Find out about the books short-listed for each category in the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards (read the judges' citations below). Click through to reserve your copies from our website. Use the OCKHAMETER to vote for your favourites and to win books.

VOLUME OCKHAMETER
Use the Ockhameter to vote for the books you think should win each section of the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards (or, alternatively, for the books you think will win each section of the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards).
Click on the horse to vote.
All entries go the draw to win a copy of each of the four winning books. Entries close 10 May. 



ACORN FOUNDATION FICTION PRIZE

The New Ships by Kate Duignan (Victoria University Press)    $30   
The New Ships moves deftly back and forth in time and place as Peter Collie, his life eroding after the loss of his wife, tries to make sense of the past and find a way forward. With ageing parents, a flailing relationship with his son, and a past tragedy, the strata of life and family are excavated and entwined with ideas of art and literature to produce an intriguing and elegantly written novel with a wide cast of memorable characters and not a word out of place.

The Cage by Lloyd Jones (Penguin Random House)      $38
Lloyd Jones has delivered a dark but clear-eyed parable of who and what we become when supposedly decent societies master the art of ‘othering’. The narrator’s intense specificity in detailing the two captive strangers’ processes and behaviours, without any seeming emotional context, allows the book to become quietly horrific, the banality of its evil played out as studious observation. It is a courageous book in its insistence upon not directly engaging with its seeming lack of humanity. But the cumulative effect is that its chilling images and their implications do just that.
>> Read Thomas's review. 

This Mortal Boy by Fiona Kidman (Vintage/Penguin Random House)    $38
Spare, unsentimental and unforgettable, This Mortal Boy is a masterful recreation of the events leading up to the real-life hanging of “jukebox killer” Albert Lawrence (Paddy) Black at Mount Eden prison in 1955. With seemingly effortless proficiency, Kidman creates an intensely human and believable story as she positions Paddy, newly arrived from Ireland, within the moral panic of post-war New Zealand, the restless vulnerability of Auckland’s teen culture and the damning preconceptions of the legal profession, all leading to the appalling inevitability of his death.

All This By Chance by Vincent O'Sullivan (Victoria University Press)        $30
All This by Chance is a remarkably immersive three-generational family saga revealing the persistence of a wartime past on our personal histories and the undeniability of traumatic memory. In rich, often intense prose Vincent O’Sullivan weaves the dramatic tension of his story through time and place, from a German concentration camp and post-war London to Italy, Greece, Africa and New Zealand, all the while holding his characters to the unbreakable thread that binds them to the impossible demands of the Holocaust.
>> Read Stella's review. 

MARY AND PETER BIGGS AWARD FOR POETRY

Are Friends Electric? by Helen Heath (Victoria University Press)    $25
Helen Heath’s collection, by turns thoughtful and moving, asks how the material world, including technology, might mediate – or replace – human relationships. The experimental first half uses found poems to engage how artifacts – sex dolls, buildings – become objects of human passion. The elegiac second half offers a touching speculative narrative: a woman embeds her deceased partner’s personality into software to avoid letting go. The question Heath suggests is perhaps less whether friends are electric and more whether they can, or should be.

There's No Place Like the Internet in the Springtime by Erik Kennedy (Victoria University Press)      $25
Erik Kennedy’s frequently playful book offers intellectual and aesthetic surprises, not least of which in the way it moves beyond its ironic mode to at times vulnerable meditations on politics, family, relationships and the self. The collection is notable for experiments in structure and prosody, weaving the contemporary, per the collection’s title, with updated nods to received forms such as the sonnet and rhyme. Kennedy’s frequently light tonal touch belies the difficulty of the linguistic manoeuvres it deftly performs.

The Facts by Therese Lloyd (Victoria University Press)       $15
Therese Lloyd’s The Facts combines ekphrasis, literary influence and the personal poem. At times darkly humorous and at others intensely uncomfortable, these poems explore a contemporary approach to the confessional lyric, interrogating emotional experience while maintaining self-awareness and a willingness to look outwards. One engaging thread in the collection is its investigation of the role of art and spirituality in relation to individual trauma and the process of healing.

