NEW RELEASES
Published to mark the 300th anniversary of first publication of Robinson Crusoe, Good Morning, Mr Crusoe argues that the legacy of Defoe's novel is racism and misogyny embedded in the fabric of British society.
"The novelty here is the way Jack Robinson uses Crusoe to analyse the mad act of self-maiming we call Brexit. As he demonstrates, all the blinkered mental preconditions for the Leave campaign exist in the novel." - Observer
"A clever take-down of the classic novel." - Guardian
“Let’s say that in the course of all human experience, death is pure conjecture: it is, as such, not an experience. And all that which is not an experience is useless to mankind.” A bizarre series of medical experiments in Buenos Aires in 1907, involving decapitation as a means of contacting the so-called afterlife, is mirrored strangely in the life of a contemporary artist.
"Comemadre is a story about the limits of science and discovery, about the purpose and process of art, about the dangers of the unchecked male ego, and much more. Beneath each of these distinct intentions, though, the book is not fundamentally theoretical, but relational. Larraquy imagines a complicated world of webbed human bonds that span generations. Each of these bonds is pulling on another, creating unique tension, unique threats, and unique possibilities. Larraquy’s scientists and artists attempt to uncover their true natures on both personal and existential fronts. In the process, their desire to be validated and accepted by others becomes all-encompassing. As these relationships carry the narrative and take center stage, it becomes apparent that guilt and desire can easily transform into violence once acted upon. The profound tragedy suggested by Comemadre is that in the absence of extended validation, that validation is too often stolen by force. At the book’s fundamentally relational foundation, Larraquy demonstrates that the tenderness which results from shared vulnerability is often undergirded by a violence springing from the same source." - Full Stop
40th birthday special. It’s 1979. The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan, China introduces its one-child policy, Margaret Thatcher is elected as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and an old Cambridge student magazine is relaunched. This special edition marks Granta’s 40th birthday by bringing together some of its best writing from the past forty years. Featuring: Angela Carter, Kazuo Ishiguro, Todd Mcewen, Bruce Chatwin, James Fenton, Primo Levi, Amitav Ghosh, Raymond Carver, Philip Roth, John Gregory Dunne, Ryszard Kapuściński, Joy Williams, Don Delillo, John Berger, Gabriel García Márquez, Bill Buford, Lindsey Hilsum, Lorrie Moore, Hilary Mantel, Ian Jack, Edward W. Said, Diana Athill, Edmund White, Ved Mehta, Alexandra Fuller, Binyavanga Wainaina, Mary Gaitskill, Lydia Davis, Jeanette Winterson, Herta Müller. What more could you want?
After her mother’s death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to a small apartment in Paris. One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night. What follows is an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence and long walks around the city.
“Ayşegül Savaş is an enormous new talent who writes with the rigour of Didion and the tenderness of Sebald. Walking on the Ceiling holds the immediacy of youth and the depth of long-earned wisdom at once. Its elegant voice is sure to summon old memories and longings from each reader, relighting them anew.”—Catherine Lacey
Could millions of jobs soon be eliminated by artificial intelligence and robots? From driverless cars to digital assistants, the world of work is on the cusp of a technological revolution that is generating hopes and fears alike. But are the robots really knocking at the door? What does all this mean for New Zealanders? Kinley Salmons new book is a call to start debating - and choosing the future we want. Kinley Salmon grew up in Nelson and now works as an economist in Washington DC.
>>Come and hear Kinley Salmon talk on Thursday 23rd May at KUSH, 5 Church Street. Door open and coffee available from 5 PM. See you there.
Beautifully presented. Includes extracts from Sculpting in Time, and pieces by Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Paul Satre and other on Tarkovsky's particular approach to film-making.
>>Watch Tarkovsky's films on your device.
From her entry into parliament in 1975 at age 23 until the epoch-changing 1984 general election that was triggered by her telling Robert Muldoon that she intended to cross the floor to vote against the National government on nuclear- free legislation.
>>Muldoon calls the snap election after consulting the Governor General and the bottle.
"The Shakespeare scholar’s fun, insightful and profoundly approachable study of 20 of his plays is perhaps the finest critique of his work to date." - Guardian
A remarkable New Zealand lawyer (1916-2007) whose lifelong commitment to social justice, legal reform, gender equality and community service left a profound legacy. She was married to Bill Sutch, who died in 1975 after being acquitted of charges of spying.
