down, over and over, into her secret life, and emerge with a small, sparkling patch of that whole cloth, Serre strikes me as extraordinarily luck. Serre’s primary subject, as always, is narration, and it’s thanks to this obsession that A Leopard-Skin Hat sidesteps memoir, not only by replacing siblings with friends and adopting a male Narrator but by plunging into the volatile spacetime of writing.” —The Baffler
Dusk by Robbie Arnott $38
In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there's far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they're forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal. [Paperback]
”Dusk is a sublime novel of loss and redemption, fight and surrender, that left me in absolute awe. Robbie Arnott's prose is incandescent, his storytelling mythic and filled with a wisdom that extends beyond the page. With Dusk, he asserts himself as one of Australia's finest literary writers.” —Hannah Kent
Why Fish Don’t Exist: A story of loss, love, and the hidden order of life by Lulu Miller $45
When Lulu Miller’s relationship falls apart, she turns to an unlikely figure for guidance — the 19th-century naturalist, David Starr Jordan. Poring over his diaries, Lulu discovers a man obsessed with nature's hidden order, devoted to studying shimmering scales and sailing the world in search of new species of fish. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake sends more than a thousand of Jordan’s specimens, housed in glass jars, plummeting to the ground, the story of his resilience leads Lulu to believe she has found the antidote to life’s unpredictability. But lurking behind the tale of this great taxonomist lies a darker story waiting to be told: one about the human cost of attempting to define the form of things unknown. An idiosyncratic, personal approach to this fascinating scientific biography, Why Fish Dont Exist is an astonishing tale of newfound love, scientific discovery and how to live well in a world governed by chaos. [Hardback]
“I want to live at this book's address: the intersection of history and biology and wonder and failure and sheer human stubbornness. What a sumptuous, surprising, dark delight.” —Carmen Maria Machado
”Her book took me to strange depths I never imagined, and I was smitten.” —The New York Times Book Review
”A story told with an open heart, every page of it animated by verve, nuance, and full-throated curiosity.” —Leslie Jamison
”This book will capture your heart, seize your imagination, smash your preconceptions, and rock your world.” —Sy Montgomery
”Moves gracefully between reporting and meditation, big questions and small moments. A magical hybrid of science, portraiture, and memoir-and a delight to read.” —Susan Orlean
Ryder by Djuna Barnes $35
Told as through a kaleidoscope, the chronicle of the Ryder family is a bawdy tale of eccentricity and anarchy; through sparkling detours and pastiche, cult author Djuna Barnes spins an audacious, intricate story of sexuality, power, and praxis. Ryder, like its namesake, Wendell Ryder, is many things — lyric, prose, fable, illustration; protagonist, bastard, bohemian, polygamist. Born in the 1800s to infamous nonconformist Sophia Grieve Ryder, Wendell's search for identity takes him from Connecticut to England to multifarious digressions on morality, tradition, and gender. Censored upon its first release in 1928, Ryder's portrayal of sexuality remains revolutionary despite the passing of time and the expurgations in the text, preserved by Barnes in protest of the war 'blindly raged against the written word'. The weight of Wendell's story endures despite this censorship, as his drive to assume the masculine roles of patriarch and protector comes at the sacrifice of the women around him. A vanguard modernist, Djuna Barnes has been called the patron literary saint of Bohemia, and her second novel, Ryder, evinces her cutting wit and originality. [Paperback]
Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser $38
It’s 1986, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students — and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the Woolfmother falls into disarray. Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain. Michelle de Kretser bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art. [Paperback]
”A hugely talented author.” —Sarah Waters
”Michelle de Kretser is a genius — one of the best writers working today. She is startlingly, uncannily good at naming and facing what is most difficult and precious about our lives. Theory & Practice is a wonder, a brilliant book that reinvents itself again and again, stretching the boundaries of the novel to show the ways in which ideas and ideals are folded into our days, as well as the times when our choices fail to meet them. There’s no writer I’d rather read.” —V.V. Ganeshananthan
”In the midst of a late coming-of-age plot effervescent with romantic and intellectual misadventure, de Kretser considers memory — how we enshrine our cultural heroes and how we tell ourselves the stories of our own lives — with absolute rigor and perfect clarity. Structurally innovative and totally absorbing, this is a book that enlivens the reader to every kind of possibility. I savored every word.” —Jennifer Croft"
”Michelle de Kretser, one of the best writers in the English language, has written her most brilliant book yet. It is, in short, a masterpiece.” —Neel Mukherjee
”One of the living masters of the art of fiction.” —Max Porter
”Thrillingly original.” —Sigrid Nunez
Three Wild Dogs and the Truth by Markus Zusak $40
“There's a madman dog beside me, and the hounds of memory ahead of us. It's love and beasts and wild mistakes, and regret, but never to change things.” What happens when the Zusaks open their family home to three big, wild, pound-hardened dogs — Reuben, a wolf at your door with a hacksaw; Archer, blond, beautiful, deadly; and the rancorously smiling Frosty, who walks like a rolling thunderstorm? The answer can only be chaos: there are street fights, park fights, public shamings, property trashing, bodily injuries, stomach pumping, purest comedy, shocking tragedy, and carnage that needs to be seen to be believed — not to mention the odd police visit at some ungodly hour of the morning. There is a reckoning of shortcomings and failure, a strengthening of will, but most important of all, an explosion of love — and the joy and recognition of family. From one of the world's great storytellers comes a tender, motley and exquisitely written memoir about the human need for both connection and disorder; but it's also a love letter to the animals who bring hilarity and beauty — but also the visceral truth of the natural world — straight to our doors and into our lives, and change us forever. [Hardback]
Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew by Avi Shlaim $27
Today the once flourishing Jewish community of Iraq, at one time numbering over 130,000 and tracing its history back 2,600 years, has all but vanished. Why so? One explanation speaks of the timeless clash between Arab and Jewish civilisations and a heroic Zionist mission to rescue Eastern Jews from backward nations and unceasing persecution. Avi Shlaim tears up this script. His parents had many Muslim friends in Baghdad and no interest in Zionism. As anti-Semitism surged in Iraq, the Zionist underground fanned the flames. Yet when Iraqi Jews fled to Israel, they faced an uncertain future, their history was rewritten to serve a Zionist narrative. This memoir breathes life into an almost forgotten world. Weaving together the personal and the political, Three Worlds offers a fresh perspective on Arab-Jews, caught in the crossfire of Zionism and nationalism. [Paperback]
”Three Worlds, by the Oxford historian of the modern Middle East Avi Shlaim, is an often enchanting memoir of his childhood in Baghdad. A lost world in Iraq is brilliantly brought back to life in this fascinating memoir.” —David Abulafia
To Free the World: Harry Holland and the rise of the labour movement in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific by James Robb $50
