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31 October 2025
If you can resist this book, you are an expert in avoiding something thrilling. Giselle Clarkson’s excellent book about all things birds is sure to engage young minds and old. Filled to the brim with intriguing information, it’s perfectly pitched with its bite-size chunks of text, excellent diagrams and illustrations, and humorous asides. Clarkson encourages us to be avian investigators: equipped with our toolkit of omnibird knowledge and our best tool — observation. Being a bird puzzle-solver has never been more lively. From poop to feathers, to all the parts of the wing, to the different styles of wings, and tails, and heads, and beaks, you’ll be spotting birds high above you, deciphering and coming up with —It’s a gull! A blackbird or possibly a thrush! A starling! There are 18 investigator notes featuring a range of birds, including ducks, gulls, corvids, chickens, flightless birds, birds of prey, and the humble sparrow. There are beautiful eggs (spot the odd one out!), a plumology lesson, an array of different nests from the carefully woven thrush work to the scattershot style of the sparrow, and an explainer on bird names — you’ll know your gymnorhina tibicen from your griseotyrannus aurantioatrocristatus in no time! And so much more. Clarkson’s wonderful illustrations draw you in (there’s great bird attitude here), and the text is lively — so many facts, but also humour and speculation. While there are answers to bird questions you didn’t know you had, there are also questions to ask. What does it feel like to fly? What are they saying? What bird would you be? There’s a charge to use your imagination and your detective skills (observational senses). It's a book about birds and it’s a book about noticing the natural world around us — its awesomeness. Omnibird is a gem — a book that informs, inspires and delights.
He began to think that a sixty-year audit of some sort was unavoidable even if it was also undesirable, even though he was generally fairly successful at avoiding whatever he deemed undesirable (most things, in fact). He had lately been finding himself increasingly reluctant to do even those things that he certainly wanted to do. He had made avoidance his life’s work, he realised: he had started by avoiding things that were both undesirable and unnecessary, and then moved through avoiding things that were either undesirable but necessary or desirable but unnecessary, and he was currently exercising his avoidance on things that were certainly both desirable and necessary. Why was he doing this? Where would it end? Also, he thought, since when has avoidance become my life’s work? I must have had, or thought I had, some other purpose at some point, or if not purpose then intention or at least inclination, he thought, but my avoidance has been all too effective with regard to something that was not even a necessity, or at least became less of a necessity as I got better at it. He was, he estimated, being soft on himself, at least twenty years behind where his writing would be if his writing was more important to him. Evidently it was less important now than it had been, he realised, otherwise surely he would spend more time actually doing it, or if not actually doing it then actually trying to do it. Avoidance was more his line. True, he had avoided writing any number of bad books, more bad books than many accomplished writers had avoided writing, but he wasn’t sure if this was an accomplishment in itself. Being a writer meant that it was always writing that he was not doing, as opposed to all of the other many things that he was also not doing. There were, of course, many fortunate people who did even less writing than he did but it was not for them specifically writing that they were not doing, which must be a relief to them, he thought. So, if he stopped avoiding writing, if he replaced some of the other many things that he did in his life presumably to avoid writing with actual writing, could he make up the twenty years of work that he had just estimated he had lost? If he did this year for year, he estimated, he would be where he could have been now when he got to be the age of Joy Williams, the author of the book that he was reading when he began what has turned out after all to be a sort of involuntary audit. This is encouraging, he thought, but then, he thought, Joy Williams has been on some sort of plateau for well more than twenty years, or if not exactly a plateau then some other upland with a shallower incline than the one that certainly lay ahead of him and for which he doubted that he had now either the stamina or the strength to ascend. If I write metaphors, I cross them out straight away, he thought, but how can I cross out a thought? Few of the ninety-nine stories in Joy Williams’s Concerning the Future of Souls are more than a page long; many are a single paragraph or even a single sentence. As with the book’s 2016 predecessor, Ninety-Nine Stories of God, the stories in this new book, which is subtitled 99 Stories of Azrael, are written with a spareness and flatness that he admires, in the language of a newspaper report or an encyclopedia entry, trimmed utterly of superfluities, and read like jokes that end up making us cry instead of laugh, or like laments that make us laugh instead of cry. Williams comes at her subjects at unexpected angles, he thought, revealing an inherent strangeness in what we might have thought to be the most ordinary details, and, conversely, making the most bizarre details seem entirely familiar and mundane. Really, he thought, life is like this, in both ways, though we blind ourselves to this as best we can. Joy Williams has the literary gift of being able to shake these scales from our eyes. He had sworn off metaphors decades ago, even metaphors in thought, but sometimes they just sneak out. More than several of the stories in the book concern Azrael, the so-called Angel of Death, who is not Death nor the cause of death, but is more a reluctant functionary, updating the register of the living, writing and erasing the names of the living and helping the souls to move on. But where to? The proximity of an extinction event, so to call it, either or both personal and collective, for the author, for the reader, for everyone and everything, adds a sort of urgency to these stories that makes us hyperaware of each detail as we are in any developing tragedy or disaster. The most tragic is the most ludicrous too, he thought, and vice versa. A good piece of literature has the same effect upon our awareness as a disaster. The 99 stories in this book have the texture of Biblical parables or Aesopian fables, he thought, but they are not parables or fables due to the indeterminacy of their meanings, or they are parables or fables that eschew the lessons and morals usually expected of parables or fables and return the reader instead to the actual. What more could we want from a story? What more could we really want full stop? The title of each story follows the story and often sits at odds with the reader’s experience of the story, forcing a further realignment of sensibilities, he thought. More, again, of what we want. Of what I want. How can such an immense knowledge, experience and learning be packed by Williams into something so simple and immediate, the weight of existence into something so astoundingly light? How can we have time, especially nowadays, for anything that falls short of this? The urgency is upon us all, he thought, or at least he felt it upon himself, and he was uncertain how to respond. Should he perfect his avoidance, or should he clutch, too late, perhaps almost too late, at whatever it was he was attempting to avoid?
HE CANNOT TELL AN AUDIT FROM A REVIEW
“A Kosovan torture survivor requests translation assistance at his therapy sessions. The novel’s narrator, a nameless translator, reluctantly agrees. But Alfred’s account of his experiences conjures hidden memories that seep into her psyche, forcing her to question her marriage and her place in the world. This is a story of a woman saddled between her Albanian past and her New York present. It explores the way that language is kept in our bodies, how it can reveal truths we aren’t ready to hear. Misinterpretation subtly blurs the distinction between help and harm. We found it propulsive, unsettling, and strangely human.” —Booker Prize judges’ citation
All your choices are good! Click through to our website (or just email us) to secure your copies, and we will dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
Omnibird: An avian investigator’s handbook by Giselle Clarkson $45
This highly illustrated, playful field-guide to common international birds brings the art of observology to the science of ornithology, showing the many ways these familiar creatures are remarkable if you take time to look. Have you seen a bird today? Probably, unless you’re reading this in bed in the morning. Did you truly look at the bird? To open your ornithological eyes and ears, meet the Omnibird. An Omnibird contains the essential birdiness of every bird—it was born from an egg, has feathers, two legs, a beak and gizzard, perhaps some premium features like spurs or a curuncle. Once you recognise the Omnibird, you’ll see the remarkable in any bird. You’ll be expert at finding extraordinary things around you, just by looking. Omnibird describes 12 common birds from habitats around the world—eagles, owls and seabirds, starlings, ducks and swans. You will explore the incredible internal structure of bird bones, learn what a gizzard stone is for, meet the tiny creatures that live on birds, and find the fascinating in eggs, bird poop, feathers, and flight patterns. Now you’re an Omnibird expert, you’ll look at every bird in new ways every day. [Large-format hardback]
>>Look inside!
>>A big, funny book all about ornithology.
>>The Observologist.
How to Rebuild Trust in Journalism by Tim Watkin $20
”There is little more important to the success of the human species than the trust that allows information networks to form and thrive, communities to share and trade, and people to see the world as it really is.” Award-winning journalist Tim Watkin confronts the breakdown in trust between journalism and the public. Drawing on the latest international and local research, he explores the social, economic and political shifts that have eroded public confidence in journalism. From financial pressures and ideological divides, to a perceived lack of transparency and the rise of misinformation, How to Rebuild Trust in Journalism examines how journalism’s role has been questioned — and what can be done to restore its standing. [Paperback]
>>Other BWB Texts.
Chapter on Love by Miklós Szentkuthy (translated from Hungarian by Erika Mihálycsa) $55
Written between Szentkuthy's first major work, Prae (1934), and the first book of the St. Orpheus Breviary (1939), Chapter on Love (publ. 1936) exemplifies well Szentkuthy's writing of excess. An attempt at polyphonic writing, it brings together the perspectives of an unlikely set of characters including the mayor of a doomed Italian city, given to debilitating ‘impressionism’ — a penchant for observing and analysing —apart the minutest shades of reality — a nihilistic pope, a hanged brigand, a courtesan and her decadent pubertal adorer. They pass through the pages of this quixotic and compelling book under the threat of imminent catastrophe, filling chapter after chapter with passionate, self-generating theorising and (mock-)philosophising on the margins of Empedocles, life and death, stockings, endingness and changeability, ethics and aesthetics, vitality and law, chaos and social order grounded in horror vacui, the forever elusive other person — all enmeshed with well-nigh self-parodic, idiosyncratic feats of ratiocination and theorising driven ad absurdum, which proliferate on the analogy of (free) association. The common denominator of their analytical furore and the yarns they spin is love, which touches not only on the human being, but the whole of nature, from the realm of plants to that of minerals. Szentkuthy's book may don the costume of a historical novel, but it stands under the sign of the pseudo: its deliberately vague setting, somewhere in Italy toward the end of the Renaissance, is in fact but a mask which allows for anachronism (of realia, ideas, data, and even terminology) to ooze through, as the characters and their observations are our contemporaries in every respect. Baroque and exuberant, of a sweeping melancholia and at times savage humor, a (mock-)treatise written with an abundance of striking, distant associations that evoke Surrealist practices, this strange novel tantalisingly shows a path not taken by experimental modernism, of the contrapuntal use of point-of-view converted into a contrapuntal use of analytic, essayistic observations of reality. [Paperback]
>>Pressing.
>>Working towards an impossible novel.
