Could he even write a review of a book he had read about someone writing about sentences that he in turn had read which were written by yet other people, some of whom, or, rather, some of which, he himself had read directly, if that is the word, that is to say not just in the book about sentences in which these sentences also appear and which he has also read? The question mark, when it finally arrived, seemed somehow out of place, so far did it trail the part of the sentence he had just written in which the matter of the question appeared early, all those clauses shoving the question mark to an awkward distance, already the thought that the sentence described was changing direction, as thoughts do, but the sentence was still obliged to display the mark that would make the first part of the sentence, and indeed the whole sentence thereby into a question, there was a debt to be paid after all, he was lucky to get off without interest. The separation of the question mark from the quested matter was not the only reservation he had about the sentence he had just written, he had other reservations, both about its structure and its content, in other words both about its grammar and its import, if that is the right word. One reservation was that he had chosen to write the sentence in the third person, a habit he had acquired, or an affectation that he had adopted, that depersonalised his reviews and made them easier to write and, he hoped, more enjoyable to read, certainly, he thought, less embarrassing for himself to read, or should that be re-read, not that he was particularly inclined to do such a thing. These reviews were also written in the past tense, for goodness sake. Could he write in the first person and in the present tense, he wondered, or was that a mode he contrarily reserved for fiction? Can I even write a review of a book I have read, he wrote as an experiment, about someone writing about sentences that he has read which were written by yet other people, some of whom, or, rather, some of which, I have read directly, if that is the word, that is to say not just in the book about sentences in which these sentences also appear and which I have also read?, he wrote, though I must say, he thought, that question mark is more problematic than ever. Also, would it not be ludicrous, he thought, to even attempt to write a review about a book about fine sentences, or exceptional sentences, or exemplary sentences or whatever, from William Shakespeare to Anne Boyer, including sentences from several of my favourite writers, though not perhaps the sentences of theirs that I would choose if I had been choosing, he thought, when my own sentences churn on, when in my own repertoire I have only commas and full stops, a continuation mark and a stopping mark, when those two marks for him are already too much for him to handle, accustomed as he had once made himself to the austerity of the full stop alone, you could write a whole book using only full stops, he thought, or he had once thought. He had wandered, and tried to return to the task in hand, or the book in hand, or to the thought in head, so to speak. Because the book was about sentences he found himself unable to write any sentences about it. If he wrote a review, he thought, he had no doubt that at least some of the readers of that review, if not all of the readers of that review, if there were any such readers, which seemed unlikely, would find his sentences fell short of their subject, or if they did not fall short they would quaver under their scrutiny, weaken and collapse, which is another sort of falling. His sentences would rather point than be pointed at. Thinking of writing would have to suffice. I would like to write, he thought of writing, that this book, Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillon, is the sort of book that anyone interested in reading better, or, indeed, in writing better, which goes without saying, as writing is a subset of reading, if that goes without saying, though not everyone’s subset, he thought, and would have said had he been saying instead of thinking and writing, or, rather thinking and thinking of writing, Brian Dillon is good company in working out how text works when it works well, but, although he thought of writing this, as he had said, see, he does say though he said he was not saying, he did not write this as, by this time, his comma-infested sentences were almost unable to move in any direction even if not in a straight line, bring on the full stops, he thought.
"Every writing worthy of its name wrestles with the Angel and, at best, comes out limping.” —Jean-François Lyotard
Danielle Dutton imagines new models for how literature might work in our fractured times. Dutton's writing is as protean as it is beguiling, using the different styles and different spaces of experience to create a collage of the depths and strangeness of contemporary life. The collection covers an inventive selection of subjects in four eponymous sections which contrast and echo one another, challenging our expectations and pushing the limits of the dream-like worlds and moods that language might create. 'Prairie' is a cycle of surreal stories set in the quickly disappearing prairieland of the American Midwest, replete with wildflowers, ominous rivers, fireflies, cattle lowing and ghostly apparitions; 'Dresses' ponders the relationship between literature and clothing, and is entirely constructed out of quotes from other works; 'Art' is an imaginative illustrated essay which explores the relationship between fiction and visual art; and 'Other' offers an assemblage of irregular stories and essays that are hilarious or heartbreaking by turns. Out of these varied materials, Dutton builds a haunting landscape of wildflowers, megadams, black holes, violence, fear, virtual reality, abiding strangeness and indefinable beauty.
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Books of Mana: 180 Māori-authored books of significance edited by Jacinta Ruru, Angela Wanhalla and Jeanette Wikaira $65
Books of Mana celebrates the rich tradition of Māori authorship in Aotearoa New Zealand. It reveals the central place of over 200 years of print literacy within te ao Māori and vividly conveys how books are understood as taonga tuku iho – treasured items handed down through generations. In this beautifully illustrated collection of essays, some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most renowned Māori thinkers join the editors in a wide-ranging kōrero about the influence and empowerment of Māori writing. Books of Mana builds on the work of editors Jacinta Ruru, Angela Wanhalla and Jeanette Wikaira, who curated Te Takarangi, a selected list of Māori-authored non-fiction books published since 1815. Launched in 2018, the Te Takarangi list now comprises 180 titles, each representing an important touchstone in an extensive landscape of Māori literature. Books of Mana explores the ways these books have enriched lives and helped to foster understanding of Māori experience, both at home in Aotearoa and internationally. What emerges from the essays collected within these covers is a clear vision of the importance of writing as activism and a profound sense that these Māori-authored non-fiction books, and the knowledge they contain, are taonga. [Hardback]
Golden Enterprise: New Zealand Chinese merchants, 1860s—1970s by Phoebe H. Li $80
Golden Enterprise offers a compelling re-examination of New Zealand Chinese history from the 1860s to the 1970s, focusing on the pivotal role of Cantonese merchants. These early entrepreneurs not only facilitated Chinese immigration but also shaped the identity of Chinese New Zealanders within the broader context of New Zealand’s shifting relationships with China, Britain, and the wider world. Drawing on extensive archival research in both Chinese and English sources, Phoebe H. Li illuminates the merchants’ transnational business and social networks, providing fresh perspectives on Chinese migration to the South Pacific. Well illustrated. [Hardback]
Aerth by Deborah Tompkins $36
Magnus lives on Aerth, which is currently moving into an Ice Age, with a strange virus limiting the population. When the planet Urth is discovered, he vows to become an astronaut and travel there, but on arriving he finds it hot, crowded, corrupt and violent, despite it being initially welcoming. Slowly Magnus realises he will not find what he's looking for, but there seems no way back. Aerth is a story about migration, climate, conspiracy theories and interplanetary homelessness. [Paperback with French flaps]