“He devoted his life to free the world from unhappiness, tyranny and oppression,” reads Harry Holland’s memorial in Wellington. Militant unionist, socialist agitator, writer and organiser, Holland was a firebrand leader of workers — in Australia, where he was jailed for sedition during the Broken Hill miners’ strike of 1909 — in Aotearoa NZ, from his arrival during the 1912Waihī Strike, to his death at the tangi of the Māori King in 1933. Elected an MP in 1918 and NZ Labour Party leader from 1919 to 1933, Holland was the “compassionate champion of the common people.” He campaigned against military conscription and war, forged a political alliance with Māori, supported strikes by indentured labourers in Fiji, defended the Samoan Mau movement against the NZ colonial administration, and condemned the mass layoffs and wage-cutting during the Great Depression. When Labour was elected to government in 1935, Michael Joseph Savage cabled Holland’s widow, Annie: “Harry’s life of service enabled us to win.” James Robb’s fresh, uncompromising biography features excerpts from Holland’s own writings, on matters as diverse as Massey’s Cossacks, industrial accidents, the poetry of Robert Burns, the White Australia policy and the Russian revolution. We rediscover this visionary socialist leader through his own words. [Paperback]
The Dictionary Story by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston $30
Dictionary wishes she could tell a story just like the other books. So one day she decides to bring her words to life. How exciting it is, she thinks, that an adventure is finally happening on her very own pages! But what will she do when everything gets out of control, all in a jumble, and her characters collide causing the most enormous tantrum to explode. This isn’t what she wanted at all! How on earth will she find sense in all this chaos? Her friend Alphabet knows exactly what to do and sings a song that brings calm and order to Dictionary’s pages once again. [Hardback]
Mother Tongue Tied: On language, motherhood, and multilingualism — Disrupting myths and finding meaning by Malwina Gudowska $40
It is estimated that more than half of the world's population communicates in more than one language and over a third of the population in the United Kingdom is multilingual. And yet life in multiple languages is rarely discussed publicly, myths and misconceptions prevail and the pressure to keep heritage languages alive has become a private conflict for millions. Linguistic diversity is more prevalent than ever, but so is linguistic inequality. Linguist Malwina Gudowska, herself trilingual, sheds light on the ways in which we navigate language, its power to shape and reshape lives, and the ripple effects felt far beyond any one home or any one language. It takes one generation for a family language to be lost. One generation — like mother to child. Mother Tongue Tied explores the emotional weight of raising multilingual children while grappling with your own identity and notions of home. At what cost does a mother save a language? Or does she let it slip away and, with it, a part of herself her children may never know. [Hardback]
”Mother Tongue Tied brilliantly illustrates how multilingual mothers are disproportionately tasked with preserving linguistic heritage on one hand and preparing children for public society on the other — all while finding a language for their own new maternal identity. A thought-provoking, political and empathetic book.” —Eliane Glaser
Persian Feasts: Recipes and stories from a family table by Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller, Lila Charif, Laya Khadjavi, and Bahar Tavakolian $70
When Leila Heller's mother, Nahid Taghinia-Milani came to the United States in 1979, she brought her recipes with her. Persian Feasts features Iranian delicacies from Iran in a dazzling tapestry of textures and aromas, from Shiraz in the south to Tabriz in the north. This exquisite collection of 100 dishes includes hearty stews, saffron-infused rice dishes, succulent kebabs, and delicate rosewater desserts — each one telling a story that is steeped in tradition and has been passed down from generation to generation. Unexpected ingredient combinations create distinctive tastes and aromas to every dish - from a simple Herb Frittata to a comforting Eggplant, Walnut & Pomegranate Stew to a delicately perfumed Cardamom and Rose Water Pudding. This highly personal book for home cooks — including family stories, historical accounts of food culture, recipe origins, and celebratory menus — is a feast for the senses, celebrating an abundance of spectacular food prepared with seasonal ingredients, fresh herbs, and fragrant spices. [Hardback]
Small Acts by Kate Gordon and Kate Foster $19
There are people everywhere who need help, who might seem okay on the outside but aren't on the inside. People whose whole entire day can be changed ... Josh wants a friend but he doesn't know how to find somewhere to belong ... Ollie wants to express herself but doesn't want to be noticed ... Small Acts introduces two kids with great hearts who know that helping others can start with one small act of kindness. Josh has a plan to start with just that. So does Ollie. What Josh and Ollie don't know yet is that they need each other to make their plans work. [Paperback]
Determination by Tawseef Khan $40
Jamila Shah is twenty-nine and exhausted. An immigration solicitor tasked with running the precious family law firm, Jamila is prone to being woken in the middle of the night by frantic phone calls from clients on the cusp of deportation. Working under the shadow of the government's 'hostile environment', she constantly prays and hopes that their 'determinations' will result in her clients being allowed to stay. With no time for friends, family or even herself (never mind a needy partner), Jamila's life feels hectic and out of control. Then a breakdown of sorts forces her to seek change — to pursue her own happiness while navigating the endless expectations that the world seems to have of her, and still committing herself to a career devoted to helping others. In this polyphonic, character-driven novel, we meet the staff of Shah & Co Solicitors, who themselves arrived in the UK not too long ago, and their clients, more recent arrivals who are made to jump through hoops to create a life for themselves whilst trying to achieve some semblance of normality. [Hardback]
”A compassionate, beautifully told portrait populated by lives that circle the UK's lamentable immigration story. This is a story of determination, also grief, hope, loss and desperation, as well as a reminder of the care, patience and kindness at the human end of a broken system.” —Guy Gunaratne
”Tawseef Khan dramatises timely quests for migrant justice amid the grinding frustrations and punitive hypocrisy of the modern British state. Resisting stereotypes and easy moralising, this is absorbing, witty, eloquent fiction, as well as a trenchant political critique.” —Tom Benn
”Determination is a hymn to empathy, alive with care and love. This is a novel not just to spend time with for the joy of the richly detailed world Khan has created but to be enlivened and challenged by. Embedded in his compelling and compassionate novel is an emphatic rebuttal to the racism and xenophobia rife in this country.” —Rebecca Watson
”A heart-breaking, honest, and deeply important story, providing a window into the world of a UK immigration lawyer and the lives touched by her work. This is a moving, immersive, and vital piece of fiction.” —Jyoti Patel
Insectarium by Dave Goulson and Emily Carter $55
Insects are essential for life as we know it. There are at least one million species of insects, together making up over 80 per cent of all living species on Earth. Around 10,000 new species of insects are discovered every year. In Insectarium learn about the secret world thriving right underneath your feet. How did insects evolve into what they are today? How do they work together and how do they defend themselves? Explore the rooms of Insectarium and meet the beautiful demoiselle and the gigantic goliath beetle. Learn why these small creatures have such a huge impact on the world around us, and why we should be protecting them. [A beautifully done large-format hardback]