The Rose Field (‘The Book of Dust’, Volume 3) by Philip Pullman $38
The long-awaited and highly anticipated conclusion to Philip Pullman’s bestselling ‘The Book of Dust’ sequence. “Lyra: what will you do when you find this place in the desert, the opening to the world of the roses?” ’‘Defend it,” Lyra said. ‘“ie defending it.” When readers left Lyra in The Secret Commonwealth she was alone, in the ruins of a deserted city. Pantalaimon had run from her — part of himself — in search of her imagination, which he believed she had lost. Lyra travelled across the world from her Oxford home in search of her dæmon. And Malcolm, loyal Malcolm, too journeyed far from home, towards the Silk Roads in search of Lyra. In The Rose Field, their quests converge in the most dangerous, breathtaking and world-changing ways. They must take help from spies and thieves, gryphons and witches, old friends and new, learning all the while the depth and surprising truths of the alethiometer. All around them, the world is aflame — made terrifying by fear, power and greed. As they move East, towards the red building that will reunite them and give them answers — on Dust, on the special roses, on imagination — so too does the Magisterium, at war against all that Lyra holds dear. Marking thirty years since the world was first introduced to Pullman’s remarkable heroine Lyra Belacqua in Northern Lights, The Rose Field is the culmination of the cultural phenomenon of The Book of Dust and His Dark Materials. [Paperback]
’Powerful, profound and utterly unforgettable: a stunning trilogy conclusion.’ —The Telegraph
”Pullman's uncanny ability to conjure place is once again in full evidence . . . And when we reach it, the novel's final showdown is a fantastically nail-biting ride.” —The Guardian
”But for all its intricate interweavings of alchemy and folk tales, ballads and poetry, the book has the pacing of a thriller.” —The Times
>>The world is falling apart.
>>Read an extract!
>>Also by Philip Pullman.
Silence Is My Habitat: Ecobiographical essays by Jessica White $37
Jessica White has been deaf since she was four years old. Where an autobiography or biography narrates the story of a person's life, an ecobiography dwells on a person's interaction with their ecosystem, and how this shapes their sense of self. The essays that follow detail how deafness encouraged and shaped her relationship with the natural world. "Deafness made me observant and quiet. Because I could not hear enough to join in on conversations, my attention often wandered or was absorbed by sensations other than sound — morning sun on my forearms, the thick, sweet scent of flowering oleanders, the triangular shadow of a flock of galahs flying overhead. On the long bus trips between school and home, I watched the sorghum burnishing as it ripened, and kangaroos bounding through wheat stubble in the late afternoons, into trees that cast long shadows. I felt the bus shake as it rattled over cattle grids or veered into the corrugations on the gravel roads." These essays consider how deafness shapes the interfaces between the writer and particular environments, given how she can only hear particular sounds, as she navigates the world through the tactile and olfactory. In these poetic essays, she describes her responses to bodies of water, the university, the archive, the bush, and the quietened realm of the pandemic. She writes of burnt trees amidst the devastating loss of her mother. She finds a flock of deaf women writers who help her fly. White reveals that deafness, although it brings fatigue and isolation, is also a portal to a rich, contemplative, and creative life. [Paperback]
Olivetti by Allie Millington $20
Being a typewriter is not as easy as it looks. Surrounded by books (notorious attention hogs) and recently replaced by a computer, Olivetti has been forgotten by the Brindle family—the family he’s lived with for years. The Brindles are busy humans, apart from 12-year-old Ernest, who would rather be left alone with his collection of Oxford English Dictionaries. The least they could do was remember Olivetti once in a while, since he remembers every word they’ve typed on him. It’s a thankless job, keeping memories alive. Olivetti gets a rare glimpse of action from Ernest’s mother, Beatrice—his used-to-be most frequent visitor—only for her to drop him off at Heartland Pawn Shop and leave him helplessly behind. When Olivetti learns Beatrice has mysteriously gone missing afterward, he believes he can help find her. He breaks the only rule of the "typewriterly code" and types back to Ernest, divulging Beatrice’s memories stored inside him. Their search takes them across San Francisco—chasing clues, maybe committing a few misdemeanors. As Olivetti spills out the past, Ernest is forced to face what he and his family have been running from, The Everything That Happened. Only by working together will they find Beatrice, belonging, and the parts of themselves they’ve lost. [Paperback]
"Millington's writing does us a great favor. Her Olivetti is neither an automaton nor a pushover — there is a painful and problematic crisis in the house he has called home and his voice drives the action with compassion. Ernest speaks with a confusion and simmering panic recognisable to anyone who was once 12, loved their mother deeply and feared for her life. The Brindles will go on confronting "Everything," with hope, gusto and all the unity they can muster. They will set the family table for seven, with a place for Olivetti; put paper in his carriage, and wait." —Tom Hanks in the New York Times Book Review
Literature for the People: How the pioneering Macmillan brothers built a publishing powerhouse by Sarah Harkness $35
From an impoverished childhood in the Scottish highlands to Victorian London, this is the story of two brothers – Daniel and Alexander Macmillan — who built a publishing empire — and brought Alice in Wonderland to the world. Their remarkable achievements are revealed in this entertaining, superbly researched biography. Daniel and Alexander arrived in London in the 1830s at a crucial moment of social change. These two idealistic brothers, working-class sons of a Scottish crofter, went on to set up a publishing house that spread radical ideas on equality, science and education across the world. They also brought authors like Lewis Carroll, Thomas Hardy and Charles Kingsley, and poets like Matthew Arnold and Christina Rossetti, to a mass audience. No longer would books be just for the upper classes. Daniel was driven by the knowledge that he was living on borrowed time, his body ravaged by tuberculosis. Alexander took on responsibility for the company as well as Daniel’s family and turned a small business into an international powerhouse. He cultivated the literary greats of the time, weathered controversy and tragedy, and fostered a dynasty that would include future prime minister Harold Macmillan. Includes fascinating insights about the great, the good and the sometimes wayward writers of the Victorian era, with feuds, friendships and passionate debate. [Paperback]
Caring for Kahurangi: The inspiring story of Friends of Flora by Sandy and Robin Toy, with photographs by Ruedi Mosimann $60
Caring for Kahurangi is the story of one of the most successful community-led conservation projects in New Zealand. For the last 25 years, the volunteer group Friends of Flora has been trapping predators, translocating birds, surveying and monitoring, determined to restore the biodiversity of the rugged country of Flora, situated on the eastern edge of Kahurangi National Park. This book describes the journey of Friends of Flora, weaving tales of volunteer adventures, rigorous science and magical encounters into an inspiring story and what can be achieved with great commitment, drive and friendship. [Hardback]
>>Look inside.
The Amendments by Naimh Mulvey $30
Nell and her partner Adrienne are about to have a baby. For Adrienne, parenthood is the start of a new life. For Nell, it's the reason the two of them are sitting in a therapist's office. Because she can't go into this without facing the painful truth: that she has been a mother before. For Dolores, Nell's mother, the news also brings a reckoning: with the way her daughter's life unfolded fifteen years ago, with its inextricable ties to her own past, and with the tragedy that neither of them have spoken about since. Set in Ireland against the backdrop of a series of abortion referendums. [Paperback]
”Niamh Mulvey's wonderfully compelling characters and deft, clear prose offer great pleasure. Her sense of political and cultural change is sharp, and the beauty she finds in days of struggle is haunting.” —Joseph O'Connor
”A smart, subtle, engrossing and moving novel that gives voice to so much that's unspoken about Ireland and about youth.” —Emma Donoghue
Clearing the Air: A helpful guide to solving climate change — In 50 questions and answers by Hannah Ritchie $40
With so many conflicting headlines out there, it's tough to sort fact from fiction when it comes to climate change and the solutions we need for a cleaner future. The first piece of good news is that data scientist Hannah Ritchie is here with answers, and the steps we need to take now. Using simple, clear data, she tackles questions such as, 'Is it too late?', 'Won't we run out of minerals?' and 'Are we too polarised?'. The second piece of good news — the truth is way more hopeful than you might think. We're at a critical moment for our planet, and getting the facts straight is step one. But even more crucial is feeling hopeful about what we can do next. The third piece of good news? We already have many of the solutions we need to create a more sustainable planet for future generations. [Paperback]
”An essential myth-busting primer on climate actions for everyone navigating the blizzard of confusing opinions and misinformation around the defining issue of our time.” —Gaia Vince
”If there were a Nobel Prize for clear thinking, Hannah Ritchie would have my vote. She doesn't just cut through the noise — she vaporises it. With a scientist's rigor and a storyteller's grace, she shows us what the data actually says about the biggest challenges of our time. Her work is essential reading for anyone who still believes facts can change minds and optimism can change the world.” —Rutger Bregman
A Short History of Almost Everything 2.0 by Bill Bryson $40
The 21st century's bestselling popular science book has now been fully revised and updated in Bill Bryson's inimitable style to reflect the many advances in science since this book was first published in 2003. This journey through time and space will inform a new generation of readers as well as those who read this book on first publication with a new perspective based on what we know now. A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 is the result of Bill Bryson's quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilisation — how we got from being nothing at all to what we are today. Now fully updated to include all the latest advances in science, it is more ground-breaking than ever before(!). Bryson makes complex subjects fascinating and accessible to everyone with an interest in the world around them. [Paperback]
”Possibly the best scientific primer ever published.” —Economist
”Truly impressive. It's hard to imagine a better rough guide to science.” —Guardian
All your choices are good! Click through to our website (or just email us) to secure your copies, and we will dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
Things That Disappear by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated from German by Kurt Beals) $36
A collection of interlinked miniature prose pieces that grapple with the phenomenon of disappearance on scales both large and small. The things that disappear in these pages range from everyday objects such as socks and cheese to close friends and the social norms of common courtesy, to sites and objects resonant with East German history, such as the Palace of the Republic or the lines of sight now blocked by new construction in Berlin. Erpenbeck asks: "Is there some kind of perpetrator who makes things that I know cherish and disappear?" These things disappear, and yet do they really? Do they remain in our memories more fully than if they continued to exist? [Paperback]
"The most profound, intelligent, humane, and important writer of our times." —Neel Mukherjee
"Wonderful, elegant, and exhilarating-ferocious as well as virtuosic." —Deborah Eisenberg, The New York Review of Books
"Her restrained, unvarnished prose is overwhelming." —Nicole Krauss
"Meditative, moving, and profoundly beautiful." —Edmund de Waal
"In these tender, poignant pieces, Jenny Erpenbeck is attuned to the silence left in the wake of an absence or disappearance. She captures the ineffable quality of memory with a quiet, haunting intensity, where a sentence or a paragraph can turn on a word and devastate." —Mary Costello
>>Junk.
>>They disappeared when the wall came down.