”What planet are we on? Can we leave? Does it mean we can never go home again if we do? What does a phrase like worlds apart really mean? Deep-forged, witty and resonant, this dimensionally stunning novella deals with dystopia and hope in a way that reveals them as profoundly related. A work of real energy and narrative grip, brilliantly earthy and airy at once, it blasts open a reader's past/future consciousness and taps into literary antecedents as disparate as Hardy and Atwood. Funny, terrifying, humane, this is a thrilling journey in a story the size of a planet — no, the size of several, all of them altogether strange and uncannily familiar.” —Ali Smith
Equality: What it means and why it matters by Thomas Piketty and Michael J. Sandel $29
In this compelling dialogue, two of the world’s most influential thinkers reflect on the value of equality and debate what citizens and governments should do to narrow the gaps that separate us. Ranging across economics, philosophy, history, and current affairs, Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel consider how far we have come in achieving greater equality. At the same time, they confront head-on the extreme divides that remain in wealth, income, power, and status nationally and globally. What can be done at a time of deep political instability and environmental crisis? Piketty and Sandel agree on much: more inclusive investment in health and education, higher progressive taxation, curbing the political power of the rich and the overreach of markets. But how far and how fast can we push? Should we prioritise material or social change? What are the prospects for any change at all with nationalist forces resurgent? How should the left relate to values like patriotism and local solidarity where they collide with the challenges of mass migration and global climate change? To see Piketty and Sandel grapple with these and other problems is to glimpse new possibilities for change and justice but also the stubborn truth that progress towards greater equality never comes quickly or without deep social conflict and political struggle. [Hardback]
Lexicon of Affinities by Ida Vitale (translated from Spanish by Sean Manning) $39
With entries as varied as 'elbow', 'Ophelia', 'progress', the painter Giorgio Morandi, 'chess', 'Eulalia' (a friend of the author's aunt), and 'unicorn', Ida Vitale constructs a dictionary of her long and passionately engaged artistic life. Taking the reader by the arm, she invites us to become her confidant, sharing her remarkable 20th century as a member of a storied generation of Latin American writers, of whom she is the last remaining alive. It's a compendium of friendship, travel, reading, and the endless opportunities she found for 'the joyful possibility of creation.' Like every dictionary, Lexicon of Affinities seeks to impose order on chaos, even if in its exuberant, whimsical profusion it lays bare the unstable character of the cosmos. [Paperback with French flaps]
"Vitale's prose is drop dead gorgeous." —Jeremy Garber
"Extraordinary. Giving due attention to Vitale's prose will bring you reassurance and optimism." —Lunate
"A vibrant and playful memoir-in-dictionary-form. A joyous celebration of a life well lived, with entries that range from the simple to the titanic." —Literary Hub
"Indispensable. Vitale's language has a precision that reminds us that memory exists: that today precision is an act of distinction and recognition." —Letras Libre
Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai (translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet) $42
The National Book Award winner’s breathtaking new novel about neo-Nazis, particle physics, and Johann Sebastian Bach. The gentle giant Florian Herscht has a problem: having faithfully attended Herr Köhler's adult education classes in physics, he is convinced that disaster is imminent. And so, he embarks upon a one-sided correspondence with Chancellor Angela Merkel, to convince her of the danger of the complete destruction of all physical matter. Otherwise, he works for the Boss (the head of a local neo-Nazi gang), who has taken him under his wing and gotten him work as a graffiti cleaner and also a one-room apartment in the small eastern German town of Kana. The Boss is enraged by a graffiti artist who, with wolf emblems, is defacing all the various monuments to Johann Sebastian Bach in Thuringia. A Bach fanatic and director of an amateur orchestra, he is determined to catch the culprit with the help of his gang, and Florian has no choice but to join the chase. The situation becomes even more frightening, and havoc ensues, when real wolves are sighted in the area. Written in one cascading sentence with the power of atomic particles colliding, Krasznahorkai's novel is a tour de force, a morality play, a blistering satire, a devastating encapsulation of our helplessness when confronted with the moral and environmental dilemmas we face. [Paperback]
"Krasznahorkai's work offers, to a degree rare in contemporary life, one of the central pleasures of fiction: an encounter with the otherness of other people. He's a universalist cut loose from the shibboleths of humanism." —Garth Risk Hallberg, The New York Times
"The best new novel I have read this year is written in a single sentence that sprawls over 400 pages. Herscht 07769 by the Hungarian genius Laszlo Krasznahorkai is an urgent depiction of our global social and political crises, rendering our impotent slide into authoritarianism with compassionate clarity. It is also a book whose timeliness derives precisely from the way its unusual style disrupts the ordinary literary mechanics of time. A masterful study in what it means to keep trudging through a world that is always ending but will not end." —Jacob Brogan, The Washington Post
Q&A by Adrian Tomine $30
Adrian Tomine began his professional career at the age of sixteen, and in the decades since, has made a name for himself as a bestselling graphic novelist, screenwriter, and New Yorker cover artist. Now, for the first time, he's taking questions. Part personal history, part masterclass (illustrated throughout with photos, outtakes, and step-by-step process images), Q&A is an unprecedented look into Tomine's working methods and a trove of insight, guidance, and advice for aspiring and practising creatives alike. [Paperback]
”Adrian Tomine has more ideas in twenty panels than novelists have in a lifetime.” —Zadie Smith
Cactus Pear for My Beloved: A family story from Gaza by Samah Sabawi $40
The story of a family over the past 100 years, starting in Palestine under British rule and ending in Redland Bay in Queensland. Samah Sabawi shares the story of her parents and many like them who were born as their parents were being forced to leave their homelands. Filled with love for land, history, peoples it is more than anything else a family story and a love story told with enormous humanity and feeling. How the son (one of six), born at the height of the displacements to a disabled father and illiterate mother, a believer in peaceful resistance, became a leading poet and writer in Palestine, before being forced, with his own young family in tow, to flee and start a new life in Australia. [Paperback]
Young Hag by Isabel Greenberg $45
Once there was magic in Britain. There were dragons and wizards and green knights and kings who pulled swords out of stones. But now, the doors to the Otherworld have closed. Young Hag has grown up believing her mother and grandmother are the last witches in the land. But when tragedy strikes, she turns her back on these tales. Where is their magic when they really need it? Then one day they find a changeling in the woods. Confronted with real magic at last, Young Hag has no choice but to believe. She sets off on the greatest quest of her life; but can Young Hag bring the magic back? Or will she become a footnote in the tale of famous kings and wizards? From the acclaimed creator of Glass Town and The One Hundred Nights of Hero comes a dazzlingly imaginative escape into the world of myth. Young Hag ingeniously reinvents the women in Arthurian legend, transforming the tales of old into a heart-warming coming-of-age story. [Paperback]
Hum by Helen Phillips $37
In a hot and gritty city populated by super-intelligent robots called 'Hums', May seeks some reprieve from recent hardships and from her family's addiction to their devices. She splurges on a weekend away at the Botanical Garden — a rare, green refuge in the heart of the city, where forests, streams and animals flourish. But when it becomes clear that the Garden is not the idyll she hoped it would be, and her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a Hum of uncertain motives in order to restore the life of her family. Gripping and unflinching, Hum is about our most cherished human relationships in a world compromised by climate change and dizzying technological revolution, a world with both dystopian and utopian possibilities. [Paperback]
”What's more intoxicating than a Helen Phillips novel? Her books have blown open the doors of what's possible with the art of storytelling — and her latest, Hum, is her best work yet: one that captures, with fire and grace, our future and what it means to love, to persist, and to be human. This is a hold-your-breath book. Buckle up and get ready to deeply feel the joy — the thrill, the magic — of reading.” —Paul Yoon
