NEW RELEASES
Modern-day Beirut is seen through the eyes of a failed writer, the eponymous Mister N. He has left his comfortable apartment and checked himself into a hotel—he thinks. Certainly, they take good care of him there. Meanwhile, on the streets below, a grim pageant: there is desperate poverty, the ever-present threat of violence, and masses of Syrian refugees planning to reach Europe via a dangerous sea passage. How is anyone supposed to write deathless prose in such circumstances? Let alone an old man like Mister N., whose life and memories have become scattered, whose family regards him as an embarrassment, and whose next-door neighbours torment him with their noise, dinner invitations, and inconvenient suicides. Comical and tragic by turns, his misadventures climax in the arrival in what Mister N. had supposed to be his 'real life' of a character from one of his early novels—a vicious militiaman and torturer. What is real? Just what kind of help does Mister N. Need?
Nine-year old Marina may swear like a sailor and think like a novelist, but even the most exceptional child can get lost on the road to adulthood. While her mother is in the hospital with a grave but unnamed illness, Marina spends the summer with her grandmother, waiting to hear whether she’ll get to go home or be bundled off, newly orphaned, to a convent school. There are no rules at Grandma’s, but that also means there are no easy ways to fend off the visions of sex and violence that torment and titillate the girl. Presenting a unique and vivid take on the coming-of-age novel, Oldladyvoice reimagines childhood through the eyes of its one-of-a-kind, hilarious, perceptive and endearing narrator.
"More than anything, Oldladyvoice is hugely good fun. Victoria’s prose is effervescent, her jokes never miss their marks, and the observations of her young narrator feel as tender as they do authentic. I loved this wise, warped little jewel of a novel." —A.K. Blakemore, Guardian
There is a space between life and death: it's called waxworks. Born in Alsace in 1761, the unsightly, diminutive Marie Grosholtz is quickly nicknamed "Little." Orphaned at the age of six, she finds employment in the household of reclusive anatomist, Dr Curtius. Her role soon surpasses that of mere servant as the eccentric doctor takes an interest in his newfound companion and begins to instruct her in the fine art of wax modelling. From the gutters of pre-revolutionary France to the luxury of the Palace of Versailles, from clutching the still-warm heads of Robespierre's Terror to finding something very like love, Little traces the improbable fortunes of a, almost-nobody who eventually became known as Madam Tussaud.
"Don't miss this eccentric charmer." —Margaret Atwood
"Marie's story is fascinating in itself, but Carey's talent makes her journey a thing of wonder." —The New York Times
"Compulsively readable: so canny and weird and surfeited with the reality of human capacity and ingenuity that I am stymied for comparison. Dickens and David Lynch? Defoe meets Atwood? Judge for yourself." —Gregory Maguire
There’s a stash of heroin waiting to be imported, and no one seems sure what to do with it. But Ayla’s a gardener, and she has a plan. Offering a fresh and funny take on the machinery of the North London heroin trade, Keeping the House lifts the lid on a covert world thriving just beneath notice: not only in McDonald’s queues and men’s clubs, but in spotless living rooms and whispering kitchens. Spanning three generations, this is the story of the Turkish Cypriot immigrant women who keep their family – and their family business – afloat, juggling everything from police surveillance to trickier questions of community, belonging and love.
"Crackling with energy. An exhilaratingly idiosyncratic first novel, Keeping the House has 'cult classic' written all over it." —Guardian
A blend of a documentary, collage, narration, and fictional interviews exploring the experiences of real-life German General Kurt von Hammerstein and his wife and children. A member of an old military family, a brilliant staff officer, and the last commander of the German army before Hitler seized power, Hammerstein, who died in 1943 before Hitler's defeat, was nevertheless an idiosyncratic character. Too old to be a resister, he retained an independence of mind that was shared by his children: three of his daughters joined the Communist Party, and two of his sons risked their lives in the July 1944 Plot against Hitler and were subsequently on the run till the end of the war. Hammerstein never criticised his children for their activities, and he maintained contacts with the Communists himself and foresaw the disastrous end of Hitler's dictatorship. In The Silences of Hammerstein, Hans Magnus Enzensberger offers a brilliant and unorthodox account of the military milieu whose acquiescence to Nazism consolidated Hitler's power and of the heroic few who refused to share in the spoils.