Poūkahangatus by Tayi Tibble (Victoria University Press)        $25
Tayi Tibble’s first collection brings us fresh, bold poems that saunter and shimmy with an unsettling self-assurance through a range of uncomfortable and familiar tropes. Her words are vital on the page: skewing and renewing the dusky maiden as millennial sex kitten. Her kūpenga snares scenes that an Aotearoa audience will recognise as our own awkward, unequal, power dynamic. Her lyrical kaupapa draws us in to peer at a two-way mirror that is playful, brutal, seductive and disquieting.
>> Read Stella's review. 


ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION AWARD

Fight for the Forests: The pivotal campaigns that saved New Zealand's native forests by Paul Bensemann (Potton & Burton)       $70
In this powerful account of aspects of recent environmental history in Aotearoa New Zealand, the author brings together a wealth of first-hand accounts and stories to provide an important record of the individuals and groups who made commitments to forest conservation and activism. Historic illustrations and well-chosen archival materials create a sense of context for the reader, while the use of contemporary photography captures the splendour of the natural environment that the book so rightfully celebrates.

Wanted: The search for the modernist murals of E. Mervyn Taylor edited by Bronwyn Holloway-Smith (Massey University Press)      $80
Thoughtfully designed and beautifully presented, the creators of this book about the murals made by artist E. Mervyn Taylor in the 1950s and 1960s have paid considerable attention to both content and production values and the result is impressive. The writers are diverse, the text engaging, and with the aid of well chosen illustrations the book delivers texture and context to a group of important and often overlooked public art works. It also makes a significant contribution to the broader understanding of artistic and cultural activity in mid-century New Zealand.

Tatau: A history of Samoan tattooing by Sean Mallon and Sébastien Galliot (Te Papa Press)        $75
This striking book detailing 3000 years of Sāmoan tattooing immediately invites closer investigation as a result of its integrated approach to design, photography, typography and writing. The ambitious scope of the subject matter and the knowledge of the main authors results in an important body of new scholarship, while the texts remain clear, accessible and engaging. Invited writers add a range of perspectives and experiences appropriate to the subject and intention of the book.

Birdstories: A history of the birds of New Zealand by Geoff Norman (Potton & Burton)        $60
This handsomely designed and elegant book offers an expanded history of the birds of Aotearoa New Zealand. The combination of text and illustrations creates a work that is detailed, wide-ranging and informative, illustrating the writer’s advanced understanding of his subject. Birdstories seamlessly brings iconic historical images together with the work of more recent artists and designers to create a volume that presents a real sense of how these birds became a feature of our visual, natural and cultural history, while reinforcing a strong conservation message.


ROYAL SOCIETY TE APĀRANGI AWARD FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION

Hudson & Halls: The food of love by Joanne Drayton (Otago University Press)           $50
This deeply moving and often surprising story is a delight to read. Set against the backdrop of the onscreen double-act many of us will remember, Hudson & Halls conveys the humour, enduring love and drama of this couple’s public and personal relationship. Joanne Drayton’s fresh approach to storytelling highlights significant social and political moments over four decades and three countries, while the story and the book design celebrate some of the kitsch flamboyance of the pair and the period.

Memory Pieces by Maurice Gee (Victoria University Press)       $35

A fresh and evocative take on the memoir from Maurice Gee, one of New Zealand’s favourite fiction writers. Three years after the publication of a comprehensive biography, he offers his own Memory Pieces, a compelling three-part memoir exploring his parents’ relationship, his own childhood, and his Swedish-born wife Margaretha’s childhood. This well-crafted and often riveting story is told with warmth and generosity, and presented in a beautifully produced book.

We Can Make a Life: A memoir of family, earthquakes and courage by Chessie Henry (Victoria University Press)       $35
Beautifully written and highly engaging, We Can Make a Life is the story of a remarkable family and their life in the South Island. Told with warmth and curiosity by an exciting new writer with a fresh and compelling voice, Chessie Henry’s powerful memoir explores her childhood, family dynamics, mental health, and the impact of the Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquakes on her family. The assuredness of the writing is complemented by the attractiveness of the book.

With Them Through Hell: New Zealand medical services in the First World War by Anna Rogers (Massey University Press)      $65
In this exquisitely produced book, Anna Rogers introduces us to the little-known story of New Zealand’s medical services during the Great War. Ambitious in scope, and engagingly written, all dimensions of the medical effort are covered, as are the significant challenges the doctors, nurses, stretcher-bearers, ambulance drivers and pharmacists faced in treating the traumatic impacts of war on the bodies and minds of soldiers. A remarkable history told with skill, compassion and empathy.