Sea, Poison by Caren Beilin $43
Cumin Baleen is a forty-one-year-old writer living in Philadelphia — this city of hospitals — who works at the upscale grocery Sea & Poison and is navigating the onset of an autoimmune condition. To start a medication that may help, an eye exam is required and this leads to a nightmarish laser eye surgery. The laser shoots into her brain, making her language spare and her sentences clause-less, a vexing constraint that stalls her book on gynecological malpractice: she wants others, in the realm of our for-profit medical industry that "renders the Hippocratic Oath its opposite," to see poison. Meanwhile, Cumin is kicked out of her boyfriend Mari's studio after he falls for Janine, their landlord, and starts renting a closet in Maron's bedroom — polyamorous Maron who is hooking up with Alix, whom Cumin lusts after. Disheveled from medicines and medical scams, Cumin declares, "I don't know what to say, I'm saying I have a cracked appearance. It's not a pity party, it's a character sketch. Insofar as you'll need to be looking at me, that your mind should fill me up with its own swaying cognitive and toxic reeds if we are to do this, your imagination should touch me with its ridiculous poison." Caren Beilin's hypnotic and fractured story is at once an homage to Shusaku Endo's terrifying novel of human vivisection The Sea and Poison and the spirit of OuLipo, the pioneering French writing group that sought new literary potential through constraints. [Paperback]
“An absurdist masterpiece. Nothing, just nothing, is as wild, outrageous, and free as Sea, Poison.” —Amina Cain
"Caren Beilin is one of the most bizarre and fearless writers of her generation." —Catherine Lacey
"I was instantly won over by Beilin's writing — so funny and serious and playful. Her books have the natural authority of those artworks that are strictly, rigorously themselves." —Sheila Heti, The Paris Review
"It's not often I read a work and want to know, simply, how. How did the writer write this?" —Patrick Cottrell, LA Review of Books
>>An enormous amount of ground.
>>Revenge of the Scapegoat.
>>Now and next.
Swallows by Natsuo Kirino (translated from Japanese by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda) $38
Twenty-nine-year-old Riki is sick of her dead-end job, of struggling to get by ever since she moved to Tokyo from the country. So when someone offers her the chance to become a surrogate in return for a life-changing amount of money, it's hard to turn down. But how much of herself will she be forced to give away? Retired ballet star Motoi and his wife, Yuko, have spent years trying to conceive. As Yuko begins to make peace with her childlessness, Motoi grows increasingly desperate for a child to whom he can pass on his elite genes. Their last resort is surrogacy; a business transaction, plain and simple. But as they try to exert ever more control over Riki, their contract with her starts to slip through their fingers… Vibrating with the injustices of class and gender, tradition and power, Swallows is an acerbic, witty vision of contemporary Japan, and of a young woman's fight to preserve her dignity — at any cost. [Paperback]
”Natsuo Kirino's novels bring us into direct contact with human life. Her fearless pen forces us to confront the ugliness, intensity and depth of our own desires, to the point that we cannot look away. But just as those desires reach a fever-pitch, she restores our faith in humanity, in a way that only Kirino can. The relentless beauty of her stories leaves me breathless every time.” —Meiko Kawakami
”A timely and engrossing drama about desire, precarity, and the uses of a woman's body. Kirino's psychologically compelling and sharp-witted storytelling draws us into her characters' lives, leaving us to answer: do our bodies have a price and who gets to decide?” —Ruth Ozeki
”A masterful feat of storytelling as well as a biting critique of gender, patrimony and class. . . A writer in effortless command of her craft, Kirino brilliantly upends our expectations at every twist and turn. Just when you thought things could not get any more complicated, she deftly ups the ante. The resulting tension builds to a startling ending that both disturbs and delights.” —Julie Otsuka
The Story of the Stone: Tales, entreaties and incantations by James Kelman $35
James Kelman has made use of the short form all of his writing life, calling on the different traditions where such stories are central within the culture, beginning and ending in freedom, the freedom to create.This collection of nearly a hundred pieces of very short fiction spans five decades and reveals James Kelman's mastery of the form. As ever, Kelman insists on his characters telling their stories in their own voices, whether in working-class Glaswegian dialect or the dull menace of bureaucratic babble. Everyday tragedy and bleak humour colour these marvels of narrative efficiency, yet at their core they are tender and full of human truth. Kelman’s uncompromising literary approach and radical politics caused some controversy when he was awarded the 1994 Booker Prize for How Late It Was, How Late. [Paperback]
"The real reason Kelman, despite his stature and reputation, remains something of a literary outsider is not, I suspect, so much that great, radical Modernist writers aren't supposed to come from working-class Glasgow, as that great, radical Modernist writers are supposed to be dead. Dead, and wrapped up in a Penguin Classic: that's when it's safe to regret that their work was underappreciated or misunderstood (or how little they were paid) in their lifetimes. You can write what you like about Beckett or Kafka and know they're not going to come round and tell you you're talking nonsense, or confound your expectations with a new work. Kelman is still alive, still writing great books, climbing." —James Meek, London Review of Books
>>Your stories are your own.
Super-Frog Saves Tokyo by Haruki Murakami (translated from Japanese by Jay Rubin), illustrated by Suzanne Dean $38
Katagiri found a giant frog waiting for him in his apartment. It was powerfully built, standing over six feet tall on its hind legs. A skinny little man no more than five foot three, Katagiri was overwhelmed by the frog's imposing bulk. “Call me \’Frog,’\" said the frog in a clear, strong voice. Katagiri stood rooted in the doorway, unable to speak. 'Don't be afraid. I'm not here to hurt you. Just come and close the door. Please.' Briefcase in his right hand, grocery bag with fresh vegetables and canned salmon cradled in his left arm, Katagiri didn't dare move. “Please, Mr. Katagiri, hurry and close the door, and take off your shoes.” Fully illustrated and beautifully designed, this special edition of Murakami's celebrated short story sees the bewildered Katagiri find meaning in his humdrum life through joining forces with Frog in an effort to save Tokyo from an existential threat. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!
Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings $38
Sub-tropical Bellworth is founded on floodplains and root-bound secrets. And Charlie, remarkable only for vanished friends and a successful sister, plans to leave for good, as soon as he deals with his dead aunt's house. Then Grace arrives, with roses pressing up through her skin, and drags Charlie into the ghost-choked mysteries of Bellworth, uncovering the impossible consequences of loss and desire — and a choice Charlie made when he was a boy. But peeling back the rumours and lies that cocoon the suburb disturbs more than complacent neighbours and lost souls. And Charlie and Grace are forced to a decision that threatens not only their lives, but all they believed those lives could be. [Paperback]
”Gorgeously written. I was so busy admiring the writing that I didn't notice how deep the water had gotten or what was growing underneath.” —T. Kingfisher
”Eerie and mesmeric, silted with a deep sense of foreboding, Honeyeater reads like a memory-old myth, like something dangerous and true.” —Cassandra Khaw
>>From under the houses.
Anima: A wild pastoral by Kapka Kassabova $28
Over the course of one summer, Kapka Kassabova lives with perhaps the last true pastoralists in Europe. She joins the epic seasonal movement of vast herds of sheep, along with shepherds and dogs, to find pasture in the Pirin mountains in Bulgaria. As she becomes attuned to the sacrifices inherent in this isolated existence, Kassabova finds herself drawn deeper into the tangled relationships at the heart of this small community. Anima is a spellbinding portrayal of the human-animal interdependence in pastoral life, and a plea for a different way of living — one where we might all begin to heal our broken relationship with the natural world. [Paperback]
”A book that mesmerises with its sense of adventure and epic sweep, this is creative nonfiction at its best.” —Guardian
”A haunting, beautiful book from what feels a darkly enchanted land. Kassabova is an extraordinary writer who slips into the skin of a place. Fiercely intelligent, scalpel-sharp, at once romantic and toughly pragmatic: Anima will live with me for a long time.” —Cal Flyn
In Defence of Leisure: Experiments in living with Marion Milner by Akshi Singh $40
The celebrated psychoanalyst Marion Milner lived for the entirety of the twentieth century. By the age of ninety-eight she had written nine books revealing how free time and creativity are vital for a fulfilled life. Akshi Singh was born ninety years after Milner, in Rajasthan, over four thousand miles away from where Milner lived and worked. At first glance, the worlds of these two women seem entirely separate. Yet when Singh found herself standing at a crossroads in her life and grieving personal loss, she realised the questions and preoccupations Milner was exploring were her own. In Defence of Leisure presents Marion Milner as a writer for our times. In asking the simple question — how do I want to spend my free time? Milner developed a method for discovering her true likes and dislikes. As Singh follows Milner's approach — from keeping a diary to painting, building a home to travelling to the sea — she discovers the importance of rest, creativity and play in all of our lives, and how it can open the door to achieving what we truly desire. [Paperback]
”This poetic, graceful and original book not only demonstrates the richness and relevance of Marion Milner's work today but also offers many insights into the choices we make - or fail to - in love, leisure and work. Singh helps us to understand how we inhabit our lives, and how we can start thinking about inhabiting them differently. An illuminating and thought-provoking book that will appeal to a very wide audience.” —Darian Leader
”In Defence of Leisure lilts beautifully between whispering diaries and the chant of a manifesto. Akshi Singh has crafted an exquisite, open-hearted celebration of desire, friendship and lives imaginatively lived. Yet she never shies from questions of risk, of where to put our anger, or of what we concede in exchange for love. Untangling security - so often pernicious and compromising - from care, Singh insists on a wide horizon, full of freedom, for everyone.” —Marianne Brooker
>>Wrapped in foil.
>>The joys of reading in bed.
>>X.
>>Books by Marion Milner.
A Woman’s Eye, Her Art: Reframing the narrative through art and life by Drusilla Modjeska $65
When a woman makes art, what does she see? When she picks up her brush and looks in the mirror? When she takes off her clothes and paints herself naked? Or when she raises her camera and turns it towards another woman, a model naked there in front of her? And how is she seen when she turns to face the men, the artists, her colleagues, her friends, her lovers? A Woman's Eye, Her Art looks back to the lives and art of European modernist women who recast the ways in which women's bodies could be seen — from the self-portraits of Paula Modersohn-Becker, to the Surrealist Claude Cahun who exposed the masquerades of femininity, to the radical nudes of photo-artists Lee Miller and Dora Maar. Alongside them in Paris during the first decades of the twentieth century were many artist-women, their friends and colleagues, including Clara Westhoff-Rilke and Gabriele Münter, Leonora Carrington and Meret Oppenheim. In this book, Drusilla Modjeska examines why these women still matter and connects their past to our present. This book is about the spirit it took for these artist-women to step out on that path, and the courage it took to stay there. It is the story of what they saw, and how they were seen as they crashed against the hypocrisies that are embedded deep in the structures of society. And it is about hard-fought freedoms as in their different ways they changed the landscape of the art world and reframed the narrative. [Hardback]
>>Look inside.