"AND Little Boy, grown up after an endless series of confusions transplantations transformations instigations fornications confessions prognostications hallucinations consternations confabulations collaborations revelations recognitions restitutions reverberations misconceptions clarifications elucidations simplifications idealisations aspirations circumnavigations realisations radicalisations and liberations, Grown Boy came into his own voice and let loose his word-hoard pent up within him." Ferlinghetti conveys his 100 years on the planet as a torrent of words bearing him on through time.
Roland Wakelin (painter), Dulcie Deamer (writer and libertine), Jean Devanny (novelist and feminist), Douglas Stewart (editor and writer) and Eric Baume (journalist and media personality) had little in common in personality, proclivities and politics. Yet they all experienced fame and/or notoriety in the 'West Island' while being largely forgotten in their country of origin.
What if you were a novelist in a world where the only media people consumed was spectacular pornography about war with titles like Wonder Woman and Captain America? What if your country had elected as its leader a shameless millionaire who was stealing your money, your democracy and your dignity? What if the media were owned by filthy rich men who didn't give two shits about any of it as long as it continued to make them filthy rich?Wouldn't it be enough to send you certifiably insane? To make you write a novel about an immortal lesbian fairy that mimicked the conventions of movies like Wonder Woman but became an accidental allegory for #MeToo? To write a savage death wail of a satire about how the rich stole everything from us?Enough to make you, reader, consider laying off the spectacular pornography about war for long enough to read it?
"Ayelet Gundar-Goshen has justifiably won plaudits for her two previous novels, Waking Lions and One Night, Markovitch. In Liar, Nofar, a socially awkward, unhappy teenage girl, inadvertently accuses a faded talent show star of sexually assaulting her. The police procedures and press furore create a momentum of their own and Nofar finds herself trapped in an ever greater web of deceit. Gundar-Goshen skilfully explores various dynamics of power – sexual, coercive, authoritative, familial – and portrays with great compassion and insight the humiliation, loneliness and rage of society’s outsiders. A perceptive and exquisitely observed novel, Liar should win Gundar-Goshen a wide international readership." - Guardian
A passionate defence of humanity and a work of radical optimism from the author of Postcapitalism. How do we preserve what makes us human in an age of uncertainty? Are we now just consumers shaped by market forces? A sequence of DNA? A collection of base instincts? Or will we soon be supplanted by algorithms and A.I. anyway? The notion of humanity has become eroded as never before. In this book Paul Mason argues that we are still capable - through language, innovation and co-operation - of shaping our future. He offers a vision of humans as more than puppets, customers or cogs in a machine.
>>"The world order is being ripped to shreds by an alliance of ethnic nationalists, women-haters and authoritarian leaders who are harnessing the power of machines and algorithms to do it."
Poetry from the Future: Why a global liberation movement is our civilisation's last chance by Srećko Horvat $40
Capitalism and historical revisionism have constructed a new world of normalized apocalyptic politics in which our passivity is guaranteed if we believe there is no future. This is a radical manifesto for hope in democracy, union and internationalism. Horvat is an associate of Slavoj Žižek and Yanis Varoufakis and is standing for the EU elections as part of DiEM25.
>>"The current system is more violent than any revolution."
1945. They have survived the Blitz, but when Simon, Patricia, Evelyn and Larry step through a mysterious library door, it is the beginning of their most dangerous adventure yet. They discover the magical world of Folio, where an enchanted kingdom of fairy knights, bears and tree gods is under threat from a sinister robot army. The many stories of the Library are locked in eternal war, and the children's only hope is to find their creator - a magician who has been lost for centuries.
A very accessible and well illustrated history of the series of conflicts between the Crown and various groups of Maori between 1845 and 1872, conflicts that form the often unacknowledged background to much else in New Zealand history.
From the author of the monumental The Great War for New Zealand.
In 1902, the young German writer Rainer Maria Rilke traveled to Paris to write a monograph on the sculptor Auguste Rodin. He returned many times over the course of his life, by turns inspired and appalled by the city's high culture and low society, and his writings give a fascinating insight into Parisian art and culture in the last century.