The Guyana Quartet by Wilson Harris $33
The four remarkable novels, The Palace of the Peacock, The Far Journey of Oudin, The Whole Armour, and The Secret Ladder, comprise a dizzying, myth-inflected epic literary experience unlike much else. Guyana is an ancient landscape of rainforests and swamplands, haunted by the legacy of slavery and colonial conquest. It is the site of dangerous journeys through the Amazonian interior, where riverboat crews embark on spiritual quests and government surveys are sabotaged by indigenous uprisings. It is a universe of complex moralities, where the conspiracies of a sinister money-lender and the faked death of a murderer question innocence and inheritance. It is a place where life and death, myth and history, philosophy and metaphysics blur.
"One of the great originals, Visionary. Dazzlingly illuminating." —Guardian
"Harris is the Guyanese William Blake." —Angela Carter
The Unconscious knows no time, it has no before-and-after, it does not have a history of its own. Yet, it does not always remain the same. Different political and economic conditions transform the way in which the Unconscious emerges within the psychosphere of society. In the early 20th century, Freud characterized the Unconscious as the dark side of the well-order framework of Progress and Reason. At the end of the past century, Deleuze and Guattari described it as a laboratory: the magmatic force ceaselessly bringing to the fore new possibilities of imagination. Today, at a time of viral pandemics and in the midst of the catastrophic collapse of capitalism, the Unconscious has begun to emerge in yet another form. In this book, Franco 'Bifo' Berardi vividly portraits the form in which the Unconscious will make itself manifest for decades to come, and the challenges that it will pose to our possibilities of political action, poetic imagination, and therapy.
The Great Adaptation tells the story of how scientists, governments and corporations have tried to deal with the challenge that climate change poses to capitalism by promoting adaptation to the consequences of climate change, rather than combating its causes. From the 1970s neoliberal economists and ideologues have used climate change as an argument for creating more 'flexibility' in society, that is for promoting more market-based solutions to environmental and social questions. The book unveils the political economy of this potent movement, whereby some powerful actors are thriving in the face of dangerous climate change and may even make a profit out of it. A perfect riposte to the idea that the market can address climate change or social issues.
High in the Armenian mountains, villagers in the close-knit community of Maran bicker, gossip and laugh. Their only connection to the outside world is an ancient telegraph wire and a perilous mountain road that even goats struggle to navigate. As they go about their daily lives - harvesting crops, making baklava, tidying houses - the villagers sustain one another through good times and bad. But sometimes a spark of romance is enough to turn life on its head, and a plot to bring two of Maran's most stubbornly single residents together soon gives the village something new to gossip about.
Over the centuries, women, people from underrepresented communities, and immigrants overcame prejudices and social obstacles to make remarkable discoveries in science—but they weren't the ones to receive credit in history books. People with more power, money, and prestige were remembered as the inventor of the telephone, the scientists who decoded the structure of DNA, and the doctor who discovered the cause of yellow fever. This book aims to set the record straight and celebrate the nearly forgotten inventors and scientists who shaped our world today. Nicely illustrated.
Kua Whetūrangitia a Koro and How My Koro Became a Star by Brianne Te Paa each $22
A young boy learns about the customs around celebrating Matariki from his grandfather. They watch the stars from the top of a mountain, prepare their offering of food for the gods, and the boy learns about Te Waka o Rangi and the tradition of calling out the names of loved ones who have passed away so that they can become stars. Just before Matariki the following year, the boy’s Koro suddenly dies. He gathers and prepares the food offering and asks each family member to come with him up the mountain when Matariki is due to rise, but they all make excuses, and he is disheartened. But when he tells them what Koro taught him, they all climb the mountain before sunrise, follow the rituals Koro carried out and call out Koro’s name so that he can become a star.
Kohei Fujiwara has never seen a giant dragon in real life. The big ryu all disappeared from Japan after World War II, and twenty years later, they've become the stuff of legend. Their smaller cousins, who can fit in your palm, are all that remain. And Kohei loves his ryu, Yuharu, but Kohei has a memory of the big ryu. He knows that's impossible, but still, it's there, in his mind. In it, he can see his grandpa - Ojiisan - gazing up at the big ryu with what looks to Kohei like total and absolute wonder. When Kohei was little, he dreamed he'd go on a grand quest to bring the big ryu back, to get Ojiisan to smile again. But now, Ojiisan is really, really sick. And Kohei is running out of time. Kohei needs to find the big ryu now, before it's too late. With the help of Isolde, his new half-Jewish, half-Japanese neighbour; and Isolde's Yiddish-speaking dragon, Cheshire; he thinks he can do it. Maybe. He doesn't have a choice.
