NEW RELEASES
These books are in the building.
Three decades of the application of Moore's sharp and quirky mind to every cultural manifestation from books to films to politics (and back to books) has left this marvelous residue of essays and criticism.
>> "The route to truth and beauty is a toll road."
When Unn inexplicably disappears, Siss's world is shattered. Siss's struggle with her fidelity to the memory of her friend and Unn's fatal exploration of the strange, terrifyingly beautiful frozen waterfall that is the 'Ice Palace' are described in prose of a remarkable lyrical economy.
"How simple this novel is. How subtle. How strong. How unlike any other. It is unique. It is unforgettable. It is extraordinary." - Doris Lessing
"I'm surprised it isn't the most famous book in the world." - Max Porter
>> Read an excerpt.
>> 1987 film by Per Blom.
Oil paintings of stills from fail videos, apricots plucked from novels, a porn filmmaker memorialising her son, reasons why Hollywood doesn't cast poets in films. Visual art, poetry, prose, photography, music and comedy from emerging artists.
>> There's a playlist!
Arts and letters: Aimee-Jane Anderson-O’Connor, Nick Ascroft, Joseph Barbon, Airini Beautrais, Tony Beyer, Mark Broatch, Danny Bultitude, Brent Cantwell, Rachel Connor, Ruth Corkill, Mark Edgecombe, Lynley Edmeades, Johanna Emeney, Bonnie Etherington, Jess Fiebig, Meagan France, Kim Fulton, Isabel Haarhaus, Bernadette Hall, Michael Hall, Rebecca Hawkes, Aaron Horrell, Jac Jenkins, Erik Kennedy, Brent Kininmont, Wen-Juenn Lee, Zoë Meager, Alice Miller, Dave Moore, Art Nahill, Janet Newman, Charles Olsen, Joanna Preston, Jessie Puru, Jeremy Roberts, Derek Schulz, Sarah Scott, Charlotte Simmonds, Tracey Slaughter, Elizabeth Smither, Rachael Taylor, Lynette Thorstensen, James Tremlett, Tam Vosper, Dunstan Ward, Susan Wardell, Sugar Magnolia Wilson, Kathryn Madill, Russ Flatt, Penny Howard. Results of the 2018 Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Award.
A fascinating insight into the vaguaries and extremities of Berlin's modern history as expressed through the lives of those living on a single street.
Winner of the European Book Prize.
Twenty-five years after his death, four women gather to share their memories of Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Russian Futurist poet whose subsequent uneasy relationship with the increasingly realist Soviet culture machine continued far past his suicide in 1930. In this novel, Mayakovsky's memory is contested on the eve of Stalin's death.
Applying avant-garde approaches to popular musical forms, from 1968 onward, Can opened a sort of crack to the creative unconscious through which flowed enormous amounts of musically liberating energy. This book is in two parts: a biography of the band by Young, and a symposium on musical experimentation by founding member Schmidt, and a consideration of the tentacular reach of the band's influence.
>> 'Halleluhwah' (1971).
>> Live in Soest (1970).
Graeber, author of the excellent Debt: The first 5000 years, argues the existence and societal harm of meaningless jobs. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, which becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a worth ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of bullshit jobs, in which workers pretend their role isn't as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He argues that the association of labour with virtuous suffering is recent in human history, and proposes universal basic income as a potential solution.
>> Writing a book about bullshit jobs is not a bullshit job.
The third and final volume of this very valuable source of information about New Zealand's literary history. By the 1960s, Brasch, though very private by temperament, was a reluctant public figure, especially as editor of Landfall. He was also becoming a highly regarded poet, who eventually had six books to his name. Behind the scenes Brasch was increasingly important as an art collector and as patron and benefactor.. Among his friends Brasch counted most of the country's leading artists, writers and intellectuals including Sargeson, McCahon, McCormick, Stead, the Pauls, the Woollastons, the Baxters, Lilburn, Beaglehole, Angus, Oliver, Bensemann, Lusk, Frame and Dallas. These near contemporaries were joined by the talented young, many met as contributors to Landfall- including Gee, Cross, Shadbolt, Duggan, O'Sullivan, Hotere, Tuwhare, Caselberg, Middleton and Manhire. Brasch's lively and sometimes acerbic accounts of such people are a fascinating aspect of his journals. Behind the esteemed poet, editor and public intellectual, however, was a sensitive and often angst-ridden man, who confided his loneliness to his journals.
>> Volumes 1 and 2 are also available.
Poetry drawing its imagery and strength from Cullinane's Irish heritage and her New Zealand home.
"There is an elegance and poise and care in the language of these poems, an unobtrusive mastery and ease in their cadences and rhythms." - Vincent O'Sullivan
Who's hiding? Who's crying? Who's backwards? Te Reo edition.
During his years in a Zen monastery, Proteus has discovered an ability to connect, deep in his mind, with a spherical entity he calls Mosquito. When Mosquito disappears, Proteus sets off in search of answers, only to find that wisdom lies far away from sanity.
When a perfect stranger visits the five misfits, will he be able to inspire them to Achieve, or are they happy as they are, leaving him to look like a perfect fool?
A damning indictment of contemporary state security, this well-researched and cogently argued book looks at the mechanisms by which states, notably the UK and the US, deprive presumed radicals of citizenship, identity and human rights, and, in doing so violate the bases of these concepts for all.