Since Britain's 2016 referendum on EU membership, the nation has been profoundly split: one side fantasising that the referendum will never be acted upon, the other entrenched in questionable assumptions about reclaimed sovereignty and independence. Underlying the cleavage are primal myths, deeper histories, and political folk-legends. James Meek, 'the George Orwell of our times', goes in search of the stories and consequences arising out of a nation's alienation from itself. Perceptive.
What if our lives are largely predetermined, hardwired in our brains - and our choices over what we eat, who we fall in love with, even what we believe are not real choices at all? Neuroscience is challenging everything we think we know about ourselves, revealing how we make decisions and form our own reality, unaware of the role of our unconscious minds.
Monday Charles is missing, and only Claudia seems to notice. Claudia and Monday have always been inseparable - more sisters than friends. So when Monday doesn't turn up for the first day of school, Claudia's worried. When she doesn't show for the second day, or second week, Claudia knows that something is wrong. Monday wouldn't just leave her to endure tests and bullies alone. Not after last year's rumors and not with her grades on the line. Now Claudia needs her best--and only--friend more than ever. But Monday's mother refuses to give Claudia a straight answer, and Monday's sister April is even less help.
As Claudia digs deeper into her friend's disappearance, she discovers that no one seems to remember the last time they saw Monday. How can a teenage girl just vanish without anyone noticing that she's gone?
Four novellas: 'The Wife', 'The Steppe', 'Ward No. 6' and 'My Life', demonstrating the subtlety of Chekhov's perceptions and the effective economy of his prose. Selected and introduced by Janet Malcolm.
A book conveying what it’s like to live in a world where shaking a stranger’s and, catching a taxi or touching a door handle are fraught with fear and dread. This memoir charts the author’s breakdown after migrating from New Zealand to England: what begins as homesickness and career burn-out develops into depression, contamination phobia and OCD. Increasingly alienated from all the things that previously gave her life meaning and purpose – family, work, nature, literature – the author is forced to confront a question once posed by the young Virginia Woolf: ‘How is one to live in such a world?’
On 26 April 1986 at 1.23 am a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded. While the authorities scrambled to understand what was occurring, workers, engineers, firefighters and those living in the area were abandoned to their fate. The blast put the world on the brink of nuclear annihilation, contaminating over half of Europe with radioactive fallout. Masterful. Jaw-droppingly readable.
>>Chernobyl vs. The Zone.
A novel exploring the tension between notions of what it means to be an American and what it means to be Other, an immigrant for instance.
"Rich and polyphonic. Unflashy almost to the point of comedy, happy to include humdrum dialogue about, say, weather or food seasoning, the novel’s round-robin mode nonetheless accumulates a kind of revelatory power, setting aside top-down commentary in favour of side-by-side juxtaposition – a narrative style that ultimately functions as a plea for more listening, as well as highlighting the quiet irony of the title, which ends up being hard to read as anything more than just 'Americans'." - Guardian
It's 1947, and India, newly independent of British rule, has been separated into two countries: Pakistan and India. The divide has created much tension between Hindus and Muslims, and hundreds of thousands are killed crossing borders. Half-Muslim, half-Hindu twelve-year-old Nisha doesn't know where she belongs, or what her country is anymore. When Papa decides it's too dangerous to stay in what is now Pakistan, Nisha and her family become refugees and embark first by train but later on foot to reach her new home.
"MacCarthy refutes the often ill-researched reductionist characterisations of Gropius as the arrogant, dour modernist. Instead, she passionately weaves a gripping and powerful narrative deserving of a wide audience while also making for essential reading for anyone studying architecture and design." - Irish Times
The heady optimism that accompanied the advent of the Internet is gone replaced by a deep unease. Technologies that were meant to liberate us have exacerbated social inequalities and stoked explosive political climates across the world. Tech companies gather our information online and sell it to the highest bidder, whether government or retailer. In this world of surveillance capitalism, profit depends not only on predicting our behaviour but modifying it too. How will this fusion of capitalism and the digital shape our values and define our future?
"Groundbreaking, magisterial, unmissable." - Financial Times
>>Interview with Zuboff.
A Thousand Small Sanities: The moral adventure of liberalism by Adam Gopnik $40
A defence of liberal values and world-view, and of democracy itself, against new dogmatisms.
"Supremely intelligent." - Guardian
An artist makes some mistakes when making a picture book, but these mistakes become the book and drive the story onward.
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