NEW RELEASES
ABÉCÉDAIRE by Sharon Kivland $38
"I wrote five days a week for a year, no more than a page, writing only for the length of the analytic hour, fifty minutes, following Freud's model of train travel for his theory of free association, acting 'as though, for instance, [you were] a traveller sitting next to the window of a railway carriage and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views outside'. Many of my women character's names begin with A: their first names; there are few surnames, save those of the secondary male characters. Some of these women exist or existed, others are from fiction, or write fiction. Some are friends or acquaintances. None are credited but a keen reader could recognise many of them. I invented nothing. I am the aleph."
"Sharon Kivland is a phenomenal writer, thinker and artist." —Ali Smith
"Each day of this unprecedented novel is its own density, its own lightness. The days are spaces: close interiors; possible gardens; open fields. They are page-spaces; conversation-spaces; spoken aloud spaces. I read Sharon Kivland for this: for the life-supporting habitat of her writing, a place to live and grow." —Kate Briggs
Laughter shakes us out of our deadness. An outburst of spontaneous laughter is an eruption from the unconscious that, like political resistance, poetry, or self-revelation, expresses a provocative, impish drive to burst free from external constraints. Taking laughter’s revelatory capacity as a starting point, and rooted in Nuar Alsadir’s experience as a poet and psychoanalyst, Animal Joy seeks to recover the sensation of feeling alive and embodied. Writing in a poetic, associative style, blending the personal with the theoretical, Alsadir ranges from her experience in clown school, Anna Karenina’s morphine addiction, Freud’s unfreudian behaviours, marriage brokers and war brokers to ‘Not Jokes’, Abu Ghraib, Fanon’s negrophobia, smut, the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, laugh tracks, the problem with adjectives, to how poetry can wake us up. At the centre of the book, though, is the author’s relationship with her daughters, who erupt into the text like sudden, unexpected laughter. These interventions – frank, tender, and always a challenge to the writer and her thinking – are like tiny revolutions, pointedly showing the dangers of being severed from our True Self and hinting at ways we might be called back to it. A bold and insatiably curious prose debut, Animal Joy is an ode to spontaneity and feeling alive.
Friend by Gavin Bishop $18
Alte Zachen (Old Things) by Ziggy Hanaor and Benjamin Phillips $40
The Forgery by Ave Barrera (translated by Ellen Jones and Robin Myers) $36
Kōhine by Colleen Maria Lenihan $25
Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou $38
Ghosts of My Life: Writings on depression, hauntology, and lost futures by Mark Fisher $45
The Real and the Romantic: English art between two World Wars by Frances Spalding $80
"To read Animal Joy is to become alive to the condition of wakefulness in the world. This spectacular achievement by the psychoanalyst and writer Nuar Alsadir provokes and destabilizes our understanding of a life’s competing narratives. I can think of no other contemporary work of nonfiction that brings together autobiography, a learned history of psychoanalysis, lyrical poetics, ontological investigations of our attempt to manage our own feelings, with such astute engagement. This is a work that will change conversations about who we are, what we think motivates us, what makes us us. The meeting place of the intentional and the unintentional erupts in Animal Joy in order that we might reinvestigate our incoming thoughts and feelings with a sense of vigor and curiosity. If you are open to introducing 'tiny revolutions' of thought into your life by resisting received and uninterrogated scripts, read this book." —Claudia Rankine
E Hoa by Gavin Bishop $18
A delightful new board book in either te reo Māori
or in English. Simple text and lovely illustrations convey the feelings of both dog and humans, and show us a beautiful friendship.
or in English. Simple text and lovely illustrations convey the feelings of both dog and humans, and show us a beautiful friendship.
