NEW RELEASES
New books for a new month.
"Pure Hollywood is pure gold. In tales of rare wit and verve, Christine Schutt leads us into the lives of her perfectly drawn characters - couples young and old, children, skinny men, charming women - and dances on masterful prose through gardens, alcohol (often too much), luxurious homes, and resort vacation spots. Come for the art of her exquisitely weird writing and stay for the human drama." - Ottesa Moshfegh
"Christine Schutt is already easily among the liveliest stylists of our time, and these eleven stories prove we ain't seen nothing yet. Each is a wonder, pickled in her crystalline idiom and cured under her brutal, astonishing wit." - Claire Vaye Watkins
What is it like to pass through middle age to the great unknown beyond, full of new uncertainties, irritations and brushes with mortality?
"This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumour joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet." - AV
"A caustically funny take on the indignities and banalities of everyday life." - New York Times
A thoughtful and wide-ranging collection, surveying the ways we think about, view, approach, climb and dream about mountains. New Zealand, after all, is only held above the surface of the ocean by the mountains upon which it depends. The selection of non-fiction, poetry, fiction and journals includes work by Rachel Bush, Freda du Faur, John Pascoe, Brian Turner, Graeme Dingle, Fleur Adcock, Edmund Hillary and Hone Tuwhare.
First published in 1977 and only now translated into English, this book introduces us to a 'new' Latin American master. Gallardo's stories are surreal and philosophical, fascinating and unsettling, melancholy and funny.
>>Read a sample story.
A good selection of influential Anglophone and translated books, well illustrated with covers, portraits, &c.
Murray spent much of his childhood either playing or working on the moor, chasing sheep and cutting and gathering peat for fuel. This book is an examination of how this landscape affected him and others. Murray explores his early life on the Isle of Lewis together with the experiences of those who lived near moors much further afield, from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland to the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and Australia. Examining this environment in all its roles and guises, Donald reflects on the ways that for centuries humans have represented the moor in literature, art and folktale, how these habitats remain an essential aspect of industrial heritage and working life, and how important the peatlands are ecologically.
A man wakes up in a hospital bed, with no idea who he is or how he came to be there. The only information the doctor shares with his patient is his name: Innokenty Petrovich Platonov. As memories slowly resurface, Innokenty begins to build a vivid picture of his former life as a young man in Russia in the early twentieth century, living through the turbulence of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. But soon, only one question remains: how can he remember the start of the twentieth century, when the pills by his bedside were made in 1999?
>> What history cannot teach us.
What happens to issues and the people that they concern when the news cycle moves on? What happens when reality takes over from debate (and when debate becomes no longer possible)? New fiction, poetry, photography and essays.
The 350 images in this book, many of them published here for the first time, not only chronicle the introduction of photography in Japan, but are also useful in helping to understand the dramatic changes that occurred in mid-nineteenth century Japan. Taken between 1853 and 1912 by the most important local and foreign photographers working in Japan, the photographic images, whether sensational or everyday, intimate or panoramic, document a nation about to abandon its traditional ways and enter the modern age.
2018 marks 125 years of suffrage in New Zealand and 100 years in Britain. This beautifully illustrated book gives a blow-by-blow account of the British struggle, and potted biographies of suffragists worldwide, including Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia.
More than 100 recipes for vibrant, earthy, unexpected dishes from the culinary zone straddling Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran, Russia and Turkey. Nicely presented, too.
Placing the achievements of African-American artists such as Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Sun Ra in their broader political and social context, Wilmer evokes an era of extraordinary innovation and experimentation that continues to inspire musicians today.
>> 'Buddha Blues' by Ornette Coleman.
>> 'India' by John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy.
Visiting camps and hostels, sneaking into detention centres and delving into his own family's history of displacement, Trilling weaves together the stories of people he met and followed from country to country. In doing so, he shows that the terms commonly used to define them - refugee or economic migrant, legal or illegal, deserving or undeserving - fall woefully short of capturing the complex realities.The founding myth of the EU is that it exists to ensure the horrors of the twentieth century are never repeated. Now, as it comes to terms with its worst refugee crisis since the Second World War, the 'European values' of freedom, tolerance and respect for human rights are being put to the test.
>> Trilling in Selmentsi.
A graphic novel telling of a Russian fairy tale. Very nicely done.
The internet was meant to set us free. Tech has radically changed the way we live our lives. But have we unwittingly handed too much away to shadowy powers behind a wall of code, all manipulated by a handful of Silicon Valley utopians, ad men, and venture capitalists? In light of recent data breach scandals around companies like Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, what does that mean for democracy, our delicately balanced system of government that was created long before big data, total information and artificial intelligence? Are we losing our critical faculties, maybe even our free will?
The gulf between Islam and the West is widening. A faith rich with strong values and traditions, observed by nearly two billion people across the world, is seen by the West as something to be feared rather than understood. Sensational headlines and hard-line policies spark enmity, while ignoring the feelings, narratives and perceptions that preoccupy Muslims today. How can Muslims confront the issues that are destroying Islam from within, and what can the West do to help work towards that end?
Contributions from David Bezmozgis, Thi Bui, Reyna Grande, Aleksandar Hemon, Fatima Bhutto, Ariel Dorfman, Vu Tran and others.
Before the arrival of railways, canals formed the major transport infrastructure of the industrial revolution. Today there are more boats on the canals than ever, many of them expressions of the 'slow transport' revolution. Winn treads the towpaths and floats alongside many of the canals' residents to give us new perspectives on the canals in history and the present.
''A clipped, funny, painfully honest narrative voice lights up Wang's novel about a Chinese-American graduate student who finds the scientific method inadequate for understanding her parents, her boyfriend, or herself. Wang has a gift for perspective.'' - Publishers Weekly
Part memoir, part enthusiasm for life in the mountains of southern France, Thorpe's enjoyably discursive book sets off on verbal journeys, and returns always to, the old stone house in which he has lived for the past 25 years.
Definitive, wide ranging.
"For a long time, vegan cooking has lived in the shadow of the health food movement of the Sixties and Seventies, but here's a cookbook that blasts away the past and jumps boldly into a multi-culinary future where veganism isn't just about saying no to animal products but is instead about saying yes to hundreds of mind-blowing dishes from Iraq to Ireland, and from the Philippines to Peru."—Amanda Cohen, Dirt Candy
From huts to skyscrapers, human history is the history of structures. By the structural engineer responsible for the London Shard.
>> Roma the engineer.
Is the president controlled by a foreign power?
Perfect for the poetic flaneur, pacing their pentameters against the wind.
Draws extensively on five centuries of Arab sources to place the Arab experience in its historical context. This new updated edition untangles the latest geopolitical developments of the region to offer a comprehensive account of the Middle East.
"Deeply erudite and distinctly humane." - Atlantic
"Dismantle the patriarchy one cocktail at a time." Includes toasts to extraordinary women in history.
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