”An indelible family portrait and a narrative tour de force, Hum generates almost unbearable tension and unease from start to end. Stunning, strangely beautiful, and written from a place of deep compassion but also with a clear and analytical eye. Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future. I loved it.” —Jeff VanderMeer
Code Dependent: Living in the shadow of A.I. by Madhumita Murgia $40
What does it mean to be human in a world that is rapidly changing thanks to the development of artificial intelligence, of automated decision-making that both draws on and influences our behaviour? Through the voices of ordinary people in places far removed from Silicon Valley, Code Dependent explores the impact of a set of powerful, flawed, and often exploitative technologies on individuals, communities, and our wider society. Madhumita Murgia, AI Editor at the FT, exposes how A.I. can strip away our collective and individual sense of agency - and shatter our illusion of free will. AI is already changing what it means to be human, in ways large and small. In this compelling work, Murgia reveals what could happen if we fail to reclaim our humanity. [Paperback]
”Code Dependent is the intimate investigation of AI that we've been waiting for, and it arrives not a moment too soon.” —Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Clive and His Hats by Jessica Spanyol $18
Meet Clive — and his imagination! Clive loves his collection of hats, and each one suggests a different adventure. He enjoys playing with them, and sharing them with his friends. A gentle, affectionate book, celebrating diversity and challenging gender stereotypes. [Board book]
Also lovely: Clive and His Babies.
Mr Moon Wakes Up by Jemima Sharpe $20
Mr Moon always sleeps. He naps during hide-and-seek, passes out on puzzles and dozes during adventure stories. But what would happen if Mr Moon ever woke up? Would he lead us to hidden, dream-like worlds, filled with fantastic friends and exciting games? And if he did, would we remember in the morning? Beautifully illustrated. [Paperback]
Read our latest newsletter. Find out what we’ve been reading and recommending. Choose from the latest arrivals and from our annual fiction sale. Find out about some special offers.
31 January 2025
He had always found the countryside horrible, but this, he now realised, was not due to anything inherent in the landscape, so to call it, but due to the rurality that has been imposed everywhere upon the landscape, a rurality fundamentally at odds with the landscape, smothering it, a rurality in some places intolerably dense and in other places miserably attenuated yet everywhere resulting in what he experienced, driving through it, as a terrible claustrophobia. The road, and how he clung to it, provided the only chance of escape from the rurality pressing down upon him, and yet it was the road that brought them, with every bend, deeper and deeper into the countryside. As he drove, he thought of the book that he was reading, Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other by Danielle Dutton, there on the back seat, just in case, though circumstances were unlikely to allow any reading on this journey, or at least he hoped not, certainly not when he was driving, although he had been known to read a book when riding a bicycle, foolishly, where was he, the book, and how the feeling of unease inherent in the stories in the ‘Prairie’ section, especially what he now remembered as the feeling of unease when the narrator is driving through the prairie, though what even is a prairie, he wondered, is any of the landscape we have been driving through today anything like a prairie, the feeling of unease perhaps arises from the unresolved transitional state that the narrator finds herself in, in the prairie or driving through the prairie, whatever that is, either by herself or with other people, members of her family perhaps, or other people, somehow sharing a small capsule of hyperawareness moving through an indeterminate and possibly oppressive landscape, just as in all car journeys and in all stories, borne on detail by detail through what otherwise could have been a long view, though a long view is nothing but impressionistic at best, not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with impressionistic. The road is what matters. In Dutton’s stories, he thought, all manner of often small but generally disquieting uncertainties and disruptions, if uncertainties and disruptions could be anything but disquieting, are introduced into the text or into the narrator’s mind, if there is any difference between the text and the narrator’s mind, and move their weight upon it in causing bends and dips that the narrator must steer herself around or through. In a classic story, as Chekhov iterated, any detail introduced must eventually be discharged, the gun seen early will be fired later, which, he thought, is fundamentally a lie, life is not like that really, and neither are Dutton’s stories. The firing of Chekhov’s gun, he thought, provides relief from the expectation that the gun will at some point be fired, literature is fundamentally reassuring in this way though it has no reason and no right to be. Is that why we read? He had wondered. Dutton’s stories have no such reassurances of shape and no catharses. Details bulge into hyperawareness and the narrator must intensify her awareness of them and steer her anxiety around them and between them, and the cumulation of undischarged and perhaps undischargeable details in the stories result in angst, just like in real life, or so he has found and in fact, if he admitted it to himself, has recently increasingly found, or so it seemed to him, grasping the steering wheel and turning it this way and that as he drove them through this increasingly intolerable rurality. He was now overaware of every turn of the steering wheel, of every acceleration and deceleration, of the way that every slight move he made of his body was translated into or was dictated by the movement of the vehicle upon the infinite turns and inclines of the road, each turn and incline composed as it was of an infinitude of subturns and subinclines, each of which required a subresponse from him as he drove upon them, each of which demanded of him that he not make even the slightest error in his driving. Whereas once he used to feel himself or managed to somehow make himself one with the machine, an extension of the vehicle, moving as one being over the terrain, he was now finding himself uncomfortably separate from the vehicle, acting upon it and responding to it consciously, to every minute variation of the terrain consciously, to every bend and every incline, hyperaware, as if he was writing an infinitely detailed story or a set of instructions for achieving an impossibly complex task, the task of guiding them safely through the rurality of this possibly prairie-like non-prairie landscape, keeping the car not only on the road but comfortably so, a task certainly impossible in its totality but, he hoped, perhaps just achievable as a string of details, a string of details for which the accumulating angst was certainly preferable to discharge. Is the vehicle responding differently, very slightly differently to the terrain, to the bends and inclines that comprise the road they are travelling upon, is there something in the steering, he wondered, or in the wheels, or in the response of the engine to the accelerator, he couldn’t isolate anything, everything seemed fine and the wheels had been recently aligned so it wasn’t that, it wasn’t the car, so perhaps the disconnect he was experiencing was between his awareness-and-intention and his body, perhaps he was becoming or even needed to become hyperaware of his own body, perhaps he was inducing in himself by merely thinking about it one of those degenerative conditions in which, before it is too far progressed, every movement necessarily becomes a set of conscious micro-instructions to the body, micro-instructions that make the movement at first possible but ultimately impossible. He had once written a very detailed description of a person walking up some stairs, he had broken down this action into the smallest possible micro-actions, and he himself had walked up some stairs and worked out how to describe these micro-actions in words and it had filled or wasted several pages, and after that he occasionally found himself repeating the exercise, and it had initially just been an exercise, involuntarily for other actions, which was at first intriguing but ultimately very unpleasant, even horrific, the mind is a fragile instrument to which everything becomes a threat. Everything. He drove on.