11-year-old Benji and his elderly grandmother, Bubbe Rosa, traverse Brooklyn and Manhattan, gathering the ingredients for a Friday night dinner. Bubbe's relationship with the city is complex - nothing is quite as she remembered it and she feels alienated and angry at the world around her. Benji, on the other hand, looks at the world, and his grandmother, with clear-eyed acceptance. As they wander the city, we catch glimpses of Bubbe's childhood in Germany, her young adulthood in 1950s Brooklyn, and her relationships; first with a baker called Gershon, and later with successful Joe, Benji's grandfather. Gradually we piece together snippets of Bubbe's life, gaining an insight to some of the things that have formed her cantankerous personality. The journey culminates on the Lower East Side in a moving reunion between Rosa and Gershon, her first love. As the sun sets, Benji and his Bubbe walk home over the Williamsburg Bridge to make dinner. This is a powerful, affecting and deceptively simple story of Jewish heritage and identity, of generational divides, of the surmountability of difference and of a restless city and its inhabitants.
>>Have a look inside!
>>Have a look inside!
A failing artist turned forger, an architectural masterpiece hidden behind high walls, an impish vagabond, and some very resourceful, very intimidating twins. Forgery pays homage to the likes of Juan Rulfo and Luis Barragán, traversing late 20th century Guadalajara with the exuberance and eccentricity of an 18th Century picaresque.
"Ave Barrera eases us into this microcosmos as strange and shocking as it is true, constructing powerful atmospheres imbued with very varied sensations, ranging from dreamlike hallucinations to terror, horror and beauty." —El País
Tokyo is a humming backdrop to an array of outsiders: a young woman arrives to work as a stripper, the manager of a love hotel hatches a sleazy plan, a spirit wanders Harajuku, and a mother embarks on a sad journey. Linked through recurring characters and themes, these haunting stories hurtle us into the streets of Tokyo and small-town New Zealand. The secular city of salarymen, sex workers and schoolgirls is just a posed with rongoā healers, lone men and rural matriarchs of Aotearoa.
>>'Love Hotel'.
Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about ‘Chinese-y’ things again. When she accidentally stumbles upon a strange and curious note in the Chou archives, she convinces herself it’s her ticket out of academic hell. But Ingrid’s in much deeper than she thinks. Her clumsy exploits to unravel the note’s message lead to an explosive discovery, one that upends her entire life and the lives of those around her. With her trusty friend Eunice Kim by her side and her rival Vivian Vo hot on her tail, together they set off a roller coaster of mishaps and misadventures, from campus protests and over-the-counter drug hallucinations, to book burnings and a movement that stinks of Yellow Peril propaganda. In the aftermath, nothing looks the same, including her gentle and doting fiancé, Stephen Greene . . . As the events Ingrid instigated keep spiraling, she’ll have to confront her sticky relationship to white men and white institutions – and, most of all, herself.
"The funniest, most poignant novel of the year." —Vogue
"Chou's pen is a scalpel. Disorientation addresses the private absurdities the soul must endure to get free, from tokenism, the quiet exploitation of well-meaning institutions, and the bondage that is self-imposed. Chou does it with wit and verve, and no one is spared." —Raven Leilani
"The funniest novel I've read all year. Uproarious, packed full of sly truths about race, love, and life in general—all of which you're going to miss, because you'll be laughing so hard." —Aravind Adiga
In this incisive collection of writings, the author of (among other things) Capitalist Realism argues that we are haunted by futures that failed to happen. Fisher searches for the traces of these lost futures in the work of David Peace, John Le Carre, Christopher Nolan, Joy Division, Burial and many others.
New edition.
"After the brilliance of Capitalist Realism, Ghosts Of My Life confirms Mark Fisher's role as our greatest and most trusted navigator of these times out of joint, through all their frissons and ruptures, among all their apparitions and spectres, past, present and future." —David Peace
>>"Ferociously intelligent."
>>"Ferociously intelligent."
Bookended by the intensity of commemoration that followed World War I and by a darkening of mood brought about by the foreshadowing of World War II, the decades between the wars saw the growing influence of modernism across British art and design. But as Modernism reached a peak in the mid-1930s, artists were simultaneously reviving native traditions in modern terms and working with a renewed concern for place, memory, history, and particularity. In The Real and the Romantic, Frances Spalding's thematic approach emphasizes the networks of connection between British artists, illuminating the intriguing alliances and shifts in artistic sensibility that fed into the creativity of these years. Throughout the period, an emphasis on the "real" and the authentic remained dominant, even as romantic feeling played an important role in shaping artists' responses to their subjects. Spalding considers the fluidity of the relationship between these two concepts and uses them as guiding themes in this beautifully produced, illustrated volume.