The Coin by Yasmin Zaher $28
The Coin's narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start. In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags. But America is stifling her — her wilfulness, her sexuality, her principles. In an attempt to regain control, she becomes preoccupied with purity, cleanliness and self-image, all while drawing her students into her obsessions. In an unforgettable denouement, her childhood memories converge with her material and existential statelessness and the narrator unravels spectacularly. In enthralling, sensory prose, The Coin explores nature and civilisation, beauty and justice, class and belonging — all while resisting easy moralising. [Paperback]
”A masterpiece.” —Slavoj Zizek
”A filthy, elegant book.” —Raven Leilani
”Glamorous and sordid.” —Elif Batuman
”Chipping away at Western hegemony one scalped it-bag at a time.” —New York Times
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25 October 2024
Alphabetisation as an organising principle at least possesses the virtue of scientific rigour. Alphabetisation is a way to achieve this. Alphabetisation is very clean, even when that which is alphabetised is very dirty (I mean dirty in a non-pejorative sense). Although it appears to be a principle that organises without adding meaning to that which is organised, a principle that organises without aiding understanding of that which is organised, that is actually its virtue. Although the experiences to which our memories relate may have been temporally organised, if organised is the right word, our memories are themselves certainly not temporally organised. Diaries are not memories, but memories could be somehow rescued from diaries, if we only knew how. Do we force new conjunctions of meaning upon sentences that abut each other merely due to their alphabetical sequence, and is this a good thing? Experimental writing needs to follow a rigorously scientific method to yield interesting results. Heti could have alphabetised all the words or alphabetised all the letters, but these, although they may have some scientific or statistical value (probably a fairly low value, I would guess), would not have been very interesting. Heti took ten years of her diary entries and put all the sentences into alphabetical order. Heti’s text is 60000 words long; my review is not long enough to be interesting. How would we arrange our lives, our thoughts, if we did not use time as a method of arrangement? I am aware that I am unlikely to do this, for reasons that could reasonably be labelled laziness. I, at least, can seldom stretch my comprehension beyond a sentence. I do not think that my attempt is very successful (even though it doesn’t need to be very successful; somewhat successful would be sufficient), but why not? I do not think that we would have got bored, though we do get bored of many things. Is this interesting? I was going to say that the way in which the book is written transforms its contents, or the context of the contents, changing our experience of the contents from what it would otherwise have been. In any case, you will find Alphabetical Diaries funny, tender, poignant, and certainly good company (or maybe it’s the author who is good company). In presenting Heti’s thoughts non-temporally arranged, the book resembles a personality, which is also a phenomenon non-temporally arranged, similarly expressed from sequentially lived experience. Is this an interesting way to proceed? It is, however, difficult to determine by what principle our memories are organised, if they can be said to be organised at all, or, if they are organised, whether they are organised by a principle, if it is not impossible to be organised without a principle of organisation. It presents that which it organises without imposing a meaning or context that would dictate or influence our understanding. Living, I suppose, is a forwardly propulsive phenomenon, temporally speaking, and reading also is forwardly propulsive wherever it lands upon a text. Memories appear to be associatively organised, which is what could be called a slippery principle of organisation, or a soft principle of organisation. Memory, however, is not forwardly propulsive. Now I will put all my sentences into alphabetical order. Otherwise the knowledge that the method will in due course be applied to it may influence the writing of the text. Perhaps there is a quantum length of text at which alphabetisation reveals repetitions, patterns, tendencies that might otherwise not be noticed (that is to say, in a shorter text). Perhaps, though, the alphabetical method, if we can call it a method, only really works if the author of the text to which it is applied is unaware of its future application to the text. Plot is as artificial in texts as it is in our lives. Reading would not be reading if it didn’t have propulsion. Really it is the having of memories that is associatively organised and perhaps not the memories themselves, if there are such things as memories that are separate from the having of them, which I doubt (though it is hard to say where memories come from if there are not). Really, the alphabetisation of the sentences is an editorial intervention that is more part of the process of reading than of writing. Surprising results are only surprising if we are surprised by them. The alphabetisation dictates how we access the text. The alphabetisation is a morselisation of the writing and has much in common with the way in which we access memory, which also appears in morsels. The book in many ways is a celebration of the sentence because the sentence is the form preserved or foregrounded by the alphabetisation. The sentence is an optimum unit of interest. This is interesting. This makes me want to apply Heti’s alphabetical method to pre-existing works of literature to see what the method may reveal about them once they are liberated from their traditionally temporal arrangement. Time is a harder principle of organisation than association but it is a softer principle than alphabetisation. Time is almost as soft a principle as association. We must free ourselves from plot. We used to read sections of the Alphabetical Diaries when they appeared online about a year ago in The New York Times back when we subscribed to The New York Times, largely, in the end, to read the Alphabetical Diaries. We would read the latest instalment of the Alphabetical Diaries aloud in bed each Sunday morning, alternating the reading so that we could also drink coffee while reading the Alphabetical Diaries. We would still happily be reading instalments of The Alphabetical Diaries in bed on Sunday mornings if the alphabet and our subscription to The New York Times had not run out at pretty much the same time. Why do I present all my ideas, if they can be said to be ideas, as questions? Will my review obscure the book it addresses in the way my reviews typically obscure the books they address? Would it be possible to write a review of this book in the way that the book itself is written, alphabetising the sentences in the review? Would such a review illuminate the book in a way that adds something to our, or my at least, understanding of it? You might think that reading someone else’s diary entries, especially when they are presented without a diary’s traditional organising principle, would become boring if it did not start out boring, but Heti’s sentences are compelling, compoundingly so, either because she has interesting thoughts; or because her thoughts, vulnerabilities, longings and so forth are entirely relatable, if that is not too nauseating a term, even if they are not interesting per se; or because boredom is a temporal phenomenon that has been excluded or bamboozled by the form.