The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy $35
Following Things I Don't Want to Know, this second installment of Levy's 'living autobiography' reveals a writer in radical flux, grappling with life and letters and re-establishing the positions of de Beauvoir's The Second Sex in a contemporary context.
Building on the work of previous biographers, Liedman creates a definitive portrait of Marx and the depth of his contribution to the way the world understands itself. He shines a light on Marx’s influences, explains his political and intellectual interventions, and builds on the legacy of his thought. Liedman shows how Marx’s Capital illuminates the essential logic of a system that drives dizzying wealth, grinding poverty, and awesome technological innovation to this day.
Recurrent financial crises, growing social inequality, and an increasing sense of the destructiveness of capitalism has fueled new interest in this thinker.
Revered throughout the Francophile world, France’s tradition of public intellectual engagement stems from Voltaire and Zola and runs through Sartre and Foucault to the present day. The intellectual enjoys a status as the ethical lodestar of his nation’s life, but, as Sand shows, the recent history of these esteemed figures shows how often, and how profoundly, they have fallen short of the ideal. Sand examines Sartre and de Beauvoir’s unsettling accommodations during the Nazi occupation and then shows how Muslims have replaced Jews as the nation’s scapegoats for a new generation of public intellectuals.
“Combining rigorous historical investigation and passionate political intervention is rare, yet it is precisely what Shlomo Sand has achieved in this well-informed, insightful book. The recent wave of reactionary, Islamophobic intellectuals in France—and elsewhere—has found one of its fiercest analysts. By re-examining the history of the ‘French intellectual’ in the longue durée, Shlomo Sand offers robust criticism of our present—and also helps us imagine how future forms of political intellectuality could emerge.” – Razmig Keucheyan
Follow the emperor penguin through snow, ice and bitter temperatures; watch as the great white shark swims 10,000 km in search of seals; track huge herds of elephants, on their yearly hunt for water and be amazed at the millions of red crabs, migrating across Christmas Island. Lovely illustrated hardback.
Clear recipes for delicious, healthy food.
A novel sifting the histories and stories of Australia's Great Ocean Road along the southern coast of Victoria, reaching back to the thinking of engineer, historian and philosopher F.B. Herschell, a minor player in the road's construction and deeply rooted in the narrator's experience of place.
"Shashi Tharoor is the most charming and persuasive writer in India. His new book is a brave and characteristically articulate attempt to save a great and wonderfully elusive religion from the certainties of the fundamentalists and the politicisation of the bigots." - William Dalrymple
Tharoor lays out Hinduism's origins and its key philosophical concepts, major texts and everyday Hindu beliefs and practices, from worship to pilgrimage to caste. Tharoor is unsparing in his criticism of extremism and unequivocal in his belief that what makes India a distinctive nation with a unique culture will be imperilled if Hindu 'fundamentalists', the proponents of 'Hindutva', or politicised Hinduism, prevail.
Neurosis is not an ailment but the dominant functional mechanism of our society. Medicalisation of neurosis has only provisionally put into into abeyance, but is increasingly ineffective. The essays in this book ask what we can learn about society through the modelling of neuroses, and what paths offer themselves to address the suffering entailed by both.
Who better than Questlove, musician and creative dynamo, to synthesise creative philosophies and provide the tools to focus your capacities in the direction you would like them applied?
>> ?estlove drum solo.
As our approach to mental illness has oscillated from biological to psychoanalytical and back again, so have our treatments. With the rise of psychopharmacology, an ever-increasing number of people throughout the globe are taking a psychotropic drug, yet nearly seventy years after doctors first began prescribing them, we still don't really know how or why they work - or don't work - on what ails our brains.
Beyond Manapouri: 50 years of environmental politics in New Zealand by Catherine Knight $40
“We’re on the cusp of significant shifts in our environment and our attitudes towards it – unfortunately we’ve squandered the opportunity to make incremental change in the area of climate change policy, for instance, and it’s now becoming more urgent to make changes that could have more brutal social and economic consequences." Catherine Knight
This book tracks the development of environmental politics from the 1960s, examines the legislation and establishment of institutions to safeguard habitats, and examines issues such as freshwater management, land use, climate change and the strengthening role of iwi and hapū in environmental management. Timely and important.
The history of milk is the history of human civilisation. From the author of Cod and Salt.
How We Desire by Carolin Emcke $38
Do we sometimes ‘slip into norms the way we slip into clothes, putting them on because they’re laid out ready for us’? Is our desire and our sexuality rather constantly in flux, evolving as we mature, and shifting as our interests change? Can our inner lives and our social roles ever be in harmony?
"Delicate and vulnerable, angry, passionate, clever and thoughtful. An amazing work." - Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
A series of essays springing from Chabon's experiences as a father and his attempts to enact meaningful communication with his children, attempts often stymied by his own unexamined generational prejudices and leading, ultimately, to a deep respect for his children.
A novel based on the author's ancestors' attempt to settle on Sunday (now Raoul) Island in the Kermadecs in the 1870s.
"Lord of the Flies as if written by Barbara Kingsolver." - Writers' Review
"A thrilling story of love and courage, brutality and hope all told with equal measures of deep humanity, imagination and elan. Lydia Syson has an amazing gift of bringing history alive through richness of language, dramatic pace and fabulous visual imagery." - Anne Sebba
>> The author on Radio NZ.
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