NEW RELEASES
"Always italicise foreign words," a friend of the author was advised. In her first book of poetry, Māori scholar and poet Alice Te Punga Somerville does just that. In wit and anger, sadness and aroha, she reflects on 'how to write while colonised' — how to write in English as a Māori writer; how to trace links between Aotearoa and wider Pacific, Indigenous and colonial worlds; how to be the only Māori person in a workplace; and how — and why — to do the mahi anyway.
>>Writing while colonised.
>>English has broken my heart.
>>English has broken my heart on the radio.
>>Find out more.
Fight Night by Miriam Toews $33
Ti Amo by Hanne Ørstavik (translated by Martin Aitken) $36
Duck's Backyard by Ulrich Hub, illustrated by Jörg Mühle $20
Immanuel by Matthew McNaught $28
Towards a Grammar of Race in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Anisha Sankar, Lana Lopesi and Arcia Tecun $40
The Collectors by Philip Pullman, illustrated by Tom Duxbury $25
>>English has broken my heart on the radio.
>>Find out more.
You are a small thing, and you must learn to fight. Swiv has taken her grandmother's advice too literally. Now she's at home, suspended from school. Her mother is pregnant and preoccupied — and so Swiv is in the older woman's charge, receiving a very different form of education from a teacher with a style all her own. Grandma likes her stories fast, troublesome and funny. She's known the very worst that life can throw at you - and has met it every time with a wild, unnamable spirit, fighting for joy and independence every step of the way. But will maths lessons based on Amish jigsaws and classes on How to Dig a Winter Grave inspire the same fire in Swiv, and ensure it never goes out? Time is running short. Grandma's health is failing, the baby is on the way, as a family of three extraordinary women prepare to face life's great changes together. From the author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows.
A woman is in a deep and real, but relatively new relationship with a man from Milan. She has moved there, they have married, and they are close in every way. Then he is diagnosed with cancer. It’s serious, but they try to go about their lives as best they can. But when the doctor tells the woman that her husband has less than a year to live – without telling the husband – death comes between them. She knows it’s coming, but he doesn’t – and he doesn’t seem to want to know. Ti Amo is a beautiful and harrowing novel, filled with tenderness and grief, love and loneliness. It delves into the complex emotions of bereavement, and in less than 100 pages manages to encapsulate both scope and depth, asking how and for whom we can live, when the one we love best is about to die.
A duck spends her days limping around her backyard with the help of a crutch until one day a blind hen stumbles in, lost, and persuades the duck to embark on an adventurous journey. The duck will guide the hen; the hen will steady the duck's wonky leg. They leave together for a place where their most secret wishes will come true. The pair come upon astonishing obstacles along the way—a wild forest, a cavernous gorge and many differences of opinion. The hen starts to wish she’d taken a guide dog rather than a duck! When the two finally arrive at their destination after all the hardships, they realise that their own backyard plus a little imagination offers as much adventure as a whole world.
Great Women Painters edited by Alison Gingeras $120
Featuring over 300 artists and covering almost 500 years, this well presented and well illustrated book gives depth to familiar works and delivers many surprises.
At what point does faith turn into tyranny? Blending essay, memoir and reportage, this exceptional debut explores community, doubt, and the place of faith in the twenty-first century. In Immanuel, McNaught explores his upbringing in an evangelical Christian community in Winchester. As McNaught moved away from the faith of his childhood in the early 2000s, a group of his church friends were pursuing it to its more radical fringes. They moved to Nigeria to join a community of international disciples serving TB Joshua, a charismatic millionaire pastor whose purported gifts of healing and prophecy attracted vast crowds to his Lagos ministry, the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN). Years later, a number of these friends left SCOAN with accounts of violence, sexual abuse, sleep deprivation and public shaming. In reconnecting with his old friends, McNaught realised that their journey into this cult-like community was directly connected to the teachings and tendencies of the church of their childhood. Yet speaking to them awakened a yearning for this church that, despite everything, he couldn't shake off. Was the church's descent into hubris and division separable from the fellowship and mutual sustenance of its early years? Was it possible to find community and connection without dogma and tribalism? Blending essay, memoir and reportage, Immanuel is about community, doubt, and the place of faith in the twenty-first century.