>>Not seeing the shadow.
The Nuclear Age: An epic race for arms, power, and survival by Serhii Plokhy $45
On 16 July 1945, the Nuclear Age began with the explosion of the first atomic bomb and the words quoted by J. Robert Oppenheimer — “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds”. While the threat of mutually assured destruction may have kept a lid on a simmering and tense geopolitical landscape, events like the Chernobyl disaster and near-misses like the Cuban Missile Crisis showed that total destruction was only ever one malfunction, mistake, or miscommunication away. Now, as governments re-arm their nuclear arsenals, treaties designed to limit the acquisition and use of nuclear weapons fall away, and nuclear weapons come increasingly within reach of non-state actors, we are on the brink of a renaissance of the nuclear industry. In The Nuclear Age, Plokhy paints an intricate picture of a world governed by fear. From the first artificial splitting of the atom in 1917 and the race to create the first atomic bomb in World War II, through the fraught arms race of the Cold War, to the imperialism, neo-colonial motivation and wars being waged today, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is as pertinent as ever. As he examines the motivations of key players, Plokhy confronts the crucial question of our age — what can we learn from the first nuclear arms race that can help us to stop the new one? [Paperback]
”Few historians write with Serhii Plokhy's authority, clarity or global vision. The Nuclear Age is not only the definitive account of how nuclear power and peril have shaped the modern world, but a profound warning about the risks we still face. This is essential reading, and a marvellous book.” —Peter Frankopan
”Panoramic in scope and fastidious in detail. Plokhy's perfectly timed, compelling and essential book reminds us that the spectre of nuclear extinction is not a cold war nightmare but a permanent condition of modern life.” —Financial Times
>>Other books by Serhii Plokhy.
Feathers of Aotearoa: An illustrated journal by Niels Meyer-Westfeld $60
Meyer-Westfeld explores the feathers of Aotearoa’s native birds, from the long wing feathers of an albatross that enable it to soar endlessly over the oceans, to the tiny, insulating feathers of a penguin. Feathers are one of nature’s most remarkable evolutionary developments, an ingenious solution to the countless environmental challenges that birds face. This exquisitely illustrated book, that combines artwork with compelling insights, will reveal a largely unknown aspect of the avian world, and will appeal to anyone with an interest in our unique bird life. [Large-format hardback]
>>Look inside!
A selection of books from our shelves that get their literary juice by reworking other works. Click through to find out more:
Dedalus [Ulysses by James Joyce (with appearances by Hamlet)]
James [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain]
Perfection [Things by Georges Perec]
Great Expectations [Great Expectations by Charles Dickens]
Call Me Ishmaelle [Moby-Dick by Herman Melville]
Autobiography of Red [fragments by Stesichoros]
A Ghost in the Throat [‘Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire’ by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill]
Beasts of England [Animal Farm by George Orwell]
P.S. Just arrived! Sea, Poison [The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo]
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24 October 2025
Ella loves horses. She loves her gran Grizzly and her home in a southern rural town. She’s most at home on her pony Magpie and cantering across the hills, especially at her favourite time of the day — the grimmelings — a time when magic can happen. Yet she’s lonely and wishes for a friend for the summer. Mum’s busy, and grumpy, looking after everyone and running the trekking business; Grizzly’s getting sicker, although she still has time to tell Ella and her little sister Fiona strange tales and wild stories of Scotland; and the locals think they are a bunch of witches. Ella knows there is power in words and when she curses the bully, Josh Underhill, little does she know she will be in a search party the next day. With Josh missing, and a strangely mesmerising black stallion appearing out of nowhere, this is not your average summer. When Ella meets a stranger, she strikes up an unexpected friendship. Has her wish come true? Why does she feel both attracted and wary of this overly confident boy, Gus? With Josh still missing, Mum’s made the lake out of bounds. That’s the last place Dad was seen six years ago. The lake with its strangely calm centre is enticing. What lurks in its depths — danger or the truth? Rachael King’s The Grimmelings is a gripping story of a girl growing up, of secrets unfolded, and a vengeful kelpie. Like her equally excellent previous children’s book, Red Rocks, King cleverly entwines the concerns of a young teen with an adventure story steeped in mythology. In Red Rocks, a selkie plays a central role, here it is the kelpie. King convincingly transports these myths to Aotearoa, in this case, the southern mountains, and in the former novel, the coast of Island Bay. There are nods to the power of language in the idea of curses, but more intriguing, and touching, are the scraps of paper from Grizzly with new words and meanings for Ella — and for us, the readers. Words are powerful and help us navigate our place in the world and ward off dangers when necessary. Yet the beauty of The Grimmelings lies in its adventure and in the courage of a girl and her horse, who together may withstand a powerful being, and maybe even break a curse. Laced with magical words, intriguing mythology, and plenty of horses, it’s a compelling, as well as emotional, ride.
Where can you fly through portals, confront monsters, make dragons your friends, adventure alongside amicable beasts, and be saved from danger by ingenuity, a little luck, and a good dose of knowledge? In books, of course. To celebrate the magnificent Taniwha landing, here’s a selection of books from our shelves.
Gavin Bishop’s books are always excellent. His new picture book, Taniwha, is a wonderful collection of pākūrau to expand your horizons, of creatures monstrous and tricky, as well as kaitiaki — protectors of people and the land and sea. Here you will find Tuhirangi who travelled with Kupe and lives in the depths of Te Moana a Raukawa, the tale of Moremore, son of Pania, who takes the shape of a shark, and the different natures of Whātaitai and Ngake — the taniwha of Te Whanganui o Tara. Beware the hunger of Tūtaeporoporo and the rage of Hotupuku. Superb illustrations, a glossary, and splendid story-telling.
If dragons are your game, look no further than Dragonkeeper by Carole Wilkinson. Set in the Han Dynasty, a slave girl finds out she is descended from a long line of dragonkeepers. Adventures ensue as Ping is set a great quest by an ancient dragon — a quest that will require bravery and heart. Along the way Ping will discover talents she possesses which will surprise not only her, but those she encounters on her journey.
(This is the first in an excellent series.)
Impossible Creatures: The Poisoned King is not to be missed nor triffled with. Head through the portal to a world of magical creatures, danger and intrigue. Well-paced action, humour, and emotional complexities make the nuanced writing of best-sellling author Katherine Rundell hard to put down. Open this book to a map of islands surrounded by mythical ceatures, and a warning!
“They would have said it wasn’t possible. They would have said she didn’t have it in her. It was in her, but deep. What’s under your house, if you were to dig? Mud and worms. Buried treasure. Skeletons. You don’t know. The girl dug into the depth of her heart and there she found a hunger for justice, and a thirst for revenge.”
Irresistible!
If you like graphic novels, Young Hag from the wonderful illustrator and writer Isabel Greenberg is a delight. It’s an alternative Britain of dragons and wizards, but the magic is fading. When a changeling is discovered in the woods, Young Hag, the youngest in her family of witches, is sent on a quest to discover the source of these magical problems. Greenberg ingeniously reinvents the women in Arthurian legend, transforming the tales of old into a heart-warming coming-of-age story.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin is now available as a graphic novel. Thoughtfully adapted by illustrator Fred Foreman, this will appeal to fans of the classic and those new to it.
Ged is on the path to being a mage, but to do so he must master his powers and confront a shadow-beast which he has let loose when toying with spells beyond his ability. Foreman captures the complexities of this coming-of-age story bringing the darkness and light of Le Guin’s story onto the page with a brooding colour palette, sweeping vistas, raw emotion, and visual details of the magical and natural world.