Marta must be quiet as a mouse. Marta must not be noticed. Marta can be in the lobby, but remain invisible. Marta must not take the elevator. Marta’s mother is a maid at the Hotel Balzaar. Things have not always been this way, but survive they must. Marta’s father is missing. The war has taken him away, and they have not heard from him in over a year. Marta watches the cat and mouse on the clock chase each other through time, she dreams in front of the strange painting, and spends her days going up the stairs, and down the stairs, waiting for the day to pass. When a countess checks into the hotel along with her bright green parrot, Marta is drawn into her web of stories. Stories that seem to nestle one inside the other. Stories with clues, maybe, to her father’s disappearance. Or maybe not. Marta wants her father to return, but how will he find them when he doesn’t know where they are? Marta strikes up a rapport with the Countess and her amazing bird. A bird who, apparently, was once a General. How did this General become a parrot? It’s one of the seven tales the Countess will tell Marta. Seven tales of magic and mystery, seven tales that never quite end, but leave questions unanswered and poor Marta increasingly frustrated. And how does the Countess know so much about Marta? Despite these frustrations and probing questions, Marta is drawn into the world of these Norendy Tales, just as you will be, and hangs on the words of the Countess, deeply wanting to believe that they are the key to her father’s return. But does she believe, or has she given up hope? The Hotel Balzaar is a charming tale of a young girl’s bravery in the face of hopelessness, of a girl who will venture through a hidden door to the roof of the hotel, where the world is a place of possibility and promise. Yet, just as the last story is about to be revealed — the story that will bind the other six tales together — our story-teller, the Countess, has departed. Marta’s story is left untold. Or is it? Another lovely tale from the excellent Kate DiCamillo, with superb Júlia Sardà illustrations completing the classic fairy tale atmosphere in this tale of bravery and hope.
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The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat by Brannavan Gnanalingam $30
Kartik Popat breezes through his teenage years despite having no friends. He has no time for his fellow Indians or immigrants. He wants to earn money, without doing any work. He dreams of being a filmmaker, but ends up working at Parliament, racing through the ranks of advisors and party hacks. As the Covid lockdown sets in, he learns that there are more grifts in the world, than doing a half-arsed job. (Mr Popat disputes all of the above characterisations.) The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat casts a sidelong glare at the rise of wannabe South Asian demagogues in Western democracies, and imagines a version fit for Aotearoa. The novel lampoons the concept of the model minority, as Kartik makes a mockery of representational politics and reacts to the echo chambers and political movements of the day. [Paperback]
“It’s the best book I’ve read all year. It is so good. It is such a good salve for any despair you’re feeling about politics at the moment. It’s just the most wonderful, wonderful book. It’s funny. It’s crack-up funny. It’s all very astute, very clever. It’s a brilliant book.” —Pip Adam (RNZ, 22.10.24)
Final Cut by Charles Burns $85
The much-anticipated and exquisitely unsettling new graphic novel from the author of Black Hole, probing not only the personal and creative obsessions of its artist character but the deeper psychosexual territories of American film and culture. As a child, Brian and his friend Jimmy would make home movies in their yards, coaxing their friends into starring as victims of grisly murders and smearing lipstick on them to simulate blood. Now an aspiring filmmaker, he, Jimmy and new girl in town Laurie — his reluctant muse — set off to a remote cabin in the woods. Armed with an old 16-millimetre camera, they film a true sci-fi horror movie where humans are born of disembodied alien wombs, a homage to Brian's favourite movie The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But as Brian's affections for Laurie go seemingly unreciprocated, Brian writes and draws himself into a fantasy where she is the girl of his dreams — both his damsel in distress and his saviour. Final Cut blurs the line between dreams and reality, imagination and perception in this astonishing look at what it truly means to express oneself through art. [Hardback]
”I love everything about this book: the story, the drawings, its way with all things extraterrestrial. It's wraparound wonderful, as close to immersive as any comic could be — a book to be read and reread.” —Observer
”Burns's new book is a joy to read and a welcome return to his long form storytelling that he's been sorely absent from for years. The central plot is beautifully told with subtle meanderings from a bygone age of youth, but accompanied with the strange and often disturbing imagery we're so used to seeing from a creator at the top of his game. A great melding of both style and substance.” —Charlie Adlard
The White Review Anthology of Writing in Translation edited by Rosanna McLaughlin, Izabella Scott, and Skye Thomas $37
The White Review Anthology of Writing in Translation brings the most innovative and exciting international writers working today to an Anglophone audience. The anthology places the work of celebrated authors and translators alongside emerging voices. It includes excerpts from novels, full-length short stories and narrative non-fiction previously unpublished in English. Contributions to the anthology include: 'Butterflies', a short story by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell; 'Peach', a short story by Sema Kaygusuz, translated from Turkish by Maureen Freely; 'Red (Hunger)', an extract from a novel by Senthuran Varatharajah, translated from German by Vijay Khurana; 'Alegría', a story by Colombian writer Margarita García Robayo, translated from Spanish by Carolina Orloff; 'Mulberry Season' an excerpt from the novel Darkness Inside and Out by Argentinian writer Leila Sucari, translated from Spanish by Maureen Shaughnessy; and the short story 'Jackals' by Haytham El-Wardany, translated from Arabic by Katharine Halls. Part of the content was selected from a global 'open call to translators'. {Paperback]