‘O brave new world, that has such people in't.’
Gliff is a novel about how we make meaning and how we are made meaningless. With a nod to the traditions of dystopian fiction, a glance at the Kafkaesque, and a new take on the notion of classic, it's a moving and electrifying read, a vital and prescient tale of the versatility and variety deep-rooted in language, in nature and in human nature.
Briar and Rose are left to fend for themselves when the machine leaves a red line around their house. Their mother is working at the hotel and Leif’s in charge, until he leaves them. There is a house empty, but safe. There are horses, and for Rose a particular horse, Gliff. There are the verifibles and the undesirables. To be one of the latter is dangerous, and eventually the red line will come for you, unless…
Ali Smith weaves myth and story, enjoys language like no other writer, and brings charcaters into your mind, and heart, who won’t leave you. Sharp with urgency and as playful as a dance, Gliff is a piece of genius.
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Gliff is a book about authoritarianism, bonding, boundaries, bureaucracy, categories, choices, climate, community, crisis, cruelty, curiosity, data, definitions, devices, disconnection, doubt, exploitation, fables, fierceness, freedom, hope, horses, humanness, identity, imagination, kindness, language, lies, limitations, loss, meaning, meaningless, money, obedience, pollution, power, possibilities, power, profit, questions, rebellion, a red line, reduction, refugees, regulations, reports, resistance, revelation, rigidity, siblings, story-telling, a strange machine, surveillance, the digital world, the othered, the unwanted, toeing the line, truth, undesirables, verification, words.
It’s a book about now, our near future, the past, time. It’s a book that frightens, dances, plays, whispers and shouts. It’s a book that draws on mythology, fairytales, art, poetry and literature; and gives us words that have come before and will go ahead of us. It’s a warning and a promising embrace.
Siblings Briar and Rose are left to fend for themselves. Leif has found them an empty house to wait in. He’s taken their passports, left them with a stack of tinned food and a roll of notes. Their home has been red-lined, their camper van red-lined. There’s a paddock of horses waiting to be sent to the knacker’s yard. Rose and Gliff have formed an unbreakable bond of perfect trust. Briar is putting the pieces of the puzzle together, while Rose is clear-eyed in instinct if not in knowledge, in a world that insists on order. An order that feeds the machine of the wealthy and the powerful.
Ali Smith’s Gliff is a book that I didn’t want to finish. A book so interesting, nuanced and layered, that I did not want to depart. To stay in this playfulness of words, the richness of language and story, to be suspended with curiosity, while also confronted by the urgency of our 21st century landscape must surely be a work of genius. Fortunately, this book is one of a pair; —Glyph will follow Gliff.
Gavin Bishop’s books have been adored by generations of children. With numerous awards to his name and books ranging from Look!, for tiny tots, to Aotearoa, suitable for the whole family, his superb illustrations and excellent stories are delightful and informative. So it’s wonderful to see some of his earlier books back in print in this collection, The Gavin Bishop Treasury.
Here you will find picture book classics like Bidibidi, the adorable Little Rabbit and the Sea, the excellent Rats! and the incorrigible Mr Fox. Mix in some Gavin Bishop-esque fairy tales and you have a perfect book for gifting, reading, and enjoying together…
Rainbows for Bidibidi
Deaming with Little Rabbit
Rapscallion Claw to the rescue
Mischief with Mr Fox!
…Because we think this is a book you should have in your household, we are offering you a $5 sweetener. Use the code TREASURE for this special discount. This week only! Offer ends Sunday 9th February.
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Mapmatics: How we navigate the world through numbers by Paulina Rowinska $40
How does a delivery driver distribute hundreds of packages in a single working day? Why does remote Alaska have such a large airport? Where should we look for elusive serial killers? The answers lie in the crucial connection between maps and maths.In Mapmatics, Dr Paulina Rowinska embarks on a fascinating journey to discover the mathematical foundations of cartography and cartographical influences on mathematics. From a sixteenth-century map that remains an indispensable navigation tool despite emphasizing the North-South divide, and maps of voting districts that can empower or silence whole communities, to public transport maps that both guide and mislead passengers, she reveals how maps and maths shape not only our sense of space and time but also our worldview. [Paperback]
Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren (translated from Norwegian by Agnes Broome) $30
Martin Berg is slowly falling into crisis. Decades ago, he was an aspiring writer who'd almost finished his novel, his girlfriend was the shockingly intelligent and beautiful Cecilia Wickner, and his best friend was the up-and-coming artist Gustav Becker. But Martin's manuscript has long been languishing in a desk drawer, Gustav has stopped answering his calls, and Cecilia has been missing for years. Not long after they were married, she vanished from his life and left him to raise their two young children alone. So who was Cecilia? Martin's eccentric wife, Gustav's enigmatic muse, an absent mother — a woman who was perhaps only true to herself. When Martin's daughter Rakel stumbles across a clue about what happened to her mother, she becomes determined to fill in the gaps in her family's story. [New paperback edition]
”Utterly gripping, like the films of Richard Linklater transmuted to the page. A magnificent doorstop of a novel.” —Guardian
Collected Short Fiction by Gerald Murnane $40
This volume brings together Gerald Murnane's shorter works of fiction, most of which have been out of print for the past twenty five years. They include such masterpieces as 'When the Mice Failed to Arrive', 'Stream System', 'First Love', 'Emerald Blue', and 'The Interior of Gaaldine', a story which holds the key to the long break in Murnane's career, and points the way towards his later works, from Barley Patch to Border Districts. Much is made of Murnane's distinctive and elaborate style as a writer, but there is no one to match him in his sensitive portraits of family members - parents, uncles and aunts, and particularly children — and in his probing of situations which contain anxiety and embarrassment, shame or delight.