It is very tiring to get everything done properly, he said, it is exhausting and, really, a waste of time to get everything done properly, but it is just as exhausting and just as much a waste of time to get everything done not properly, to do a mediocre job, so to speak, he said. As not doing anything at all does not seem to be an option available to me, despite its attractions, he said, as doing nothing is fraught with its own existential dangers, so to call them, I may as well do everything properly, he said. This is a terrible trap. I will exhaust myself and waste my time whether I do things properly or not, nobody will notice whether I do things properly or not, I am uncertain if I can tell whether I am doing things properly or not myself, but they would notice if I do nothing at all. Perhaps what I call properly is in fact mediocre, I aspire to the mediocre but fall short, or I aspire to excellence and fall short, it makes no difference, I fall to the same point, somewhere below the mediocre, far below excellence, I fall to my place in the order of things whether I aspire to the mediocre or to the excellent, I may as well aspire to excellence, whatever that means, and fail more grandly, he said, though he was unsure if this failure was more grand or more pathetic. He had, he said, entertained the intention, at least briefly, of writing a proper review of Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard, he had been rereading Old Masters not merely but at least partly for the purposes of writing this review, and he had even, while researching this review or this book, discovered what seemed to him to be a video game in which he could move around the galleries of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, although there were some galleries he could not enter for some reason, perhaps he had to advance to another level or perhaps he was just clumsy, avoiding the gallery attendants, searching for the location in which almost the entire book is set: the bench facing the painting White-Bearded Man by Tintoretto. Using the navigation arrows provided for the purpose by Google, he found, the player of the game can become well acquainted with the endless parquet flooring of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, with the marble staircases and gilded cornices and door-frames of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and with much of what Reger, the dominant voice if not the narrator of Bernhard’s book, dismisses as its collection of “Habsburg-Catholic state art. The Kunsthistorisches Museum is entirely in line with the artistic taste of the Habsburgs, who, at least where painting is concerned, had a revolting, totally brainless Catholic artistic taste,” writes Bernhard as Atzbacher quoting Reger, Atzbacher being the book’s narrator, even though pretty much all he does is quote what Reger has at some time said. He must concentrate on his review, he thought, I am determined to write a proper review, he said aloud, forgetting that he had already reviewed the book with a proper review, or in any case something slightly closer to a proper review than what he felt himself now capable of, not that that is saying much, some years before. Old Masters is an entirely musical book, he wrote, starting at last in a sensible way, despite being set in a painting gallery it is entirely musical both in its phrasing and in its structure, if there is a difference between the two, he thought, drifting from the task, the musical form of the book is what matters, he wondered if he could say the form is all that matters, that form is all that ever matters. Old Masters is narrated in one unbroken paragraph by Atzbacher, about whom we learn little, he wrote, but the voice that reaches us is the voice of Reger, an elderly music reviewer, who has arranged to meet Atzbacher on their regular bench in front of the White-Bearded Man but on an irregular day, they normally meet there on alternate days only. Atzbacher arrives early in order to watch Reger waiting for him from the next room, and the first half of the book consists of Atzbacher telling us what Reger has previously told him, of Reger speaking through Atzbacher, so it seems, just as Reger also speaks, as Atzbacher notes, through the museum attendant Irrsigler: “Irrsigler has, over the years, appropriated verbatim many, if not all, or Reger’s sentences. Irrsigler is Reger’s mouthpiece, nearly everything that Irrsigler says has been said by Reger, for over thirty years Irrsigler has been saying what Reger has said. If I listen attentively I can hear Reger speak through Irrsigler.” As with Irrsigler so with Atzbacher, he thinks, Atzbacher seemingly unaware of the irony. Old Masters is a very funny book, he thinks, Reger’s reported opinions amount to a stream of invective against pretty much everything held in esteem in the society in which Reger lives, and in which Bernhard lived, separated as they are only by tense, admiration, after all, being for Bernhard a form of mental weakness. “There has virtually been no culture in Vienna for a long time, and one day there will really be no culture of any kind left in Vienna, but it will nevertheless be a cultural concept even then. Vienna will always be a cultural concept, it will more stubbornly be a cultural concept the less culture there is in it,” writes Benhard as Atzbacher as Reger and perhaps again as Bernhard. Well, he thought, as with Vienna so with Nelson, though I will not write that down, he thought. Heidegger, Stifter, Bruckner, Vienna’s public lavatories, restaurants, politicians, all are derided in the most amusing fashion and at length, he wrote, in this first section, in the words of Reger as remembered by Atzbacher as he watches Reger waiting for him to arrive. This might even be Bernhard’s funniest book, he thought, the way Reger’s ridicule surges through it, builds and collapses. When Atzbacher keeps his appointment with Reger, Reger’s rants continue via Atzbacher, but at one step less remove, the rants continue but the tone changes, subtly, Old Masters might be Bernhard’s both least and most subtle book, he thought, the least subtle because of Reger’s ranting but the most subtle because of the modulation in that ranting, all in this one paragraph, the rant no longer filtered by Atzbacher’s memory is more extreme, nastier, less enjoyable, clumsier, is the fact that I can go along with Reger’s rants in the first half a mark against me, he wondered, and if so am I redeemed by being put off when we meet Reger himself in the second, so to speak, when we meet Reger in the raw, so to speak, he wondered, and Atzbacher intercuts what Reger says to him at this time in the gallery with recollections of what Reger has said to him previously at the Ambassador cafe, and the depth of Reger’s unhappiness since the death of his wife is expressed in sequences of sentences, each ending “...Reger said at the Ambassador then,” repeated like sobs, and the unhappiness flows through and gives depth to the rest of the book, which principally concerns the difficulties of carrying on living is a world devoid of value, Old Masters is perhaps Bernhard’s funniest book and his saddest. “Oh yes, Reger said, the logical conclusion would invariably be total despair about everything. But I am resisting this total despair about everything, Reger said. I am now eighty-two and I am resisting this total despair about everything tooth and nail, Reger said.” Reger’s vitriol is a survival mechanism, he wrote, to despise is to survive, that is clumsily put, he thought, too clumsily put to write down. “One’s mind has to be a searching mind, a mind searching for mistakes, for the mistakes of humanity, a mind searching for failure. The human mind is a human mind only when it searches for the mistakes of humanity, Reger said. A good mind is a mind that searches for the mistakes of humanity and an exceptional mind is a mind that finds the mistakes of humanity, and a genius’s mind is a mind which, having found these mistakes, points them out and with all the means at its disposal shows up these mistakes.” Reger despises nothing more than old masters, so Reger says, and this is why he has sat on his bench at the Kunsthistorisches Museum every other day for thirty years. “Art altogether is nothing but a survival skill, we should never lose sight of this fact, it is, time and again, just an attempt to cope with this world and its revolting aspects, which, as we know, is invariably possible only by resorting to lies and falsehoods, to hypocrisy and self-deception, Reger said. … All these pictures, moreover, are an expression of man’s absolute helplessness in coping with himself and with what surrounds him all his life. … All these so-called old masters are really failures, without exception they were all doomed to failure.” Our obsession with art, he thought, if we have an obsession with art, or with celebrity, if we have that, or with sport performers, so to call them, or with wealthy people, or actors, or singers, is not with how these apogees of achievement are more successful than us, more skilled, more wonderful, more spiritual even, whatever we mean by that, but with the flaws, the weaknesses, vices and misfortunes that make them like us after all, failures, and we are reassured that not even great success, however that is measured, not even great skill, not even great fame would stop us from being failures, and so we need not therefore even strive for these things, they would not in any case save us, so to speak. When the worst happens, though, we are devastated but it is not true to say that we do not also feel relief, and this is the saddest thing of all, he thought. “Reger was looking at the White Bearded Man and said, the death of my wife has not only been my greatest misfortune, it has also set me free. With the death of my wife I have become free, he said, and when I say free I mean entirely free, wholly free, completely free, if you know, or if at least you surmise, what I mean. I am no longer waiting for death, it will come by itself, it will come without my thinking of it, it does not matter to me when. The death of a beloved person is also an enormous liberation of our whole system, Reger now said. I have lived for some time now with the feeling of being totally free. I can now let anything approach me, really anything, without having to resist, I no longer resist anything, that is it, Reger Said.” Atzbacher accepts the ticket Reger offers him to attend a performance of Kleist’s The Broken Jug, a work also mocking human faillings, at the Bergtheater that evening, but, Atzbacher says, “The performance was terrible,” ending the book with the first opinion he has expressed that might be his own, though, given the formative influence of Reger upon him, can any opinion be his own, can anyone’s opinion anyway be considered their own, he wondered. I will give up on this review, he decided, I cannot write the review properly he realised, whatever could constitute properly, perhaps I could have done so once but I can do so no longer, at least not today, the only day I have to write it, he thought, my mind no longer performs in that way. He had spent a long time playing the Kunsthistorische Museum game but he could not find the painting of the White Bearded Man.
Unfortunately we need this book now more than we ever thought that we would — and we need it more by the day. Geoffrey Palmer draws on his experience as former Prime Minister, Minister of Justice, and Attorney-General to get people thinking about the state of New Zealand’s democracy. Palmer offers rare insights into the machinery of power and its vulnerabilities, and rather than surrendering to pessimism, he presents a roadmap for renewal. At a time when authoritarianism rises globally and the rule of law faces unprecedented threats, Palmer’s message is clear: ordinary citizens hold the key to democratic revitalisation through civic engagement and vigilance. This collection of thoughtful essays challenges readers to reclaim their role in governance. Palmer argues that regardless of which parties hold power, without public awareness and participation, democratic institutions will continue to weaken.
“It’s political,” say ministers both prime and sub-prime, trying to disparage collective action taken by workers in the health, education, and public service sectors (as if politics were some kind of dirty thing). They are right in this at least: politics is and should be the ways we work together with those whose interests we share to make the world better for us all. Are the outcomes of our political structures expressing this?
Here is a selection of books from our shelves. Click through to find out more about them:
How to Save Democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand
Fierce Hope: Youth Activism in Aotearoa
Nature, Culture, and Inequality
All your choices are good! Click through to our website (or just email us) to secure your copies, and we will dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
Lili Is Crying by Hélène Bessette (translated from French by Kate Briggs) $30
Lili is Crying, Hélène Bessette's debut novel, explores the fraughtness and depth of the troubling relationship between Lili and her mother Charlotte. With a near-mythic quality, Bessette's stripped-back prose evokes at once the pain of thwarted love — of desire run cold — and the promise of renewal. Lauded by critics on its initial publication in 1953 for its boundary-pushing style, Lili is Crying marked the beginning of a singular writing career. Bessette's work is here translated into English for the first time. [Paperback with French flaps]
”In Hélène Bessette’s novel Lili is Crying, the tears are unavoidable. They’re in the title, and ten pages in, I was emailing everyone I could about the book. It felt electric and urgent, as if Bessette should have long been in my canon, with Ingeborg Bachmann or Elizabeth Hardwick, Lynne Tillman and Annie Ernaux. Lili shares the cartoon’s casual violence, which is not to say the novel is comic, though at times it is, yes, darkly funny. It is beautiful, brutal.” —Jennifer Kabat, 4 Columns
”Kate Briggs’s deft translation brings Hélène Bessette’s novel into English for the first time. Bessette plays with line breaks and typography, exercising what Eimear McBride refers to in her beautiful introduction as ‘formal indiscipline’. Lili is Crying is the loudest book I have ever read. From Lili’s ‘desperate sobs’ to the ‘trumpeting love’ of Lili and the shepherd, the writing rattles like a set of cutlery in a tumble dryer. Miraculously, all the noise coheres into an elegant symphony.” —Oonagh Devitt-Tremblay, Literary Review
”I’m grateful to Kate Briggs for her translation of Lili is Crying – a tragic, comic, invigorating book with an eccentric staccato style that blurs speech and thought.” —Kathryn Scanlan
The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey $40
A genre-bending story about breaking — both of the heart and literary form itself. The sudden, devastating breakup of a relationship in the winter of 2021 left Catherine Lacey depressed and adrift. She began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a process that led to the writing of fiction that was both entirely imagined and strangely, utterly true. She soon realised that she was writing about her relationship with faith. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey's appetite vanished completely, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that followed the ending of her belief in God. Bending form, both she and her fictional characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, grief-driven lust and the redemptive power of platonic love and narrative itself. A hybrid work that is both non-fiction and fiction with no beginning and no ending, The Möbius Book troubles the line between memory and imagination with an open-hearted defence of faith's inherent danger. [Hardback]
''A deliciously weird mix of theology, allegory and dark humour; The Moebius Book is every bit as brilliant and electrifying as everything Lacey has ever written.'' —Sara Baume
''A page-turner in both directions, The Moebius Book explores some of the most propulsive questions at the core of human intimacy. I was absolutely spellbound.'' —Leslie Jamison
>>Read from either end!
>>Infinite regress.
>>Now and next.
Orlanda by Jacqueline Harpman (translated from French by Ros Schwartz) $26
There's a voice in Aline's head — a voice that wants out. Brash, boisterous and sexually adventurous, this voice seems to be the antithesis of Aline, a prim literature professor for whom each day promises to be as quiet and conventional as the last. That is until, after thirty-five years of imprisonment, her alter ego breaks free. Taking on a life of his own, Orlanda — Aline's second self — slips into the taut, rugged body of a young man. As Aline continues unaware, Orlanda follows, dragging gleeful chaos in his wake, vowing to leave both their existences forever altered. From the author of I Who Have Never Known Men. [Paperback]
>>Chaos ensues.