”Throughout its existence, The White Review has served as the most sparkling of birthing wards for the delicate, difficult, and delightful children of other languages' literatures that might have otherwise never found their way into life in English.” —Polly Barton
”Since the very beginning The White Review has demonstrated its aesthetic and political commitments to work in translation, actively giving space to marginalised languages, debut translators, and all manner of transcultural connections. It has always been a home for collaboration, community, experiment, and daring.” —Lauren Elkin
”Nothing less than a cultural revolution.” —Deborah Levy
[ … ] by Fady Joudah $33
Fady Joudah's powerful collection of poems opens with ‘I am unfinished business’, articulating the ongoing pathos of the Palestinian people. A rendering of Joudah's survivance, [...] speaks to Palestine's daily and historic erasure and insists on presence inside and outside the ancestral land. Responding to the unspeakable in real time, Joudah offers multiple ways of seeing the world through a Palestinian lens — a world filled with ordinary desires, no matter how grand or tragic the details may be — and asks their reader to be changed by them. The sequences are meditations on a carousel: the past returns as the future is foretold. But "Repetition won't guarantee wisdom," Joudah writes, demanding that we resuscitate language "before our wisdom is an echo." These poems of urgency and care sing powerfully through a combination of intimate clarity and great dilations of scale, sending the reader on heartrending spins through echelons of time. Joudah reminds us, "Wonder belongs to all." [Paperback]
"Joudah's [...] offers a stunning magnification of consciousness that undertakes the work suggested by the title: reembodying in the text-beautifully, painfully-what has been systematically removed." —Los Angeles Review of Books
"Within [...] pages, the poet's voice travels across centuries and continents, historicising the fate of the Palestinian people while illuminating the bewilderment, eros, and spirituality of everyday life. Joudah's integrity and craftsmanship elasticise the boundaries of the lyric and embrace a reckoning with colonial violence. But these glimmering, layered poems defy easy categorization, even as they brim with the wisdom we inherit from the dead." —Aria Aber, Yale Review
The Man Who Cried I Am by John A. Williams $40
Rediscover the sensational 1967 literary thriller that captures the bitter struggles of postwar Black intellectuals and artists, with a foreword by Ishmael Reed and a new introduction by Merve Emre about how this explosive novel laid bare America's racial fault lines. Max Reddick, a novelist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter, has spent his career struggling against the riptide of race in America. Now terminally ill, he has nothing left to lose. An expat for many years, Max returns to Europe one last time to settle an old debt with his estranged Dutch wife, Margrit, and to attend the Paris funeral of his friend, rival, and mentor Harry Ames, a character loosely modelled on Richard Wright. In Leiden, among Harry's papers, Max uncovers explosive secret government documents outlining 'King Alfred', a plan to be implemented in the event of widespread racial unrest and aiming 'to terminate, once and for all, the Minority threat to the whole of the American society'. Realizing that Harry has been assassinated, Max must risk everything to get the documents to the one man who can help. Greeted as a masterpiece when it was published in 1967, The Man Who Cried I Am stakes out a range of experience rarely seen in American fiction: from the life of a Black GI to the ferment of postcolonial Africa to an insider's view of Washington politics in the era of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, including fictionalized portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. Few novels have so deliberately blurred the boundaries between fiction and reality as The Man Who Cried I Am (1967), and many of its early readers assumed the King Alfred plan was real. In her introduction, Merve Emre examines the gonzo marketing plan behind the novel that fuelled this confusion and prompted an FBI investigation. [Paperback with French flaps]
”It is a blockbuster, a hydrogen bomb. This is a book white people are not ready to read yet; neither are most black people. But it is the milestone produced since Native Son. Besides which, and where I should begin, it is a damn beautifully written book.” —Chester Himes (1967 review)
”If The Man Who Cried I Am were a painting it would be done by Brueghel or Bosch. The madness and the dance is never-ending display of humanity trying to creep past inevitable Fate.” - Walter Mosley
The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt $36
A modern amorality play about a 17-year-old girl, the wilder shores of connoisseurship, and the power of false friends. “Maman was exigeante — there is no English word — and I had the benefit of her training. Others may not be so fortunate. If some other young girl, with two million dollars at stake, finds this of use I shall count myself justified.” Raised in Marrakech by a French mother and English father, a 17-year-old girl has learned above all to avoid mauvais ton ("bad taste" loses something in the translation). One should not ask servants to wait on one during Ramadan: they must have paid leave while one spends the holy month abroad. One must play the piano; if staying at Claridge's, one must regrettably install a Clavinova in the suite, so that the necessary hours of practice will not be inflicted on fellow guests. One should cultivate weavers of tweed in the Outer Hebrides but have the cloth made up in London; one should buy linen in Ireland but have it made up by a Thai seamstress in Paris (whose genius has been supported by purchase of suitable premises). All this and much more she has learned, governed by a parent of ferociously lofty standards. But at 17, during the annual Ramadan travels, she finds all assumptions overturned. Will she be able to fend for herself? Will the dictates of good taste suffice when she must deal, singlehanded, with the sharks of New York? [A beautifully produced hardback from the New Directions' ‘Storybook ND’ series.]