’Murnane is without question both the most original and most significant Australian author of the last 50 years, and one of the best writers Australia has produced. This claim will be hotly contested by many — and perhaps most — Australian critics and readers, but I suspect it will become a commonplace sentiment internationally.” —Emmett Stinson, The Guardian
The Glutton by A.K. Blakemore $28
Sister Perpetue is not to move. She is not to fall asleep. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient's room. She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed. But it is hard to believe that this slender, frail man is the one they once called The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon. Before, he was just Tarare. Well-meaning and hopelessly curious, born into a world of brawling and sweet cider, to a bereaved mother and a life of slender means. The 18th Century is drawing to a close, unrest grips the heart of France and life in the village is soon shaken. When a sudden act of violence sees Tarare cast out and left for dead, his ferocious appetite is ignited, and it's not long before his extraordinary abilities to eat make him a marvel throughout the land. [New paperback edition]
”An embarrassment of riches. A sensory assault fit to slap any reader awake with its gorgeous glut of baroque prose and wise, poised lessons on life, pleasure, class, desire, and love.” —Kiran Millwood Hargrave
The Haunting of Hajji Hotak, And other stories by Jamil Jan Kochai $33
Jamil Jan Kochai breathes life into his contemporary Afghan characters, moving between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in America. In these arresting stories verging on both comedy and tragedy, often starring young characters whose bravado is matched by their tenderness. In ‘Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain’, a young man's video game experience turns into a surreal exploration on his own father's memories of war and occupation. Set in Kabul, ‘Return to Sender’ follows two married doctors driven by guilt to leave the US and care for their fellow Afghans, even when their own son disappears. A college student in the US in ‘Hungry Ricky Daddy’ starves himself in protest of Israeli violence against Palestine. And in the title story, ‘The Haunting of Hajji Hotak’, we learn the story of a man codenamed Hajji, from the perspective of a government surveillance worker, who becomes entrenched in the immigrant family's life. The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories is a moving exploration of characters grappling with the ghosts of war and displacement — and one that speaks to the immediate political landscape we reckon with today. [Paperback]
”An endlessly inventive and moving collection from a thrilling and capacious young talent.” —Jess Walter
The Dictionary People: The unsung heroes who created The Oxford English Dictionary by Sarah Ogilvie $28
The Oxford English Dictionary has long been associated with elite institutions and Victorian men. But the Dictionary didn't just belong to the experts; it relied on contributions from members of the public. By 1928, its 414,825 entries had been crowdsourced from a surprising and diverse group of people, from astronomers to murderers, naturists, pornographers, suffragists and queer couples. Lexicographer Sarah Ogilvie dives deep into previously untapped archives to tell a people's history of the OED. Here, she reveals the full story of the making of one of the most famous books in the world. [Paperback]
Free and Equal: What would a fair society look like? by Daniel Chandler $30
Imagine: you are designing a society, but you don't know who you'll be within it — rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like? This is the revolutionary thought experiment proposed by the twentieth century's greatest political philosopher, John Rawls. As economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler argues in this hugely ambitious and exhilarating intervention, it is by rediscovering Rawls that we can find a way out of the escalating crises that are devastating our world today. Taking Rawls's humane and egalitarian liberalism as his starting point, Chandler builds a careful and ultimately irresistible case for a progressive agenda that would fundamentally reshape our societies for the better. He shows how we can protect free speech and transcend the culture wars; get money out of politics; and create an economy where everyone has the chance to fulfil their potential, where prosperity is widely shared, and which operates within the limits of our finite planet. This is a book brimming with hope and possibility — a galvanising alternative to the cynicism that pervades our politics. [Paperback]
”A brilliantly eloquent, incredibly insightful reimagining of liberalism.” —Owen Jones
”Inspiring. Impassioned. Full of hope.” —Zadie Smith
”This is a fantastic book.” —Thomas Piketty
World Without End by Jean-Marc Jancovici and Christophe Blain $65
an eminent climate expert takes a graphic novelist on a journey to understand the profound changes that our planet is experiencing. The scientist, Jean-Marc Jancovici, explains the workings of superpowers and history; oil and climate; ecology, economics and energy flows. He describes, in short, the world we live in today — a world whose future is deeply uncertain. The artist, Christophe Blain, intently listens and draws. As the pair come face to face with global warming, they — along with Mother Nature, Pop Eye and Jiminy Cricket, among others — create a picture of what the solution to our predicament actually looks like. It's not just about switching to renewable energy sources, they show. It's about rethinking everything: our energy supply, our economies, and our whole world. We're left with a vision of the future in which food, education, housing, transport and communities — in other words, all of us — work together and, with a few technological fixes, succeed in creating a world without end. [Large-format hardback]
Portrait Activity Book by Kathryn Box and James Lambert $22
An engaging and insightful introduction to portraits in art, this fun-packed children's book includes activities inspired by fourteen modern and contemporary artworks. Experiment with abstract portraiture like Pablo Picasso, design your own mask with the Guerrilla Girls, and try your hand at creating a word-only portrait inspired by Lorna Simpson! With fascinating facts about each artist's life and work throughout, this book is guaranteed to encourage a deeper understanding of art styles, techniques, and ideas, and introduce young readers to artworks in a variety of media, including photography, mixed media, sculpture, conceptual art, installation art and painting. [Large-format paperback]
What the Wild Sea Can Be: The future of the world’s ocean by Helen Scales $37