A search for new ways to talk about the social construct of race in Aotearoa brought together this powerful group of scholars, writers and activists. For these authors, attempts to confront racism and racial violence often stall against a failure to see how power works through race, across our modern social worlds. The result is a country where racism is all too often left unnamed and unchecked, voices are erased, the colonial past ignored and silence passes for understanding. By ‘bringing what is unspoken into focus’, Towards a Grammar of Race seeks to articulate and confront ideas of race in Aotearoa New Zealand – an exploration that includes racial capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness. A recurring theme across the book is the inescapable entanglement of local and global manifestations of race. Each of the contributors brings their own experiences and insights to the complexities of life in a racialised society, and together their words make an important contribution to our shared and future lives on these shores. Contributors: Pounamu Jade Aikman, Faisal Al-Asaad, Mahdis Azarmandi, Simon Barber, Garrick Cooper, Morgan Godfery, Kassie Hartendorp, Guled Mire, Tze Ming Mok, Adele Norris, Nathan Rew, Vera Seyra, Beth Teklezgi, Selome Teklezgi and Patrick S. Thomsen.
On the Farm: New Zealand's invisible women by David Hall $40
This interesting book tells the stories of Kiwi farm women largely in their own words, drawing from the vast archive of letters written to New Zealand farming magazines throughout the 20th century. It reveals the daily routines, the various roles women held on farms: from mother to teacher, baker to accountant, cleaner to farm worker, and how their extraordinarily busy work loads were carried out largely unacknowledged and unseen. It shows how women struggled for greater recognition for their contributions to farming, tracing a time from when it was impossible for a woman to get a bank loan to own or operate a farm, to a period when women were often considered equal partners in the running of a farm and regularly became individual farm owners.
A Gothic-feeling, atmospheric mystery story set in the world of 'His Dark Materials' and 'The Book of Dust', and revealing the early life of the complex pivotal character Mrs Coulter. On a dark winter's night in 1970, Horley and Grinstead huddle for warmth in the Senior Common Room of a college in Oxford. Conversation turns to the two impressive works of art that Horley has recently added to his collection. What the two men don't know is that these pieces are connected in mysterious and improbable ways; and they are about to be caught in the cross-fire of a story which has travelled time and worlds.
More Zeros and Ones: Digital technology, maintenance and equity in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Anna Pendergrast and Kelly Pendergrast $15
Bushline by Robbie Burton $40
Many of today's digital technologies inadvertently amplify the power structures and prejudices of wider society. By examining the way digital tools and platforms are designed, built, and maintained, this BWB Text aims to identify where and what we can do better for everyone in Aotearoa. Following on from the success of Shouting Zeros and Ones, this fresh collection includes writers with specific expertise in applying topics such as environmental science, law and Te Tiriti o Waitangi to recent developments in technology. More Zeros and Ones continues the exploration of emerging issues for digital technology and society in Aotearoa New Zealand. Contributors include Dr Nessa Lynch, Amber Craig, Hiria Te Rangi, Dr Sarah Bickerton, Sarah Pritchett, Hannah Blumhardt, Dr Paul Smith, Professor Graeme Austin, Siobhan McCarthy, Dr Karaitiana Taiuru, Dr Andrew Chen, Dr Karly Burch, Dr Moana Nepia, Nicholas Jones, Dr Marama Muru-Lanning, Dr Henry Williams, Mira O'Connor and Professor Anna Brown.
Nelson publisher and tramper Robbie Burton shows us the paths that led him to publish some of Aotearoa's best and pivotal non-fiction books, and to love the mountains.
>>On publishing Nicky Hager and hitting a political nerve.