"A staggeringly intelligent examination into the nature of truth, love, respect, beauty and trust. This is that rare thing, or merle blanc, as maman might say: a perfect book. I've read it four times, which you can do between breakfast and lunch." —Nicola Shulman, The Times Literary Supplement
"This is a short, sharp sliver of a story — only 64 pages — but every single word is pitch perfect. Think of it as the literary equivalent of a shot of ice-cold vodka-Belvedere or Grey Goose only, of course." —Lucy Scholes, Prospect
"For a wonderfully sideways take on the complex intersections between class, wealth and power — intersections that invariably favour those who have most of them already — I recommend reading The English Understand Wool, by the American writer Helen DeWitt." —Alex Clark, The Observer
"The English Understand Wool is Helen DeWitt's best and funniest book so far — quite a feat given the standards set by the rest of her work. Its pages are rife with wicked pleasures. It incites and rewards re-reading." —Heather Cass White, The Times Literary Supplement
Nine Minds: Inner lives on the spectrum by Daniel Tammet $45
Meet nine extraordinary people on the autism spectrum. A Japanese researcher in psychology sets out to measure loneliness while drawing on her own experience of autism. A quirky boy growing up in 1950s Ottawa sows the seeds of his future Hollywood stardom. In the US, a non-verbal man explores body language, gesture by eloquent gesture, in his mother's yoga classes. Nine Minds delves into the extraordinary lives of nine neurodivergent men and women from around the globe. From a Fields Medal-winning mathematician to a murder detective, a pioneering surgeon to a bestselling novelist, each is remarkable in their field, and each is changing how the world sees those on the spectrum. Exploding the tired stereotypes of autism, Daniel Tammet — autistic himself — reaches across the divides of age, gender, sexuality and nationality to draw out the inner worlds of his subjects. Telling stories as richly diverse as the spectrum itself, this illuminating, life-affirming work of narrative nonfiction celebrates the power and beauty of the neurodivergent mind, and the daring freedom with which these individuals have built their lives. [Hardback]
”Tammet's exquisite portraits remind us that the variety of brains is every bit as essential as any other form of diversity.” —Andrew Solomon
”Daniel Tammet's wonderful portraits of autistic people's inner lives illustrate the range of neurodivergent talents and experiences, and celebrate human cognitive diversity.” —Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre
”Beautifully rendered, painstakingly researched, and completely absorbing, Nine Minds offers something that autistic people urgently need: it humanises us.” —Katherine May
”In Nine Minds, Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant and author of Born on a Blue Day, reports on the unique lives and cognitive differences of nine neurodivergent people. This fascinating book engages by imaginatively entering its subjects' inner worlds. Each profile is based on hours of interviews. Readers will discover a spectrum filled with valuable different kinds of minds.” —Temple Grandin
The Tale of a Wall: Reflections on hope and freedom by Nasser Abu Srour (translated from Arabic by Luke Lefgren) $50
This is the story of a wall that somehow chose me as the witness of what it said and did. Nasser Abu Srour grew up in a refugee camp in the West Bank, on the outskirts of Bethlehem. As a child, he played in its shadow and explored the little world within the camp. As he grew older, he began questioning the boundaries that limited his existence. Later, sentenced to life in prison, with no hope of parole, he found himself surrounded by a physical wall. This is the story of how, over thirty years in captivity, he crafted a new definition of freedom. Turning to writings by philosophers as varied as Derrida, Kirkegaard and Freud, he begins to let go of freedom as a question that demanded an answer, in order to preserve it as a dream. The wall becomes his stable point of reference, his anchor, both physically and psychologically. As each year brings with it new waves of releases of prisoners, he dares to hope, and seeks refuge in the wall when these hopes are dashed. And, in a small miracle, he finds love with a lawyer from the outside — while in her absence, the wall is his solace and his curse. A testimony of how the most difficult of circumstances can build a person up instead of tearing them down, The Tale of a Wall is an extraordinary record of the vast confinement and power of the mind. [Paperback with French flaps]
”The Tale of a Wall is the reason we have literature. Nasser has made art out of poison with his honesty and golden pen. He brings to light the specificity of experience of the Palestinian prisoner in a manner that makes every reader think about the incarcerated in their own countries without forgetting Palestine. It helps us understand the consequences on others when we do not wield whatever power we each hold for solidarity. A profound and important work.” —Sarah Schulman
Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru $37
A novel about beauty, power, and capital's influence on art and those who devote their lives to creating it. Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him. Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height — the greater public panicked in quarantine — and though he has returned to work, Jay hasn't recovered from the effects of a recent Covid infection. When Jay arrives at a house set in an enormous acreage of woodland, he finds the last person he ever expected to see again: Alice, a former lover from his art school days. Their relationship was tumultuous and destructive, ultimately ending when she ghosted him and left for America with his best friend and fellow artist, Rob. In the twenty years since, their fortunes could not be more different: as Jay teeters on the edge of collapse, Alice and Rob have found prosperity in a life surrounded by beauty. Ashamed, Jay hopes she won't recognize him behind his dirty surgical mask; when she does, she invites him to recover on the property where an erratic gallery owner and his girlfriend are isolating as well, setting a reckoning decades in the making into motion. Blue Ruin moves back and forth through time to deliver an extraordinary portrait of an artist as he reunites with his past and confronts the world he once loved and left behind. [Paperback
"That wild time of youth is brilliantly conjured throughout Blue Ruin in flashback scenes that seem to pulsate with the roar of drunken parties and the thump of dance music. We are instantly swept along by the laconic grace and psychological acuity of Mr. Kunzru's writing and by the commotion he unleashes at will and to great effect. Indeed, Mr. Kunzru has drawn a narrator so appealing that we forgive him almost anything. In a novel where little happens, at least on the surface, and where the making and selling of art is examined at length, Jay's odyssey also broadens a narrative that might otherwise have become fatally introspective or, worse still, pretentious. But Mr. Kunzru's satirical eye, keen wit and compassionate intelligence guard against any such slide. Blue Ruin may end with the fate of a valuable painting hanging in the balance and millions of dollars about to vanish with a single drunken gunshot. By then, however, we care as little as Jay does about the fate of objects. Mr. Kunzru has made his point." —Anna Mundow, The Wall Street Journal
”Even as Blue Ruin delves into the past with Proustian specificity, it does not succumb to nostalgic cliche about a time when young artists could achieve success almost overnight. Rather, Kunzru focuses on how the lives of the three friends diverge. Blue Ruin's success stems from its uncompromising connection between the pains of the past and the decomposition of the present, without celebrating either. Through the simple story of a once-lauded artist becoming a delivery driver in an effort to push his career-and himself-to the limit, Kunzru creates a trajectory in which social tensions are rising, liberalism is disappearing and fascism is once more gathering momentum." —Ed Luker, Frieze
Happy Apocalypse: A history of technological risk by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz $45
Being environmentally conscious is not nearly as modern as we imagine. As a mode of thinking it goes back hundreds of years. Yet we typically imagine ourselves among the first to grasp the impact humanity has on the environment. Hence there is a fashion for green confessions and mea culpas. But the notion of a contemporary ecological awakening leads to political impasse. It erases a long history of environmental destruction. Furthermore, by focusing on our present virtues, it overlooks the struggles from which our perspective arose. In response, Happy Apocalypse plunges us into the heart of controversies that emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries around factories, machines, vaccines and railways. Jean-Baptiste Fressoz demonstrates how risk was conceived, managed, distributed and erased to facilitate industrialization. He explores how clinical expertise around 1800 allowed vaccination to be presented as completely benign, how the polluter-pays principle emerged in the nineteenth century to legitimize the chemical industry, how safety norms were invented to secure industrial capital and how criticisms and objections were silenced or overcome to establish technological modernity. Societies of the past did not inadvertently alter their environments on a massive scale. Nor did they disregard the consequences of their decisions. They seriously considered them, sometimes with dread. The history recounted in this book is not one of a sudden awakening but a process of modernising environmental disinhibition.