Beginning with its fascinating deep history, Scales links past to present to show how the prehistoric ocean ecology was already working in ways similar to the ocean of today. In elegant, evocative prose, she takes readers into the realms of animals that epitomise today's increasingly challenging conditions. Ocean life everywhere is on the move as seas warm, and warm waters are an existential threat to emperor penguins, whose mating grounds in Antarctica are collapsing. Shark populations — critical to balanced ecosystems — have shrunk by 71 per cent since the 1970s, largely the result of massive and unregulated industrial fishing. Orcas — the apex predators — have also drastically declined, victims of toxic chemicals and plastics with long half-lives that disrupt the immune system and the ability to breed. Yet despite these threats, many hopeful signs remain. Increasing numbers of no-fish zones around the world are restoring once-diminishing populations. Amazing seagrass meadows and giant kelp forests rivaling those on land are being regenerated and expanded. They may be our best defense against the storm surges caused by global warming, while efforts to reengineer coral reefs for a warmer world are growing. Offering innovative ideas for protecting coastlines and cleaning the toxic seas, Scales insists we need more ethical and sustainable fisheries and must prevent the other existential threat of deep-sea mining, which could significantly alter life on earth. Inspiring us all to maintain a sense of awe and wonder at the majesty beneath the waves, she urges us to fight for the better future that still exists for the Anthropocene ocean. [Paperback]
Ash’s Cabin by Jen Wang $38
Ash has always felt alone. Adults ignore the climate crisis. Other kids Ash's age are more interested in pop stars and popularity contests than in fighting for change. Even Ash's family seems to be sleepwalking through life. The only person who ever seemed to get Ash was their Grandpa Edwin. Before he died, he used to talk about building a secret cabin, deep in the California wilderness. Did he ever build it? What if it's still there, waiting for him to come back...or for Ash to find it? To Ash, that maybe-mythical cabin is starting to feel like the perfect place for a fresh start and an escape from the miserable feeling of alienation that haunts their daily life. But making the wilds your home isn't easy. And as much as Ash wants to be alone...can they really be happy alone? Can they survive alone? A superb graphic novel from New York Times-bestselling author and illustrator Jen Wang — a singularly affecting story about self-discovery, self-reliance, and the choice to live when it feels like you have no place in the world.
Slow Down: How degrowth communism can save the Earth Kohei Saito $40
The very logic of the capitalist system pits it against Earth's life support systems, and any ‘growth’ a system generates comes at an intolerable cost to our future. Drawing on cutting-edge research across multiple disciplines, Saito suggests that nothing but a transformation of our economic life can save us from climate collapse. Karl Marx himself reached this breakthrough at the end of his life, long before climate change had even begun. What few people realise is that it radically altered his vision of proletarian revolution. Now that we are entering our own end-game, we must grasp Marx's final lesson before it is too late. If we are to avoid the three terrible prospects of climate fascism, climate Maoism or mere anarchy, the future must belong to degrowth communism, a fair and humane existence within the limits of nature. There is no alternative: the endless acceleration of capital has run out of road. [Paperback]
”Slow Down has an almost magic ability to formulate complex thoughts in clear language, as well as to combine strict conceptual thinking with passionate personal engagement. What this means is that Saito's book is not just for anyone interested in ecology or in the problems of today's global capitalism, it is simply indispensable for those of us who want to SURVIVE in short, to all of us.” —Slavoj Zizek
”Philosopher Kohei Saito calls us to reject the logic of economic growth and embrace a different kind of plenty. The key insight, or provocation, of Slow Down is to give the lie to we-can-have-it-all green capitalism. In place of a command economy, Saito puts forth a model based on local experimentation.” —The New Yorker
Oil (‘Object Lessons’ series) by Michael Tondre $23
Oil remains the ur-commodity of our global era, having been distilled from ancient algae and marine life to turn modernity's wheels. Wars are fought over it. Some communities are displaced by its extraction, so that others may reap its benefits. But despite its heated history, few will ever see oil on the ground. Shrouded within a labyrinth of oil fields, pipelines, and manufacturies, it tends to be known only through its magical effects: the thrill of the road, the euphoria of flight, and the metamorphic allure of everything from vinyl records to celluloid film and synthetic clothing. Michael Tondre shows how hydrocarbon became today's pre-eminent power. How did oil come to structure selfhood and social relations? And to what extent is oil not only a commercial product but a cultural one--something shaped by widely imagined dreams and desires? Amid a warming world unleashed by fossil fuels, oil appears as a rich resource for thinking about histories of globalization and technology no less than the energetic underpinnings of literature, film, and art. [Paperback]
The New Classics: The Broadsheet Melbourne Cookbook, Recipes from the city’s best restaurants, cafes, and bars $60
Recipes from 80 of the city's most-ordered breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes, as selected by Broadsheet. Featured venues include Soi 38, Tedesca Osteria, Hope Street Radio, Manzé, Embla, Enter Via Laundry, France-Soir, Gimlet, Grill Americano, Nomad, Reine, Stokehouse, Florian, A1 Bakery, Pidapipó, Tarts Anon, and dozens more.
The Serviceberry: An economy of gifts and abundance by Robin Wall Kimmerer $38
As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition and the hoarding of resources and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry's relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth — its abundance of sweet, juicy berries — to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, "Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency." [Hardback]
The long lists for the this year’s premier book awards in Aotearoa have been announced. Get your copies and start reading now. Tell us what you think!
New Zealand Book Awards Trust Te Ohu Tiaki i Te Rau Hiringa chair Nicola Legat says this year’s longlist is a testament to the talent of the authors and the farsighted publishers who back them.
“Across poetry, prose and non-fiction the list includes books by some of our finest thinkers and most inventive writers. Some tackle today’s burning issues and others are entertaining and escapist reads. All deserve our admiration.
“The 2025 longlist is one of great riches. The judges have a difficult job ahead of them to select the shortlists and eventual winners,” she says.