"Superb. Spalding also uses her persuasive narrative to highlight the role of women artists in the period. As the biographer of a cluster of Bloomsbury figures, she unsurprisingly gives Dora Carrington and Vanessa Bell full measure, but also lesser-known figures such as the single-minded New Zealander Frances Hodgkins, Evelyn Dunbar and Winifred Knights." —Michael Prodger
"Delectable. The joy and intense interest of this book will come courtesy of the attention given by its scholarly but always readable author to less well-known names." —Rachel Cooke, Guardian
Jonna lives in an orphanage whose manager is strict and obsessed with cleanliness. Like all the other children, Jonna has only one dream: to be adopted by a well-dressed mother who smells of perfume. But one day, a beat-up car pulls up. The door opens and out step two thick hairy legs with muddy boots, followed by a belly as round as a barrel, and finally, a head like an overgrown pear. It's a gorilla! Surely the orphanage won't let a gorilla adopt a child. But, to Jonna's horror, the gorilla chooses her. Eventually Jonna and the gorilla start to get along, until a man from the council threatens to send Jonna back to the orphanage. The Ape Star is a heartwarming and unconventional chapter book about love, adoption, friendship, and seeing from different perspectives.
Under attack from within, Lia tries to keep the landscapes of her past, her present and her body separate. But time and bodies are porous, and unpredictable. Something gleeful and malign is moving in Lia’s body. It shape-shifts down the banks of her canals, leaks through her tissue, nooks and nodes. It taps her trachea like the bones of a xylophone. It’s spreading. Lia’s story is told, in part, by the very thing that’s killing her; a malevolent voice that wanders her systems, learning her from the inside-out. The novel moves between her past and her present as we come to understand the people that have shaped her life. In turn, each of these take up their place in the battle raging within Lia’s body, at the centre of which dances the murderous narrator and a boy nicknamed ‘Red’ — the toxic chemo that is Lia’s last hope.
Memories have the power to move us, often when we least expect it, a sign of the complex neural process that continues in the background of our everyday lives. Memory is a process that shapes us: filtering the world around us, informing our behaviour and feeding our imagination. Drawing on the poignant stories of her patients, from literature and fairy tales, Veronica O'Keane uses the latest neuroscientific research to ask, among other things, why can memories feel so real? How are our sensations and perceptions connected with them? Why is place so important in memory? Are there such things as 'true' and 'false' memories? And, above all, what happens when the process of memory is disrupted by mental illness? This book is a testament to the courage — and suffering — of those who live with serious mental illness, showing how their experiences unlock our understanding of everything we know and feel.
"Vivid, unforgettable. A fascinating, instructive, wise and compassionate book. There is much for the reader to learn, but there is also a lot that is simply delightful." —John Banville, Guardian
A new edition of the pioneering work first published in 1984, challenging us to look at how the built environment impacts on women's lives. It exposes the sexist assumptions on gender and sexuality that have a fundamental impact on the way buildings are designed and our cities are planned. Written collaboratively by the feminist collective Matrix, the book provides a full-blown critique of the patriarchal built environment both in the home and in public space, and outlines alternative forms of practice that are still relevant today. Making Space remains a path breaking book pointing to possibilities of a feminist future.
Leipzig, 1726. Eleven-year-old Stefan Silbermann, an organ-maker's son, has just lost his mother. Sent to Leipzig to train as a singer in the St Thomas Church choir, he struggles to stay afloat in a school where the teachers are as casually cruel as the students. Stefan's talent draws the attention of the Cantor — Johann Sebastian Bach. Eccentric, obsessive and kind, he rescues Stefan from the miseries of school by bringing him into his home as an apprentice. Soon Stefan feels that this ferociously clever, chaotic family is his own. But when tragedy strikes, Stefan's period of sanctuary in their household comes to a close. Something is happening, though. In the depths of his loss, the Cantor is writing a new work: the Saint Matthew Passion, to be performed for the first time on Good Friday. As Stefan watches the work rehearsed, he realises he is witness to the creation of one of the most extraordinary pieces of music that has ever been written.