Culture in a Small Country: The arts in New Zealand by Roger Horrocks $45
The Battle for Cable Street by Tanya Landman $17
Tenderheart: A book about vegetables and unbreakable family bonds by Hetty Lui McKinnon $65
This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham $37
One Hundred Havens: The settlement of the Marlborough Sounds by Helen Beaglehole $60
Rooms of Their Own: Where great writers write by Alex Johnson, illustrated by James Oses $45
A Message for Nasty by Roderick Fry $40
How To Be You: Simone de Beauvoir and the art of authentic living by Skye Cleary $38
A wide-ranging account of the state of the arts in Aotearoa, combining new perspectives on the past with a view of the situation today and considering the impact of the pandemic on the sector. It includes interviews with writers, painters, composers, filmmakers and other artists, who accepted the challenge of making a creative career in a country which is often blind to the value of the arts. The book looks not only at artistic innovations but also at practical problems, public scandals, and the struggle in a small society to reach critical mass.
“Like so many others, I have been waiting for this book. Horrocks’s big picture history is convincing and revelatory because his insider’s knowledge of the arts is so uniquely broad and deep.” — Wystan Curnow
In 1936 the British Union of Fascists staged a provocative march through London's Jewish East End. They were met by a massive antifascist counter-protest, which fought the fascists and the police until Mosley was instructed by the police to leave the area. This important but overlooked piece of history is told for younger readers in the context of the lives of young people in the area.
McKinnon takes readers on a vegetable-by-vegetable journey, packed with clever and inventive ways to combine ingredients, flavours and texture. With practicality, accessibility and economy in mind, Hetty devotes one chapter to each of her 22 favourite everyday vegetables, from Asian greens to zucchini. As is Hetty's signature, the flavours are globally inspired, with an emphasis on simple yet inventive weeknight cooking.
Alice had not expected to spend the first twenty years of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf. When she stood on Morell Bridge watching fireworks explode from the rooftops of Melbourne at the start of a new millennium, she had only two thoughts. One was: the fireworks are better in Sydney. The other was: was the world's technology about to crash down around her? The world's technology did not crash. But there were worse disasters to come: Environmental collapse. The return of fascism. Wars. A sexual reckoning. A plague. Uncertain of what to do she picks up an unfinished project and finds herself trapped with the ghosts of writers past. What began as a novel about a member of the Bloomsbury set, colonial administrator, publisher and husband of one the most famous English writers of the twentieth century becomes something else altogether.
History has played out in the many coves of the Marlborough Sounds in complex ways - Maori and Pakeha, land and sea, boom and bust, locals and tourists. It's a glorious but challenging environment, and generations of farmers, miners and tourism operators have faced obstacles that range from the merely difficult to the nearly impossible. Well illustrated.
The perennial question asked of all authors is How do you write? What do they require of their room or desk? Do they have favourite pens, paper or typewriters? And have they found the perfect daily routine to channel their creativity? Crossing centuries, continents and genres, Alex Johnson has pooled 50 of the best writers and transports you to the heart of their writing rooms - from attics and studies to billiard rooms and bathtubs. Discover the ins and outs of how each great writer penned their famous texts, and the routines and habits they perfected. Meet authors who rely on silence and seclusion and others who need people, music and whisky. Meet those who travel half-way across the world to a luxury writing retreat, and others who just need an empty shed at the bottom of the garden. Some are particular about pencils, inks, paper and typewriters, and others will scribble on anything - including the furniture. But whether they write in the library or in cars, under trees, private islands, hotel rooms or towers - each of these stories confirms that there is no best way to write.
December 8, 1941. Marie Broom wakes in her home on Hong Kong’s Fortress Hill to the sound of bombs falling nearby. Within days, Japanese soldiers have seized the surrounding buildings. Soon afterwards they take over the whole island. Most of its British residents are forcibly interned. Marie’s husband Vincent, a New Zealander, is away on business, trapped in Singapore as it too comes under Japanese attack. Macau-born Marie, 27, her three young daughters, baby son and the family’s amahs must face Hong Kong’s increasingly brutal occupation alone. A well-researched novel based on actual events and experiences.
"The most chilling depiction of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and the particular horrors facing young women unprotected I have ever come across" —Peter Graham
"Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay." So said Simone de Beauvoir. In this galvanising tour of her existentialist philosophies for life, we learn how de Beauvoir can teach us to free ourselves of fears and stereotypes and live more authentically.
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