”Happy Apocalypse offers a compelling, powerful and very timely critique of the claim that we live in a period unprecedentedly marked by an awareness of technological crises and environmental risks. Fressoz shows instead, and in striking detail, how in France and Britain in the decades around 1800, in major fields of concern such as public health, industrial safety and environmental impact, calculations of risk and estimates of safety were both impressively widespread and energetically debated. The book offers a brilliantly original analysis of how industrialists and entrepreneurs, legislators and scientists, public lobbies and private interests, all made sense of the processes that accompanied the establishment of new kinds of capitalist society and their models of welfare, profit and security. Happy Apocalypse will be required reading for anyone concerned with the ways in which current crises of safety and survival can be better understood in their proper historical settings.” —Simon Schaffer, University of Cambridge
England: A natural history by John Lewis-Stempel $70
England's landscape is iconic — a tapestry of distinctive habitats that together make up a country unique for its rich diversity of flora and fauna. Concentrating on twelve habitats, John Lewis-Stempel leads us from estuary to park, chalk downland to woodland , river to field, village to moor, lake to heath, fen to coastal cliffs, in a book that is unquestionably his magnum opus. Referencing beloved great writers in whose footsteps he treads — Gilbert White, John Clare, W. H. Hudson, Richard Jefferies, Edward Thomas — and combining breathtakingly beautiful prose with detailed wildlife observation, botanical fact and ancient folklore, Lewis-Stempel immerses himself in each place, discovering their singular atmosphere, the play of the seasons; the feel of the wind in midwinter; the sounds of daybreak; how twilight settles. England: A Natural History is the definitive volume on the English landscape, and the capstone of John Lewis-Stempel's nature writing. [Hardback]
”No-one comes close to Lewis-Stempel's ability to paint the English landscape in words. Maddeningly brilliant.” —Sally Coulthard
”It is now expected of the modern nature writer to draw together landscape, wildlife, history and culture, but few — if any — do it as deftly as Lewis-Stempel does here. There is still a place for this kind of assured and expert countryside writing. Not just a place, but acres of room.” —Richard Smythe, Times Literary Supplement
A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez (translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell) $37
Mariana Enriquez's first story collection since the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, the occult and the macabre, the stories explore love, womanhood, LGBTQ counterculture, parenthood and Argentina's brutal past. [Paperback]
”One of Latin America's most exciting authors.” —Silvia Moreno-Garcia
”A mesmerising writer who demands to be read. Her fiction hits with the force of a freight train.” —Dave Eggers
The Hotel Balzaar (A Norendy tale) by Kat DiCamillo, illustrated by Júlia Sardà $28
In the land of Norendy, tales swirl within tales-and every moment is a story in the making. At the Hotel Balzaar, Marta's mother rises before the sun, puts on her uniform, and instructs Marta to roam as she will but quietly, invisibly — like a little mouse. While her mother cleans rooms, Marta slips down the back staircase to the grand lobby to chat with the bellman, study the painting of an angel's wing over the fireplace, and watch a cat chase a mouse around the face of the grandfather clock, all the while dreaming of the return of her soldier father, who has gone missing. One day, a mysterious countess with a parrot checks in, promising a story-in fact, seven stories in all, each to be told in its proper order. As the stories unfold, Marta begins to wonder: could the secret to her father's disappearance lie in the countess's tales? [Illustrated hardback]
Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst $38
A dark, luminous and wickedly funny portrait of modern England through the lens of one man's acutely observed and often unnerving experience. It is a story of race and class, theatre and sexuality, love and the cruel shock of violence, from one of the finest writers of our age. Dave Win is thirteen years old when he first goes to stay with the sponsors of his scholarship at a local boarding school. This weekend, with its games and challenges and surprising encounters, will open up heady new possibilities, even as it exposes him to their son Giles's envy and violence. As their lives unfold over the next half a century, the two boys' careers will diverge dramatically: Dave, a gifted actor struggling with convention and discrimination, Giles an increasingly powerful and dangerous politician. Our Evenings is Dave Win's own account of his life as a schoolboy and student, his first love affairs, in London, and on the road with an experimental theatre company, and of a late-life affair, which transforms his sixties with a new sense of happiness and a perilous security.