"This wise, refreshing novel takes us to the heart of Bach's life and work. James Runcie's expert imagination makes his picture of Leipzig specific and convincing, and behind the music's echo lies a touching human story. It offers a glimpse into a world more faithful and attentive than our own, but not alien to us: 'we listen to music as survivors,' the great Cantor says." —Hilary Mantel
>>BWV 224.
>>BWV 224.
A young woman attends a play about the Berlin Wall coming down and is the only Black person in the audience. She is sitting with her boyfriend by a bathing lake and four neo-Nazis show up. In New York, she witnesses Trump's election victory in a strange hotel room and later awakes to panicked messages from friends. Engaging in a witty question and answer with herself, the narrator looks at our rapidly changing times and tells the story of her family: her mother, who was a punk in East Germany and never had the freedom she dreamed of and her absent Angolan father. But in the background of everything is the memory of her twin brother, who died when they were nineteen.
"So exuberant, inventive, brainy, sensitive and hilarious that it's like a pyrotechnic flare illuminating the whole woman, past and present, radiant, unique, a voice and a novel to take with us into the future." —Francesca Goldman
"Bold and exceptional. Her impressive writing, born of a brilliant mind, surprises — stylistically, and by its frankness and associations. I rode in the passenger seat, beside the beauty and strangeness of 1000 Coils of Fear." —Lynne Tillman
A small boy and his elephant play an absurd game of hide and seek in this beautifully illustrated picture book that will have young readers shouting out loud in delight, and adults laughing too, as Elephant hides, in full view. A te reo Māori edition of this very popular book.
The Sound of Being Human explores, in detail, why music plays such a deep-rooted role in so many lives, from before we are born to our last days. At its heart is Jude's own story: how songs helped her wrestle with the grief of losing her father at age five; concoct her own sense of self as a lonely adolescent; sky-rocket her relationships, both real and imagined, in the flushes of early womanhood, propel her own journey into working life, adulthood and parenthood, and look to the future. Shaped around twelve songs, ranging from ABBA's 'Super Trouper' to Neneh Cherry's 'Buffalo Stance', Kraftwerk's 'Radioactivity' to Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' 'Heat Wave', the book combines memoir and historical, scientific and cultural enquiry to show how music can shape different versions of ourselves; how we rely upon music for comfort, for epiphanies, and for sexual and physical connection; how we grow with songs, and songs grow inside us, helping us come to terms with grief, getting older and powerful memories.
"Too often we treat popular music as wallpaper surrounding us as we live our lives. Jude Rogers shows the emotional and cerebral heft such music can have. It's a personal journey which becomes universal. Fascinating." —Ian Rankin
When Graham Caveney was in his early twenties he began to suffer from what was eventually diagnosed as agoraphobia. What followed were decades of managing his condition and learning to live within the narrow limits it imposed on his life: no motorways, no dual carriageways, no shopping centres, limited time outdoors. Graham's quest to understand his illness brought him back to his first love: books. From Harper Lee's Boo Radley, Ford Madox Ford, Emily Dickinson, and Shirley Jackson: the literary world is replete with examples of agoraphobics — once you go looking for them. On Agoraphobia is a fascinating, entertaining and sometimes painfully acute look at what it means to go through life with an anxiety disorder that evades easy definition.
The Reluctant Carer: Dispatches from the edge of life by The Reluctant Carer $40
"Never less than completely absorbing, simply because Caveney is such a nimble, exact writer, able to move swiftly but unjarringly between daft jokes and serious reflections. His descriptions of the toll the condition takes on his mental health are horrifying in their precision, but that precision makes them beautiful at the same time...the book has the merit of timeliness, in addition to its eloquence and refreshing sense of being totally unconfected." —Telegraph
Due to their aging parents' declining health, The Reluctant Carer moved back into the family home to care for them. This book conveys both the all-consuming demands of unpaid care and the discovery of the contradictions and new dimensions of human experience that become apparent from this undesired but willing role.