Whenua $70
At nearly 400 pages, this beautifully designed book from the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū is rich with large images of paintings, prints, sculptures, weaving, carving, ceramics, photographs and moving image artworks. The landscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand have long been a powerful source of inspiration for artists. This major new book explores the importance of whenua in our art history through the work of more than 100 of this country’s most celebrated artists. Beginning in Te Waipounamu and reaching outwards, across Aotearoa and beyond to Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific, Whenua thoughtfully explores ideas of identity and belonging, kaitiakitaka, land use, migration, environmentalism and activism through a selection of important historical and contemporary artworks. A vibrant and very readable range of texts, interviews and perspectives by leading writers—including Su Ballard, Emalani Case, Huhana Smith, Cosmo Kentish-Barnes, Lily Lee, Hana O’Regan, Rebecca Rice, Matariki Williams and many more—provides insight into the many ways that whenua is fundamental to the visual language and identity of the arts in Aotearoa. Artists include: Mark Adams, Rita Angus, John Gibb, Bill Hammond, Louise Henderson, Ralph Hotere, Lonnie Hutchinson, Robyn Kahukiwa, Emily Karaka, Doris Lusk, Riki Manuel, Colin McCahon, John Miller, Buck Nin, John Pule, Bridget Reweti, Baye Pewhairangi Riddel, Olivia Spencer Bower, Margaret Stoddart, Bill Sutton, Wi Taepa, Areta Wilkinson and many more. Beautifully presented and full of both iconic and surprising images. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovitz $38
What’s left when your kids grow up and leave home? When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair, he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned 18. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact. He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he’s been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class — something he hasn’t yet told his wife. So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past — an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son — on route, maybe, to his father’s grave in California. Pitch perfect, quietly exhilarating and moving, The Rest of Our Lives is a novel about family, marriage and those moments which may come to define us. [Paperback]
Short-listed for the 2025 Booker Prize.
”It’s clear author Ben Markovits has spent time teaching. This novel speaks like a much-loved professor, one whose classes have a terribly long waitlist. It’s matter of fact, effortlessly warm, and it uses the smallest parts of human behaviour to uphold bigger themes, like mortality, sickness, and love. The Rest of Our Lives is a novel of sincerity and precision. We found it difficult to put it down.” —Booker Prize judges’ citation
”The Rest of Our Lives is another quiet triumph, an elegant, devastating book that lays bare the way time calcifies our failures, how we find ourselves trapped not by circumstance but by the slow erosion of the will to escape. Markovits has long been one of our most under-appreciated novelists; this is yet more proof that he deserves far greater recognition.” —Alex Preston, Guardian
>>Read an extract.
>>Watch a bit.
>>On writing about middle age.
How To Art: Bringing a fancy subject down to earth so we can all enjoy it by Kate Bryan, illustrated by David Shrigley $40
A funny, inviting and full-colour book about art for people who don't know about 'art'. Featuring original artworks by David Shrigley What is art, where do I find it, and once I'm in front of it, what am I supposed to think about it? Kate Bryan is a self-confessed art addict who has worked with art for over twenty years. But before she studied art history at university, she'd been into a gallery just twice in her life and had no idea she was entering an elitist world. Now, she's on a mission to help everybody come to art. Like playing or listening to music, or cooking and eating great food, reading or watching films, making art or looking at other people's deserves to be an enriching part of all our lives. So here, in How to Art, is a nifty way to take art on your own terms. From where it is to what it is, to tips on how to actually enjoy really famous artworks like the Mona Lisa, to how to own art and make art at home, through to vital advice for making a career as an artist and even how to make your dog more cultural, How to Art gives art to everyone, and makes it fun. Laced throughout with original artworks by the very down-to-earth artist David Shrigley. [Hardback]
>>Look inside.
”Finally! Art without terror!” —Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood $38
Amid a global pandemic, one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together — of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease. She's afraid of her own floorboards, and ‘What is love? Baby don’t hurt me’ plays over and over in her ears. She hates her friends, or more accurately, she doesn't know who they are. Has the illness stolen her old mind and given her a new one? Does it mean she'll get to start over from scratch, a chance afforded to very few people? The very weave of herself seems to have loosened: time and memories pass straight through her body. "I'm sorry not to respond to your email," she writes, "but I live completely in the present now.” Will There Ever Be Another You is the phosphorescent story of one woman's dissolution and her attempt to create a new way of thinking, as well as an investigation into what keeps us alive in times of unprecedented disorientation and loss.” [Paperback]
”This novel offers moments of hilarity, scenes of rich drama, and a dazzling number of references. It is determined to be less than the sum of its parts. It is deliberately perverse, refusing to hang together. Lockwood is not arguing that the centre cannot hold: she is showing that it does not hold.” —Claire Monagle, Australian Book Review
>>Long Covid from the inside.
>>Unclear moral standing.
The Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung (translated from Korean by Anton Hur) $37"
A novel-in-ghost-stories, set in a mysterious research centre that houses cursed objects, where those who open the wrong door might find it's disappeared behind them, or that the echoing footsteps they're running from are their own. An employee on the night shift at the Institute learns why some employees don't last long at the centre. The handkerchief in Room 302 once belonged to the late mother of two sons, whose rivalry imbues the handkerchief with undue power and unravels those around it. The cursed sneaker down the hall is stolen by a live-streaming, ghost-chasing employee, who later finds he can't escape its tread. A cat in Room 206 reveals the crimes of its former family, trying to understand its own path to the Institute's halls. But Chung's haunted institute isn't just a chilling place to play. As in her astounding collections Cursed Bunny and Your Utopia, these violent allegories take on the horrors of animal testing, conversion therapy, domestic abuse, and late-stage capitalism. Equal parts bone-chilling, wryly funny, and deeply political. [Paperback]
”Timetable will absorb you in the shadows of its imagination, marvellous oddness, humour and heart. It's a wild midnight tour of a uniquely brilliant and exquisitely demented world, terrifying and enchanting — a world I did not want to leave!” —Gerardo Samano Cordova
>>Waiting for the bus.
>>From the graveyard shift.
Israel on the Brink: Eight steps for a better future by Ilan Pappe $39
Israel can’t go on like this. 7 October and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza laid bare the cracks in its foundations. It was unveiled as a country unable to protect its citizens, divided between messianic theocrats and selective liberals, resented by its neighbours and losing the support of Jews worldwide. While its leaders justify bombing campaigns, atrocities and manmade famine in the Gaza Strip, Israel is becoming a pariah state. Its worst enemy is not Hamas, but itself. Ilan Pappe paves a path out of the Jewish state, rooted in restorative justice and decolonisation, including the release of all Palestinian prisoners, the end of illegal settlements, and building bridges with the Arab world. The future can be one of peace, not endless war. [Paperback]
”When you think that everything that could be said has been, Ilan Pappe provides this eye-opening, original and, most importantly, hopeful book.” —Eyal Weizman, author of Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation
”Ilan Pappe supplants slogans for a single democratic state with a detailed program comprising eight mini-revolutions. This is a bold undertaking and offers abundant ground upon which to debate a vision and transform it into a program. Even, and especially, for those in disagreement, Israel on the Brink offers a point of departure to take seriously the work of decolonization.” —Noura Erakat, author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine
”Ilan Pappe's Israel on the Brink is a tour de force, essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the disintegration of the Zionist project and its consequences. Pappe, one of the foremost scholars on the Israel-Palestine conflict, has authored a series of ground-breaking and important books. This one is no exception.” —Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times
>>Other books by Ilan Pappe.
>>In conversation with Avi Shlaim.
Broken Republik: The inside story of Germany’s descent into crisis by Chris Reiter and Will Wilkes $39
For many years, the post-war recovery of Germany was an inspirational story. All of Europe looked on with admiration and envy as the nation rebuilt and set standards for the rest to follow. Companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Siemens and Bayer rose to become global titans, while the country's political leaders earned respect around the world — even their football teams were the best. Such was its success that when the Berlin Wall fell, it appeared to reunify almost seamlessly. Where Germany led, the rest followed. But, even at its zenith, there were signs of trouble. So, when events started to turn against Germany, the whole edifice began to crumble. As political and business leaders benefited from the status quo, they couldn't see the problems heading their way. Volkswagen's emissions fraud tainted its industrial reputation; abandoning nuclear power left the country at the mercy of Russia for its energy needs; and a growing divide between rich and poor stoked international tensions that opened the door to the rise of the far-right AfD party. Journalists Chris Reiter and Will Wilkes have been reporting for years on the problems the country faces. Germany is not alone in this, but it is singularly ill-equipped to deal with them. [Paperback]
”A splendid book by authors who long ago detected Germany's fragility — and aimed at readers who take no pleasure in the sight of its precipitous decline.” —Yanis Varoufakis
The Floral Dream: A guide to growing cut flowers in New Zealand by Olivia McCord $50
A practical and inspiring guide for New Zealand home gardeners who dream of growing their own cut flowers. Whether the reader is new to gardening or already has dirt under their nails, this book offers down-to-earth advice on how to grow beautiful blooms in the back yard. It begins with preliminary advice on garden layout, soil preparation, a planting calendar and crucially, sowing seeds. At the heart of the book, though, is detailed advice on growing the specific flowers that flourish in New Zealand conditions, with the author's recommendations on favourite varieties. These include focal flowers that serve as the main attraction in arrangements, filler flowers that add volume and texture, and foliage varieties that provide greenery and structure. The book finishes with advice on how to pick and arrange flowers, as well as instructions for creating spectacular bouquets. Nicely done and full of good information and photographs. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!
Read our latest newsletter!
17 October 2025
Meet Vera. She has lists. One list for Daddy and another for Anne Mom. Ten reasons each for staying together. Except one list only gets to 6. Vera is 10; she’s a brainiac — side-lined at school as ‘Facts Girl’ and trying to keep her ‘monkey brain’ in check. She’s Korean-American and half-Jewish with Russian grandparents. Vera, her little brother Dylan (cute, but mostly annoying), and her Daddy, Igor Shmulkin, and step-Mom Anne Bradford, a progressive blue-blood, live a modern comfortable life in an American city not too far in the future. Daddy’s trying to save a literary journal — hoping for the Rhodesian Billionaire to come through. Anne Mom is just trying to keep the household running smoothly while corralling her friends into good causes. As Daddy and Anne Mom descend into daily battles, Vera is having her own internal battles. Will she ever have a best friend? Will she find her birth mother, Mom Mom, before it’s too late? Is it safe on the streets anymore? America is in freefall, although for Vera at her good school, in her room of her own, in a safe neighbourhood, and with Kaspie (her AI device named after Gary Kasparov) at hand, it’s all at a distance. Until it’s not. Vera, or Faith is a very funny, but biting, satire. Observed through the eyes of a girl sideways to the world, Vera is the perfect vehicle for this look at a messed-up world, not that you will despair outright. You will be too busy laughing, liking Vera, and cheering her on. Fingers crossed that she wins the debate with her new-found friend, encouraging her to keep asking questions of her chess companion Kaspie (made in Korea), and to keep using that ‘monkey brain’ to solve the puzzle of Mom Mom. Yet the world will crash down, and ultimately Vera, who is a ten-year-old girl will find solace where she least expects it. So this is a sad, funny, good story with a rumbling darkness, a thunder clap of what is to come if we aren’t very careful.