>> Go to the OCKHAMETER now. 

BOOKS @ VOLUME #122 (6.4.19)

Read our latest NEWSLETTER and find out about the books we've been reading, about our Book of the Week, new releases, giveaways, amusements, and upcoming events (including something rather exciting happening in September). 

Max Porter's remarkable and affecting Lanny is our Book of the Week this week. The much anticipated new novel from the author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers taps deep veins of language and folklore as it tells of a young boy who becomes the focus of both a mythical force and a crisis. 
>> Read Thomas's review. 
>> The author reads from his novel. 
>> An interview with Max Porter.
>> Printing the letterpress pages.
>> How Lanny came to be. 
>> Porter reads from his first novel, Grief is the Thing with Feathers. 
>> Read Thomas's review of Grief is the Thing with Feathers. 
>> Pushing the boundaries of the written word. 
>> Coffee with Max Porter.
>>GIVEAWAY: We have a signed and numbered letterpress printing of an extract from Lanny (you can see this being printed here) and a Lanny tote bag to give away courtesy of Faber & Faber and Allen & Unwin NZ. To go in the draw, purchase a copy of the book during April. 

Lanny by Max Porter   {Reviewed by THOMAS} Wherever humans gather they begin to do each other harm. The size of human gathering that optimises this harm is called, in England, a village. Neither small enough for differences to be accommodated nor large enough for them to be ignored, a village allows its inhabitants full exercise of their capacities for intolerance, for suspicion, for collective cruelty. In Max Porter’s poetic and affecting short novel Lanny, a couple move to one such village with their highly imaginative son, Lanny. The first part of the book is told in the alternating voices of the parents and of Pete, the elderly artist from whom Lanny receives art lessons. Lanny’s mother is trying to pull out of a period of depression, writing a crime thriller, and his father continues to commute to London, both a presence and an absence in the lives of the other members of his family. We see the ethereal Lanny through their eyes, but it is perhaps Pete who identifies most with his original ways of thinking and original ways of seeing. Narrated in the voices of these characters, the text provides access only to what they are prepared to acknowledge, leaving uncertain spaces. There is a fourth ‘voice’ in this first part of the book, that of ‘Dead Papa Toothwort’, a personification of a force of nature suppressed in modern life, a principle of decay and regrowth, assailing social fixity and seen primarily in its negative aspect as a force of destruction or death. From beneath the structures of stultification that comprises, to Porter, English village life, even Englishness itself, from the land, from growing and rotting things, from nature, comes the force that will bring down those structures. The first part of the book is saturated with ominous feeling as Toothwort approaches and wanders the village. As with the plant from which he gets his name, Toothwort is parasitic: like death, he has no form but the form he borrows, no words but the words he borrows. “He does the voices,” writes Porter, after Shakespeare, referring to himself, perhaps, as much as to his character. The Toothwort sections are comprised largely of odd snippets and freighted phrases such as are overheard in passing the conversations of others, lines often arranged on the page in a typographically eccentric way like the verbal detritus they are. Just as Toothwort uses phrases gleaned from the village to remake into his purposes, so does the author. A text always contains the ominous presence of the author’s intention, the author as a fateful presence, constructing the sentences but at the same time drawing them towards their death. Toothwort appears in the guise of ordinary things because the ordinary really is full of horror and the kind of undoing that he represents. He is “reckoning with the terrible joke of the flesh and the rubbery links between life and death.” Toothwort wanders the village and ‘chooses’ Lanny, the being most like himself. The second part of the book is told in myriad unattributed but distinct voices of people in the village, along with Lanny’s parents, Pete, and people involved in the search for Lanny after he disappears. These muttered, declaimed, gossipped or published passages demonstrate how, after a crisis is not quickly resolved, the worst aspects of people often come to the fore and people speak and act their prejudices, suspicions, jealousies and resentments, using them to vault to conclusions that relieve their uncertainty. Pete is beaten, Lanny’s mother slurred, anyone with a difference resented or suspected. The village builds itself into an unhealthy state of what could only be called excitement. These ‘external’ snippets are uncomfortable. The reader, like the villagers, is a voyeur, implicated in the crisis that exists for and because of those - villagers and readers - who observe and shape the crisis. We jump to conclusions and reveal our prejudices as do the villagers. We resent the author who reveals us to ourselves as the stories of the voyeurs swamp the facts (or, rather, the absence of facts). The third part of the book begins in the most internal of modes: the dreams of those closest to Lanny (his parents and Pete), dreams of Toothwort-catalysed possible Lannys and possible fates for Lanny. The sequence resolves into a dream of Lanny’s mother, of how Toothwort reveals Lanny to her in this dream, of how she wakes, “breathes in the flesh particles of generations of villagers before her and it tastes like mould and wet tweed,” and finds him, and of what comes after. Lanny’s mother is “caught between what is real and what is not,” however, and I can’t excise my suspicion that the entire sequence, including its resolution, is her dream or desire, a ‘possible’ but not necessarily ‘true’ story, a trajectory in her mind, a disengagement from other, external, possibly more ‘true’ stories - but isn’t fiction always like this? This is a remarkable book. Porter has the uncanny ability to evoke the ordinary and then make it reveal a certain beauty and depth and horror just as it slips away from our ability to hold it in our minds.