We can have your books dispatched by overnight courier, or ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction
All That We Know by Shilo Kino (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Maniapoto) (Moa Press)
Amma by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press)
Ash by Louise Wallace (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
At the Grand Glacier Hotel by Laurence Fearnley (Penguin, Penguin Random House)
Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Kataraina by Becky Manawatu (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe, Waitaha) (Mākaro Press)
The Mires by Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā) (Ultimo Press)
Poorhara by Michelle Rahurahu (Ngāti Rahurahu, Ngāti Tahu–Ngāti Whaoa) (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Pretty Ugly by Kirsty Gunn (Otago University Press)
The Royal Free by Carl Shuker (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry
Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud by Lee Murray (The Cuba Press)
The Girls in the Red House are Singing by Tracey Slaughter (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Hibiscus Tart by Carin Smeaton (Titus Books)
Hopurangi - Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka by Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu) (Auckland University Press)
In the Half Light of a Dying Day by C.K. Stead (Auckland University Press)
Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit by Emma Neale (Otago University Press)
Manuali ʻi by Rex Letoa Paget (Saufoʻi Press)
/Slanted by Alison Glenny (Compound Press)
Slender Volumes by Richard von Sturmer (Spoor Books)
Slim Volume by James Brown (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
BookHub Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction
Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa by Matiu Baker (Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Whakaue), Katie Cooper, Michael Fitzgerald and Rebecca Rice (Te Papa Press)
A Different Light: First Photographs of Aotearoa by Catherine Hammond and Shaun Higgins (Auckland University Press)
Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist by Jill Trevelyan, Jennifer Taylor and Greg Donson (Massey University Press)
Fenoga Tāoga Niue I Aotearoa: Niue Heritage Journey in Aotearoa by Molima Molly Pihigia, Toluma'anave Barbara Makuati-Afitu, Kolokesa Uafā Māhina-Tuai, Hikule'o Fe'aomoeako Melaia Māhina and Janson Chau (Mafola Press)
Force of Nature Te Aumangea o Te Ao Tūroa: A Conservation History of Forest & Bird 1923-2023 by David Young and Naomi Arnold (Potton & Burton)
Golden Enterprise: New Zealand Chinese Merchants 1860s-1970s by Phoebe H. Li (Chinese Poll Tax Heritage Trust)
Leslie Adkin: Farmer Photographer by Athol McCredie (Te Papa Press)
Sam the Trap Man: Cracking Yarns and Tall Tales from the Bush by Sam Gibson (Allen & Unwin New Zealand)
Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa by Kirsty Baker (Auckland University Press)
Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art by Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) and Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī) (Auckland University Press)
General Non-Fiction Award
Bad Archive by Flora Feltham (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
The Beautiful Afternoon by Airini Beautrais (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Becoming Aotearoa: A New History of New Zealand by Michael Belgrave (Massey University Press)
The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
Feijoa: A Story of Obsession & Belonging by Kate Evans (Moa Press)
Hard by the Cloud House by Peter Walker (Massey University Press)
Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery by Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku (Te Arawa, Tūhoe, Ngāpuhi, Waikato)(HarperCollins Publishers Aotearoa New Zealand)
The Invasion of Waikato Te Riri ki Tainui by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books)
Kahurangi: The Nature of Kahurangi National Park and Northwest Nelson by Dave Hansford (Potton & Burton)
The Mermaid Chronicles: A Midlife Mer-moir by Megan Dunn (Penguin, Penguin Random House)
The Twisted Chain by Jason Gurney (Ngāpuhi) (Otago University Press)
Unreel: A Life in Review by Diana Wichtel (Penguin, Penguin Random House)
The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation by Richard Shaw (Massey University Press)
Read our latest newsletter. Find out about some new cookbooks, and about a prepublication offer. Our ‘Fiction Reductions’ sale continues!
24 January 2025
The results of any laboratory testing for cell abnormality or antigen present as either positive or negative but the passage of time demonstrates the result categories to be four: true positive, false positive, false negative and true negative; or, rather, the results are either positive or negative and the cellular abnormality or antigen is either present or absent, but the two sets of two categories are not superimposed due to error margins, indeterminacy and ambiguity. What is seen and what actually is overlap only in the majority of instances. Every statement has its confidence undermined, largely due to the processes by which the statement is achieved. Girl at End is concerned with laboratory testing and is itself a form of laboratory testing even when not ostensible about laboratory testing, but, often, about music, if music is not itself a form of laboratory testing. Girl at End is a book about seeking confidence in precision but losing confidence because of uncertainty about that to which precision has been applied, precision being always more certain about its origins than its applications. Girl at End is an accumulation of data fields that may or may not represent that to which they are applied, however googlable the data in the data fields may be, data fields through which people move, impelled by whatever it is that impels people, not our concern, not knowable, not useful knowledge even if it were knowable, and as they move through the data field, the data, in constant movement, bounces off their surfaces, scattering, interpenetrating, both defining and concealing whatever, whoever, has entered the field. Only surfaces make any sense. Interference in the flow of text, for instance, is both a camouflage and a revelation. Depending on the nature of the test, the grooming of the data field, the flavour of the obsession, disparate entities may present as similar and similar as disparate. This both increases our dependence upon the tests and undermines our confidence in the tests. False positives. False negatives. What if these were in the majority? We would be liberated into indeterminacy while still clutching at the tests even though we would know these tests were less reliable than not. Our presence in the data field can produce nothing but ambiguity. Uncertainty is our signature, evidence of our presence in a field comprised of data, the more precise, the more detailed, the better. Girl at End is a “literature of exhaustion.” Northern Soul meets laboratory cytology: Girl at End is the interpenetration of the two. When one’s interest is not very interesting but just interesting enough to qualify as an interest and when one’s occupation is not very occupying but just occupying enough to qualify as an occupation, it is the interpenetration of the two, by virtue of the spinning of a turntable or a centrifuge, the interpenetration, the mixing, the mutual contamination, if we can think of it as contamination, that makes us more than either the so-called interest or the so-called occupation. Only when exhausted can we find respite. Lab-lit is best read clean and leaves no residue. “Girl at End is feeling so virtual. Branco speaks. Sheriff speaks. Branco speaks again.” What people say is only mouthed. The words are obscured by the words of the songs on the soundtrack that overwhelms the screenplay, songs from the past, incidentally, as all data is from the past, but the screenplay is vital to the TV show because without it no-one would know how to be or what was what, depending on whether the screenplay is prescriptive or descriptive, and this is itself by no means certain. The screenplay is perhaps after all no screenplay but the notebook of some alien uncertain of what is important enough to record. “Paul Sartre eats his bowl of chips. They don’t seem like anything. It’s like they’re imbued with nothing.”