Tom Stoppard by Hermione Lee $33
"An extraordinary book filled with dragons big and small." —Carole Wilkinson, author of the 'Dragonkeeper' series
Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard escaped the Nazis with his mother and spent his early years in Singapore and India before arriving in England at age eight. Skipping university, he embarked on a brilliant career, becoming close friends over the years with an astonishing array of writers, actors, directors, musicians, and political figures, from Peter O'Toole, Harold Pinter, and Stephen Spielberg to Mick Jagger and Václav Havel. Having long described himself as a bounced Czech, Stoppard only learned late in life of his mother's Jewish family and of the relatives he lost to the Holocaust. A paperback edition of this outstanding biography.
Three tiny, ancient beings - Moss, Burnet and Cumulus, once revered as Guardians of the Wild World - wake from winter hibernation in their beloved ash tree home. When it is destroyed, they set off on an adventure to find more of their kind, a journey which takes them first into the deep countryside and then the heart of a city. Helped along the way by birds and animals, the trio search for a way to survive and thrive in a precious yet disappearing world.
"Each page brims with the wonder of our natural world, so much to learn but all a sheer delight." —Piers Torday
Followed by: By Rowan and Yew.
On February 6, 1978, a catastrophic nor'easter struck the city of New York. On that night, in a penthouse in the Upper West Side's stately Apelles apartment building, a crowd gathered for a wild party. And on that night, Mr. Albert Haynes Caldwell—a partner emeritus at Swank, Brady & Plescher; Harvard class of '26; father of three; widower; atheist; and fiscal conservative--hatched a plan to fake a medical emergency and toss himself into the Hudson River, where he would drown. In the eye of this storm: Hazel Saltwater, age six. The strange events of that night irrevocably altered many lives, but none more than hers. The Blizzard Party is Hazel's reconstruction of the facts, an exploration of love, language, conspiracy, auditory time travel, and life after death. Cinematic, with a vast cast of characters and a historical scope that spans World War II Poland, the lives of rich and powerful Manhattanites in the late 1970s, and the enduring effects of 9/11.
Ko wai kei te papa tākaro? by Te Ataakura Pewhairangi $23
A very relatable board book in simple te reo Māori, about playing in the playground.
By the end of the First World War, the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers were unknown. Most were presumed dead, lost forever under the battlefields of northern France and Flanders. Robert Sackville-West brings together the accounts of those who dedicated their lives to the search for the missing. These stories reveal the lengths to which people will go to give meaning to their loss: Rudyard Kipling's quest for his son's grave; E.M. Forster's conversations with traumatised soldiers in hospital in Alexandria; desperate attempts to communicate with the spirits of the dead; the campaign to establish the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior; and the exhumation and reburial in military cemeteries of hundreds of thousands of bodies. It was a search that would span a century: from the department set up to investigate the fate of missing comrades in the war's aftermath, to the present day, when DNA profiling continues to aid efforts to locate, recover and identify these people.
What a Shell Can Tell by Helen Scales and Sonia Pulido $35
A lavishly illustrated and information-packed introduction to the wonder of shells through the art of observation. Using a friendly question-and-answer format, the book explores, through a richly sensory experience, the incredible diversity of shells around the world and showcases the environments molluscs inhabit.
A Dictionary of Naval Slang by Gerald O'Driscoll $23
Trapped aboard leaky ships and creaking vessels for months, sometimes years, on end, the crews developed a peculiar language all of their own. The Royal Navy's heyday is long past and much of the sailor's vocabulary has vanished with it. But before it disappeared once and for all, veteran sailor Gerald O'Driscoll preserved its unique language in this sometimes hilarious but always fascinating compendium of nautical language.
Elephant's part: The part of the spectator. One who elects to watch others working and does not make any attempt to lend a hand is said to be doing the elephant's part.
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