”The best novel that's been written about contemporary Britain in the past ten years. It's funny but desperately moving too.” —The Sunday Times
”The finest novel yet from one of the great writers of our time.” — The Guardian
”Our Evenings is a truly astonishing novel, by turns delicate and ferocious, radical in the way it explores questions of race, class, sexuality and origins in a genteel English Home Counties setting. It is the story of a country undergoing great change, even if its people aren't aware of it — the novel moves through time so beautifully that I felt such a sense of loss at the end.” —Tash Aw
Gifted by Suzumi Suzuki (translated from Japanese by Allison Markin Powell) $40
In 2008, the unnamed narrator of Gifted is working as a hostess and living in Tokyo's nightlife district. One day, her estranged mother, who is seriously ill, suddenly turns up at her door. As the mother approaches the end of her life, the two women must navigate their strained relationship, while the narrator also reckons with events happening in her own life, including the death of a close friend — all under the bright lights of Tokyo's 'sleepless town', Kabukicho. In sharp, elegant prose, and based on the author's own experiences as a sex worker, Gifted heralds the breakthrough of an exciting new literary talent. [Paperback]
”Demonstrates that death is the only way forward. Oozes with maternal cruelty.” —Yoko Ogawa
The Hidden Globe: How wealth hacks the world by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian $40
Borders draw one map of the world; money draws another. The Hidden Globe is a riveting account exposes a parallel universe exempt from the laws of the land, and how the wealthy and powerful benefit from it. The map of the globe shows the world we think we know: sovereign nations that grant and restrict their citizens’ rights. Beneath, above, and tucked inside its neatly delineated borders, however, a parallel universe has been engineered into existence, consisting of thousands of extraterritorial zones that operate largely autonomously, increasingly for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful. Atossa Abrahamian traces the rise of the hidden globe to thirteenth-century Switzerland, where poor cantons marketed the commodity they had—bodies, in the form of mercenary fighters. Following its evolution around the world, she reveals how prize-winning economists, eccentric theorists, visionary statesmen, and consultants masterminded its export in the form of free trade zones, flags of convenience, offshore detention centers where immigrants languish in limbo, and charter cities controlled by by foreign governments and multinational foreign corporations—and even into outer space, where tiny Luxembourg aspires to mining rights on asteroids. By mapping the hidden geography that decides who wins and who loses in this new global order—and how it might be otherwise—The Hidden Globe fascinates, enrages, and inspires. [Paperback]
”In describing insidiously interconnected global regimes of inequality and injustice, Atossa Abrahamian boldly renews our sense of reality and brilliantly illuminates our political impasse.” —Pankaj Mishra
This Earthly Globe: A Venetian cartographer and the quest to map the world by Andrea di Robilant $38
In the autumn of 1550, an anonymously authored volume containing a wealth of geographical information new to Europeans was published in Venice under the title Navigationi et Viaggi (Journeys and Navigations). This was closely followed by two further volumes that, when taken together, constituted the largest release of geographical data in history, and could well be considered the birth of modern geography. The editor of these volumes was a little-known public servant in the Venetian government, Giovambattista Ramusio. He gathered a vast array of both popular and closely guarded narratives, from the journals of Marco Polo to detailed reports from the Muslim scholar and diplomat Leo Africanus. In an enthralling narrative, Andrea di Robilant brings to life the man who used all his political skill, along with the help of conniving diplomats and spies, to democratise knowledge and show how the world was much larger than anyone previously imagined.
”An extraordinary story that reads more like a thriller than a book about history. A dazzling tale, brilliantly told.” —Peter Frankopan
Kai Feast: Food stories and recipes from the maunga to the moana by Christall Lowe $50
Nau mai, haere mai ki tenei kai hākari wainene! Christall Lowe invites you to a hākari at her family table — replete with mouthwatering dishes infused with the flavours of Aotearoa, brimming with manaakitanga, and served with wonderful tales of nostalgia. In this illustrated story of feasting you'll find a bountiful basket of kai and korero gathered all the way from the mountains to the sea. It's lip-smackingly good kai — from soul-warming kaimoana hot pot, umu pulled pork and hāngī infused with native rongoa, to kūmara donuts, sweet korimako cake and burnt sugar steamed pudding. Recipes are woven with stories of traditional gathering and feasting, tips on cooking for a crowd and notes on foraging and using native herbs. With Kai Feast in your kitchen, you'll be prepared for any occasion, big or small. [Hardback]
Party Rhyme! by Antonia Pesenti $24
It's PARTY RHYME! Put on your PARTY BAT, enjoy the LIZZIE DRINKS, but don't eat too much HAIRY BREAD! Flip the flaps to reveal clever puns, witty rhymes, and playful language. Perfect for children's love of birthday parties, Party Rhyme combines bold illustrations and kid-friendly jokes that will appeal to both younger and older children. Huge fun. [Board book with reverse gatefold flaps]
A selection of books from our shelves.
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‘Object Lessons’ is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
If you love the long-form essay, esoteric facts, or are curious about the world about us, particularly objects in this world, then you will love Bloomsbury Publishing’s ‘Object Lessons’ series. Between us we have read a fair few ‘Object Lessons’, and they are always incisive, interesting, and highly engaging in content and style. To help you discover this excellent series we are offering you 25% off in-stock titles.* Head over to the Object Lessons page and start selecting. Find your favourite objects or explore some new ones. (PS these make excellent gifts!)
* This weekend only. Promotion finishes Tuesday 29th, 10am. Use the promotion code: OBJECT
We use Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s cookbooks frequently at home — her recipes are very user-friendly and her methods and proportions guarantee perfect and delicious dishes that immediately become favourites.
”Every meal is something to celebrate — a casual gathering with friends, a weeknight dinner, a long birthday lunch in the garden. It doesn't matter what the occasion, there is an unspoken joy in sharing food with others.”
This collection of recipes includes a guide to creating menus for any occasion, from a celebration of summer produce to pure comfort food in cooler weather, a simple family dinner to a relaxed lunch with friends. Julia pairs ingredients in harmonious and delicious ways, with recipes for every season.
We can dispatch to anywhere in Aotearoa by overnight courier, or have books ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
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18 October 2024
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.