“It’s the same thing time and time again, shamelessly, tirelessly. It doesn’t matter whether it’s morning or afternoon, winter or summer. Whether the house feels like home, whether somebody comes to the door to let me in. I arrive, and I want to stay, and then I leave.” All My Goodbyes is a novel for the restlessness in us all. Mariana Dimópulos’s protagonist is a young woman on the move. Leaving Argentina at 23 in an attempt to thwart her father’s ambitions and to escape the confines of what she sees as her predictable life, she heads to Madrid with the idea of being an ‘artist’, smoking hashish and hanging out, discussing ‘ideas’ with other travellers. After only a month, she is bored and on the move again, reinventing herself — being Lola or Luisa — whichever identity fits, being a tourist or a traveller, making new backstories, but never quite the truth. She is ambiguous to those she meets and, at times, to the reader also. We follow, or aptly, interact with her life over a decade as she swings between several European places — Madrid, Malaga, Berlin and Heidelberg to mention a few — and South America, washing up in rural Patagonia. The narrative is fractured as she relays her memories, skidding across one experience to the next and back again in a looping circuit, tossing us backwards and forwards in time. We are taken into conversations and thrown out again; we interact with those she has formed relationships with and ultimately said goodbye to. We see her as a traveller, tourist, voyeur, baker, shelf stacker, factory worker, farmhand. Upon this fractured narrative, a web is woven as we piece together the relationships that make her and break her — and always there is an impending sense of something or someone that will change her, a sense of threat with the axe taking centre stage. Dimópulos’s writing is subtle and agile. We do not mind being tossed on our protagonist's sea. In fact, we are curious. We love her late-night conversations with Julia in her kitchen, leaning up against the bench with the sleepy Kolya bunched up in his mother’s arms; we wonder when she will give in to the gentle charms of the scholar Alexander; and question why she is fascinated by the uber entrepreneur Stefan. We know, before it happens, that she will abandon them all, that her desire to leave is greater than her desire to stay. She travels full circle: we encounter her back in her homeland — still restless, still moving — living in the southernmost part of Patagonia. Working for Marco and his mother she finally finds a place to stop. Yet deceit and disaster settle here and take her onward and away, against her will and desire. Is she the architect of her own disaster, creating impossible situations? Her abandonment of people in her life is at times mutually beneficial, at other times cruel. Why does she not speak up, or face up to herself, when she could make a difference? Her riposte is always to leave — to turn her back. While the themes in this novel are restlessness, abandonment and departure, the writing, in contrast, is assured, subtly ironic, agile and so compelling that you will want to reread this — you will want to keep arriving.
NAOMI ARNOLD WALKS AOTEAROA!
Walking from Bluff, at the southern tip of the South Island, to Cape Reinga, at the northern tip of the North Island, award-winning journalist, and author of Southern Nights, Naomi Arnold spent nearly nine months following Te Araroa, fulfilling a 20-year dream. Alone, she traversed mountains, rivers, cities and plains from summer to spring, walking on through days of thick mud, blazing sun, lightning storms, and cold, starlit nights. Along the way she encountered colourful locals and travellers who delight and inspire her. This is an upbeat, fascinating, and inspiring memoir of the joys and pains found in the wilderness, solitude, friendship, and love.
NORTHBOUND: Four Seasons of Solitude on Te Araroa will be published in April, 2025.
Order now for a signed copy at a special price: a pre-publication discount of 10%.
Use the code WALK at the check-out if ordering through our website — or just email us to secure your copy. Offer ends March 10th.
Cookbooks come in many guises. From your go-to favourite every day to special-occasion-feasting recipe books. From reference books which give you the science of cooking and definitive descriptions of ingredients, to those that talk food and eating. They all excite our interest in food and give us more cooking knowledge. These four recent books all combine witty, informative and passionate writing with recipes and food experiences, celebrating the pleasure of food in life, and lives in food!
Australian dedicated, almost obsessive, foodie Virginia Trioli delivers lively asides and joyful reflections with A Bit on the Side. Here you will find the sweet, the sour, the bitter and the sharp, all infused with delight. A Bit on the Side revels in the small moments: the sauces that make the dish, the joy of the perfect side salad, the local ingredient and the bits stuffed inside. Dotted with recipes, foodie hints and plenty of storytelling Trioli celebrates the small bursts of flavour that give life joy and meaning.
'A humorous reminder that the smallest things often carry the biggest rewards.' BONNIE GARMUS
'Utterly delightful. Trioli's passion for life - and food, glorious food - crackles through every joyous page. A book so rare and so bloody well done.' TRENT DALTON
'Each page is full of zest, wit and joy; Virginia writes like an angel.' CHLOE HOOPER
What could be better? Art, cuisine, and famous writers! The Bloomsbury Group fostered a fresh, creative and vital way of living that encouraged debate and communication ('only connect'), as often as not across the dining table. Gathered at these tables were many of the great figures in art, literature and economics in the early twentieth century: E. M. Forster, Roger Fry, J. M. Keynes, Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf, among many others. The Bloomsbury Cookbook - Recipes for Life, Love and Art is part cookbook, part social and cultural history. Generously illustrated with artworks and photographs, filled with menus and recipes this is perfect for lovers of food, literature, art, and history.
'I need this book!' - Nigella Lawson
'Glorious ... a feast of eccentric detail' - New Statesman
'A window onto Bloomsbury via recipes, grocery lists, pantries, kitchens and, above all, dining tables' - Virginia Nicholson
Restuarant critic and award-winning writer Jay Rayner’s first cookbook! 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. 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 irresistible dishes to inspire all cooks.
'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
A unique work of literary and culinary joie de vivre, part food memoir, part recipe book, French Cooking for One is Michèle Roberts' first cookbook, and a personal and quirky take on Édouard de Pomiane's ten-minute cooking classic. Once a food writer for the New Statesman, Roberts was born in 1949 and raised in a bilingual French-English household, learning to cook from her French grandparents in Normandy. Her love of food and cookery has always shone through in her novels and short stories.
From quick bites for busy days to sumptuous main courses for those who enjoy spending more time in the kitchen, the focus throughout this book is on dishes that are simple and fun to prepare, and results that are mouthwatering to contemplate and, of course, to eat. With over 160 delicious recipes, the majority of which are vegetarian, combined with piquant storytelling and feminist wit, French Cooking for One is a working cook's book with French flair, bursting with life and illustrated with the author's original ink drawings, full of charm and humour.
Levy invites the reader into the interiors of her world, sharing her intimate thoughts and experiences, as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of the literary and artistic muses that have shaped her. From Marguerite Duras to Colette and Ballard, and from Lee Miller to Francesca Woodman and Paula Rego, Levy shares the richness of their work and, in turn, the richness of her own. Each short essay draws upon Levy's life, encapsulating the precision and depth of her writing, as she shifts between questions of mortality, language, suburbia, gender, consumerism, and the poetics of every day living.
A selection of books from our shelves.
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17 January 2025