"Compellingly written, addictive to read, The Reluctant Carer turns the demands of compassion into dark farce. Hilarious, bitter, poignant and profound, this is the human condition laid brilliantly bare, like an existential soap opera — only with more laughs. The author relays the trauma of ageing parents — and the decisions so many of us have to face — with honesty, empathy, and absolute integrity. This is the funniest, most touching book I've read in years; it will, quite frankly, break your heart." —Philip Hoare
The Biggest Number in the World: A journey to the edge of mathematics by David Darling and Agnijo Banerjee $27
The Glass Wall: Lives on the Baltic frontier by Max Egremont $25
Winston Churchill: His times, his crimes by Tariq Ali $55
"As funny as it is moving and poetic, The Reluctant Carer marries the forensic honesty of Karl Ove Knausgaard with the dry wit of Alan Bennett, and is every bit as good as that sounds." —Will Storr
Enter the strange, largely unexplored realm between the finite and the infinite, and float through a universe where the rules we cling to no longer apply. Encounter the highest number computable, infinite kinds of infinity and consider whether one infinity can be greater than another.
"A wonderful new book. If you love journeying into imagined mathematical worlds and simply exploring, then this book is pure, unadulterated escapism. Brilliant." —New Scientist
Few countries have suffered more from the convulsions and bloodshed of twentieth-century Europe than those in the eastern Baltic. Small nations such as the Baltic States of Latvia and Estonia found themselves caught between the giants of Germany and Russia, on a route across which armies surged or retreated. Subjected to foreign domination and conquest since the Northern crusades in the twelfth century, these lands faced frequent devastation as Germans, Russians and Swedish colonisers asserted control of the territory, religion, government, culture and inhabitants. The Glass Wall features an extraordinary cast of characters — contemporary and historical, foreign and indigenous — who have lived and fought in the Baltic.
In this coruscating biography, Tariq Ali challenges Churchill's vaulted record. Throughout his long career as journalist, adventurer, MP, military leader, statesman and historian, nationalist self belief influenced Churchill's every step, with catastrophic effects. As a young man he rode into battle in South Africa, Sudan and India in order to maintain the Imperial order. As a minister during the first World War, he was responsible for a series of calamitous errors that cost thousands of lives. His attempt to crush the Irish nationalists left scars that have not yet healed. Despite his record as a defender of his homeland during the Second World War, he was willing to sacrifice more distant domains. Singapore fell due to his hubris. Over 3 Million Bengalis starved in 1943 as a consequence of his policies. As a peace time leader, even as the Empire was starting to crumble, Churchill never questioned his imperialist philosophy as he became one of the architects of the postwar world we live in today.
Gaia: Goddess of the Earth by Imogen and Isobel Greenberg $33
"In Ali's telling, which draws on more honest existing historical scholarship than most popular biographies of Churchill, the two-times prime minister emerges not so much as deeply racist — some of his contemporaries remarked on it in shock — as profoundly authoritarian, with a soft spot for fascist strongmen, and a hostility to working-class assertion." —Priyamvada Gopal
>>See also Geoffrey Wheatcroft's Churchill's Shadow.
>>See also Geoffrey Wheatcroft's Churchill's Shadow.
A beautifully done graphic novel for children, suing Greek mythology to give a strong ecological message. Imagine you made something that was so beautiful and powerful that everyone wanted to take it for themselves. And then you had to watch them destroy it. Would you fight for it? Meet Gaia, the ancient Greek goddess who created the Earth and the universe that stretched beyond it. She raised trees from their roots to the sky, sent waterfalls tumbling over cliffs and created the tides that sloshed on the shore. She gifted her creation to animals and mortals, and watched as they made it their home. But she also created a force she couldn't control: the ambition of gods. Gaia watched as the gods fought brutal wars and manipulated mortals such as Hercules and Achilles, disturbing peace on Earth. Storms raged, fires blazed and people, animals and plants suffered. Gaia begged the gods to look after her creation, but no one listened.
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