How should we occupy ourselves, he wondered, whatever that means, lest we be occupied by someone else, or something else, how do we keep our feet, if our feet at least may be said to be our own to keep, by leaning into the onslaught or by letting it wash through us? Too many metaphors, if they’re even metaphors, he thought, too much thought thought for us by the language we use to think the thoughts, he thought, too many ready-made phrases, who makes them and why do they make them, and what are their effects on us, he wondered, where is the power that I thought was mine, where is the meaning that I meant to mean, how can I reclaim the words I speak from those against whom I would speak them? No hope otherwise. The narrator of Noémi Lefebvre’s Poetics of Work happens to be reading Viktor Klemperer’s Language of the Third Reich, in which Klemperer demonstrates that the success of, and the ongoing threat from, Nazism arose from changes wrought on the ways in which language was used and thus upon the ways people thought. Whoever controls language controls thought, he thought, Klemperer providing examples, authority exerts its power through linguistic mutation, but maybe, he thought, power can be resisted by the same means, resistance is poetry, he shouted, well, perhaps, or at least a bit of judicious editing could be effective in the struggle, he thought, rummaging in the drawer of his desk for his blue pencil, it’s in here somewhere. Fascism depends on buzzwords, says Klemperer, buzzwords preclude thought, and the first step in fighting fascism, says Klemperer, is to challenge the use of these buzzwords, to re-establish the content of discourse, to rescue the particular from the buzzword. Could he think of some current examples of such buzzwords, he wondered, and he thought that perhaps he could, perhaps, he thought, if such terms were removed from discourse and the wielders of these buzzwords had no recourse but to say in plain language what they meant, these once-were-wielders would be revealed to be either ludicrous or dangerous or both ludicrous and dangerous and the particulars of a given situation could be more clearly discussed. That is a subversive thought, he thought, to edit is to unpick power. “There isn’t a lot of poetry these days, I said to my father,” says the narrator at the beginning of Poetics of Work. A state of emergency has been declared in France, it is 2015, terror attacks have resulted in a surge of nationalism, intolerance, police brutality, the narrator, reading Klemperer as I have already said, is aware of the ways in which language has been mutated to control thought, power acts first through language and then turns up as the special police, it seems. What purchase has poetry in a language also used to describe police weaponry, the narrator wonders. “I could feel from the general climate that imagination was being blocked and thought paralysed by national unity in the name of Freedom, and freedom co-opted as a reason to have more of it.” Freedom has become a buzzword, it no longer means what we thought it meant, but even, perhaps, well evidently, its opposite. “Security being the first of freedoms, according to the Minister of the Interior, for you have to work.” You have to work, is this the case, the narrator wonders, you have to work and by working you become part of that which harms you. The book progresses as a series of exchanges between the narrator and their father, the internal voice of their father, of all that is inherited, of Europe, of the compromise between capital and culture, of all that takes things at once too seriously and nowhere near seriously enough. “He’s there in my eyes, he hunches my shoulders, slows my stride, spreads out before me his superior grasp of all things,” the narrator says, embedded in their father, struggling to think a thought not thought for them by their father, their struggle is a struggle for voice, as all struggles are. “I am like my father but much less good, my father can do anything because he does nothing, while I do nothing because I don’t know how to defend a person who’s being crushed and dragged along the ground and kicked to a pulp with complete impunity, nor do I know how to get a job or write a CV or any biography, nor even poetry, not a single line of it.” What hope is there? Is it possible to find “non-culture-sector poetry”, the narrator wonders, or even to write this “non-culture-sector” poetry if there could be such a thing? What sort of poetry can be used to come to grips with even the minor crises of late capitalism, for instance, if any of the crises of late capitalism can be considered minor? “I watched the water flow south, and the swans driven by their insignificance, deaf and blind to the basic shapes of the food-processing industry, ignorant that they, poor sods, were beholden to market price variation over the kilo of feathers and to the planned obsolescence of ornamental fowls.” The book sporadically and ironically gestures towards being some sort of treatise on poetry, it even has a few brief “lessons,” or maxims, but these are too half-hearted and impermanent to be either lessons or maxims, perhaps, he thought, they might qualify as antilessons or antimaxims, if such things could be imagined, though possibly they ironise an indifference to both. “Indifference is a contemplative state, my father said one day when he’d been drinking.” Doing nothing because there is nothing to be done, or, rather, because one cannot see what can be done, is very different from doing nothing from indifference, but the effect is the same, or the lack of effect, so something must be done, the narrator thinks, even if it is the case that nothing can in the end be done. For those to whom language is at once both home and a place of exile, the struggle must be made in language, or for language, resistance is poetry, or poetry is resistance, I have forgotten what I shouted, I will sharpen my blue pencil, after all one must be “someone among everyone,” as the narrator says. “There’s a fair bit of poetry at the moment, I said to my father,” the narrator says at the end of Poetics of Work. “He didn’t reply.”
Aotearoa’s longest-running arts and literary journal honours its milestone 250th issue with a new name, a new design, cover art by Fiona Pardington and an exciting bumper issue. Landfall Tauraka 250 is filled with contributions from emerging and established writers and artists. Alongside the new writing, art and reviews from across the motu, the commemorative 250th issue debuts the Landfall Tauraka Craft Interview — a kōrero between Bill Manhire and editor Lynley Edmeades — and features reflections from cherished writers on the journal’s enduring impact. It also announces the winners of three major literary awards: the 2025 Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize; the 2025 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award; and the 2025 Landfall Tauraka Essay Prize. Landfall Tauraka was founded in 1947 as a periodical dedicated to New Zealand poetry, fiction, essays, art, criticism and reviews. The journal has been in continuous publication for nearly 80 years. In that time, it has become a living taonga, a record of creative and critical expression in Aotearoa, and a platform for an extraordinary range of voices.
All your choices are good! Click through to our website (or just email us) to secure your copies, and we will dispatch your books by overnight courier or have them ready to collect from our door in Church Street, Whakatū.
Mr Outside by Caleb Klaces $40
During a time of restricted movement, the narrator of Mr Outside visits his reclusive father Thomas who is packing up to move into a care home. As father and son grapple with the task, long-buried conflicts resurface. Thomas, a poet and former radical priest, slips between affection and fear, while the narrator struggles to find the words he’s been holding back. Yet amidst confusion and grief, moments of humour and connection emerge, as both men discover new ways to listen. Told through a striking combination of text and image, Klaces’s distilled novel explores the stories we tell about our lives, intimacy in crisis, and the fragile line between reality and delusion. Based on the life of his own father, Mr Outside is poignant, profound, and unexpectedly funny; a tender meditation on endings, the limits of understanding, and the act of letting go. [Paperback]
”I can’t remember the last time a book moved me to tears, but Mr Outside did so more than once. With each page awash in bittersweet detail, Klaces evokes the raw and distant intimacy between fathers and sons with tenderness and insight and captures the inevitable yet cataclysmic rupture of the loss of a parent as honestly and effectively as anything I’ve ever read. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful and comforting all at once. I could not recommend it more highly.” —Kevin Powers
”I was utterly absorbed by this riveting, wonderful book, and thought about little else during the days I read it. The prose is unsparing — clear yet enigmatic, clipped yet voluminous. Every page carries a startling moment or detail. By the end of it, you’re left with a sense of the turbulence and bewildering beauty of a whole life. Mr Outside is a major achievement.” —Martin MacInnes
”A novel of extraordinary clarity. What Klaces has achieved here is remarkable. His precise, compelling language miraculously shapes a truth you’d think no language could do justice to: that the price for incredible love is incredible loss.” —Lisa McInerney
a grammar of the world by Jeanne Benameur (translated from French by Bill Johnston) $45
For Benameur in these poems, the Egyptian goddess Isis advances with her along the seashore, unifying the past and the present, inside and outside, memory and imagination, trauma and hope, the blue of the sky and the blue of the sea. She is unity rediscovered. Drawing on subjects as diverse as the author's childhood traumatic flight from the Algerian War of Independence in the late 1950s, the modern migrant crisis, the transformative power of writing and the long history of the Mediterranean, a grammar of the world is brought into harmony by the central mythological figure, who personifies a careful reknitting of the world and repairing of ancient wounds through the act of writing. [Paperback with French flaps]
”In Jeanne Benameur's language all is fluttering, gentle and stirring. Places are foremost, they precede us, then history settles in and the writing unfurls.” —Cécile Coulon
”For Benameur, the backwash of Algerian history flows back into the sea of inner feelings.” —Yasmine Chouaki
>>See more!
>>The Child Who.
Taniwha by Gavin Bishop $40
Monster-sized and monster-filled, this beautifully illustrated book, retells a variety of tales about the taniwha of Aotearoa, from the guardians who accompanied waka voyages to present-day inhabitants of the whenua and moana. Taniwha are all around us. They are good at hiding or changing their shape. They can be very tricky. If you want to meet one, you have to know what to look for and where to look. Describing how the landscape was shaped, and exploring relations between Māori and the sometimes friendly, but more often terrifying, supernatural creatures, these traditional stories are brought to life with Bishop’s lively and inventive illustrations. [Hardback]
>>Look inside!
>>Other superb books from Gavin Bishop.
Vaim by Jon Fosse (translated from Nynorsk by Damion Searls) $38
Jatgeir travels from the fishing village of Vaim to the city in search of a needle and thread. Cheated twice, he returns to his boat, where he falls asleep as waves rock the hull. Soon he is awakened by a voice: a woman is calling his name from the quay. There stands Eline, the secret love of his youth — and the namesake of his boat — with a packed suitcase. Eline pleads to come aboard. In what follows, this single encounter reverberates across three stories: three narrators, three deaths. The first new work from Jon Fosse since he was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature, Vaim is a spectral novel that wanders and watches, imbued with things half-seen, perhaps not of this world yet still caught in its rhythms. The first in a trilogy of novels, it continues his investigation into the human condition: the subtle encounters that come to define our lives and our deaths, and what lies in the threshold between what is and what is longed for. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Reading Jon Fosse is always a curious and wondrous experience. Vaim is no exception: it ferries the reader along the stream of the ‘ordinary’ mind, from which suddenly shines forth a luminous beyond.” —Xiaolu Guo
Blackout by Yann Chateigné Tytelman (translated from French by Clem Clement) $40
Spring 2020. In lockdown in a mountain village with his partner and young child, art critic and curator Yann Chateigné Tytelman becomes haunted by the wordless and stoic ghost of his father. He takes this time of withdrawal from the rhythms of everyday life and work to meditate on silence in our lives, silence in art, in literature, music and in philosophy. In a series of short fragments, he circles the void at the heart of modern society, brought into sharp focus by the spectre of disease and death hanging over a stilled world.
”It all started with a letter to my father. It had been about ten years since his death, and I suddenly felt like writing to him about the silence, his silence, the silence between us. It started in 2020, as a necessity. The silence, then, was striking. It resonated with other erased voices, other voids, other emotions. I thought I would not be able to stop. Neither diary, nor essay, nor short story, Blackout is a weaving, a braid made of these lines of silence, and tells, in fragments, the story of a dispossession, of an entry into darkness.“ —Yann Chateigné Tytelman. [Hardback]
“A moving account of a son's search for his father's ghost, as well as a riveting enquiry into the notions of silence and absence in music, literature and visual art. Extraordinary.” —Jude Cook
”A haunting, delicately woven elegy; a luminous act of love written into the void. Let it draw you in. Let it speak to your own silences.” —Suzanne Joinson
”Silence is etymologically rooted in the idea of being quiet and still, of attending. The defining 'absence of sound' came much later. There are reasons why retreats are often predicated on silence. They seek to face directly the fear we have — identified so keenly by Jung — of the journey to the interior that 'silence' prompts. There is no such thing as absolute silence, of course. In an anechoic chamber, you become the sound you hear: your lungs, your heart, your eyelids. Tytelman's remarkable meditation on the presences made vivid by absence understands this instinctively, emotionally, intellectually and even metaphysically. He listens beyond listening. We carry our own silence and that of others like organs. We make our own silences and harvest them. In his haunted and haunting text, even ghosts are breathing.” —Gareth Evans
”Blackout offers an extended reflection on living within silence and emptiness, but through the accumulation of seemingly disconnected stories something else emerges: the pangs of absence enfolded one after another — but absence is always presence, silence is a teeming noise. Was the collective amnesia that followed our recent, yet somehow erased, enforced isolation necessary to forgetting a deeper revelation? For a moment, another kind of society presented itself, a society of gorgeous nothings given eyes to see in the dark.” —David Toop
We Live Here Now by C.D. Rose $45
DeLillo meets Kafka in a wickedly smart novel that explores the boundaries between art and life, vision and reality, beauty and commerce. When visitors to a famous conceptual artist's installation start mysteriously disappearing, the aftershocks radiate outwards through twelve people who were involved in the project, changing all of their lives, and launching them on a crazy-quilt trajectory that will end with them all together at one final, apocalyptic bacchanal. Mixing illusion and reality, simulacra and replicants, sound artists and death artists, performers and filmmakers and theorists and journalists, We Live Here Now ranges across the world of weapons dealers and international shipping to the galleries and studios on the cutting edge of hyper-contemporary art. It spins a dazzling web that conveys, with eerie precision, the sheer strangeness of what it is like to be alive today. [Paperback]
Short-listed for the 2025 Goldsmiths Prize.
"C.D. Rose's genius novel is a book that shows it is possible for a novel to be at once highly original and to fit within an established tradition. We Live Here Now is both accessible and challenging, entertaining the reader with its ridiculous and sinister figures, even as it prompts more intellectual questions about the reality of appearances." —John Self
"In this deeply rewarding novel considering many under-discussed aspects of contemporary commerce, Rose has produced another breathtakingly imaginative work." —Booklist
>>To go with the flow, or not.
>>”I still dream about those places.”
Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett $40
The things that hold life in place have been lifted off and put away. Uprooted by circumstance from city to deep countryside, a woman lives in temporary limbo, visited by memories of all she's left behind. The most insistent are those of Xavier, who has always been certain he knows her better than anyone, better than she knows herself. Xavier, whom she still loves but no longer desires, a displacement he has been unable to accept. An unexpected letter from an old acquaintance brings back a torrent of others she's loved or wanted. Each has been a match and a mismatch, a liberation and a threat to her very sense of self. The ephemera left by their passage — a spilled coffee, an unwanted bouquet, a mind-blowing kiss — make up a cabinet of curiosity she inventories, trying to divine the essence of intimacy. What does it mean to connect with another person? What impels us to touch someone, to be touched by them, to stay in touch? How do we let them go? Claire-Louise Bennett explores the mystery of how people come into and go out of our lives, leaving us forever in their grasp. [Paperback with French flaps]
”Shape-shifting and splendid in its disregard for conventional wisdom and contemporary minimalist tastes, it weaves rococo abundance and brazen mundanity into something as porous and unknowable as the narrator’s inner world. Claire-Louise Bennett is a true original, working at the brink of what language can do.” —Annie McDermott, Times Literary Supplement
”If Bennett might seem at first blush a more quietly innovative writer than the novelists with whom she is inevitably compared, this is not to her detriment, but inseparable from the extraordinary subtlety and emotional detail of the psychological portraits her fiction paints.” —Doug Battersby, Financial Times
”Big Kiss, Bye-Bye delivers an exhilarating approximation of what memory feels like. Certain specifics appear fixed — the colour of a shirt, say, or an ex-lover’s hurtful words — but the rest swirls about, shifting depending on circumstance. Bennett’s writing is unpretentious and unselfconscious, with an often startling immediacy. Her vocabulary is precise — she finds a message ‘discomposing’; her empty flat is ‘languidly transporting’ — and sometimes unexpected. Pages of spare, simple sentences are offset by meandering digressions full of possibilities. Bennett is always conscious that every moment might one day be remembered, reshuffled, retold. Memory never fully settles.” —Zoe Guttenplan, Literary Review
”Bennett draws on ‘polyvocal, and apparently experimental’ (note the tonal eye roll) techniques not to obfuscate, but to elucidate the real conditions of living, and writing, from the perspective of the underclass. Far from the stylistic abstractions of modernist masculinist totality or the avant-garde elite, this is the prose, we could say, of precarity. Bennett’s heroines might seek shelter in rooms of their own, but the walls always feel treacherously porous.” —Jane Hu, Bookforum
>>Flux given.
Case Studies: A story of plant travel by Felicity Jones and Mark Smith $85
In 1829, London physician Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward sealed a plant inside a glass container — a simple experiment that helped change the way plants were transported across the world, transforming gardens, ecosystems and lives in the process. This book traces that story through photographs and essays, pairing striking contemporary images of cased plants — shot in New Zealand and in the United Kingdom — with reflections on the implications of plant transfer/movement. Across six essays by Gregory O’Brien, Dame Anne Salmond, Luke Keogh, Mark Carine, Markman Ellis and Huhana Smith, the book considers not only the scientific and colonial ambitions that drove botanical exchange, but also its consequences: ecological disruption, the spread of invasive species, and the marginalisation of Indigenous knowledge systems. Case Studies also gives space to other voices — those speaking to mātauranga Māori, to tino rangatiratanga over native species, and to the ongoing work of conservation and reclamation. It is not only a record of historical movement, but also a reminder of the values and choices that continue to shape the land beneath our feet. [A beautifully presented large-format hardback]
>>Look inside!
>>Growing conditions.
A Long Winter by Colm Tóibín $33
One snowy morning, after an argument with her husband, Miquel's mother departs from their village high up in the Pyrenees and disappears. With his younger brother stationed far away on military service and his father a social pariah detested by the locals, Miquel is caught between, on one hand, the slow disintegration of his family, and on the other, a bitter feud which prevents the townspeople from showing him any more than the slightest acts of kindness. With Miquel's mother still unaccounted for, the two men are forced to fend for themselves throughout a harsh winter, made harsher still by the emergence of family secrets that have festered in the long silence between father and son. Published as a standalone novella for the first time. [Hardback]
”A superbly powerful tale of betrayal and desertion.” —Spectator
Indignity: A life reimagined by Lea Ypi $40
When Lea Ypi discovers a photo of her grandmother, Leman, honeymooning in the Alps in 1941 posted by a stranger on social media, she is faced with unsettling questions. Growing up, she was told records of her grandmother's youth were destroyed in the early days of communism in Albania. But there Leman was with her husband, Asllan Ypi — glamorous newlyweds while World War II raged. What follows is a thrilling reimagining of the past, as we are transported to the vanished world of Ottoman aristocracy, the making of modern Greece and Albania, a global financial crisis, the horrors of war and the dawn of communism in the Balkans. While investigating the truth about her family, Ypi grapples with uncertainty. Who is the real Leman Ypi? What made her move to Tirana as a young woman and meet a socialist who sympathized with the Popular Front while his father led a collaborationist government? And, above all, why was she smiling in the winter of 1941? By turns epic and intimate, profound and gripping, Indignity shows what it is like to make choices against the tide of history — and reveals the fragility of truth, collective and personal. Through secret police reports of communist spies, court depositions, and Ypi's memories of her grandmother, we move between present and past, archive and imagination. Ultimately, she asks, with what moral authority do we judge the acts of previous generations? And what do we really know about the people closest to us? [Paperback]
>>Love, war, and betrayal.
Mana by Tāme Iti $50
Mana. It's a big word. But what is it? Are you born with it, can you earn it, can it be taken away? For more than five decades, Tāme Iti has stood at the heart of Aotearoa's struggle for indigenous rights. From land marches to performance art, police raids to prison cells, his voice has challenged New Zealand to reckon with its colonial legacy. Once branded as a dangerous and extreme activist, now hailed as a national treasure, Tāme has lived the contradictions and realities of standing with mana motuhake in a modern world. After being silenced from speaking te reo Māori as a child, Tāme went on to champion its revitalisation. He discovered the power of protest and what it means to live with mana in a world that often tries to strip it away. This is his kōrero of the road he walked and the people who joined him. The comrades, the supporters, and the ones who tried to take him out. Mana is the story of a man who has never stopped challenging the status quo. [Hardback]
>>Art, activism, and the fight for Māori rights.
>>The power in knowing who you are.