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter    As her waters break, the water rises. London is flooding and a young mother is about to give birth. Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From is a mesmerising and poetic novel in the vein of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, yet it is quieter and more illuminating. Sparse and brilliant sentences and thought pieces punctuate the pages, each word vital and necessary. Hunter has taken a journey and laid bare its essence and emotional pinpoints. We only know the family through the eyes of the mother - she is ever present in our consciousness - and those around her are known by their capital letter only, R (her partner), Z (her child), R’s parents N & G. Each moment is a struggle. Leaving London, finding safe roads, arriving in the countryside to the short-lived refuge at N &G’s home. Food and supplies are running out, and a visit to the nearest town brings only disaster. And the waters continue to rise, sending people further north across borders and into foreign territory, to refugee camps where conditions are far from ideal but camaraderie is useful for a new mother and her babe. Hunter looks us in the eye and, through her characters, contemplates the choices that people make in a crisis, the alliances they build despite fear and mistrust, the risks they will take to survive as well as the psychological patterns that play out - behaviours that defy rationality but express an innate necessity for self-determination. When R leaves the camp intent on finding better solutions, he is as much running away as he is securing his sanity. The need to be alone and uncrowded by humanity is paramount. Our narrator moves herself onward, determined to find safety and tranquility for herself and her child despite the danger of permanently losing contact with R. She hopes she is leaving enough clues - even when those clues are little more than stating her existence to herself and the broken landscape around her. This is a world that doesn’t stretch too far from reality - climate will (and does already) alter how we live on the earth and we will increasingly see the movement of people due to extreme weather. This novella could be described as Cli-fi (Climate science fiction), but at its nub it is a book about love and connection, about how humanity endures and what we can overcome even when it alters us irrevocably. At the start of the book, Hunter has chosen to quote from T.S.Eliot: What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning, The end is where we start from. This leads you into the first chapters and from there you will not want to leave until you get to the end - the new beginning. Hunter’s language is evocative, and her observations prescient. Delicate, precise and memorable, this is a novella to be immersed in.

NEW RELEASES

Lanny by Max Porter        $30
The much anticipated new novel from the author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers taps deep veins of language and folklore as it tells of a young boy who becomes the focus of a mythical force. 
"It's hard to express how much I loved Lanny. Books this good don't come along very often. It's a novel like no other, an exhilarating, disquieting, joyous read. It will reach into your chest and take hold of your heart." - Maggie O'Farrell

Guestbook: Ghost stories by Leanne Shapton          $65
A wonderful, beautiful illustrated book in which Shapton demonstrates how memories accumulate and images haunt us, how stories and histories perpetuate themselves through residues that become increasingly firmly lodged in our minds. From the author of the innovative novel Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris: Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry.
“Guestbook reveals Shapton as a ventriloquist, a diviner, a medium, a force, a witness, a goof, and above all, a gift. One of the smartest, most moving, most unexpected books I have read in a very long time.” – Rivka Galchen
>> Leanne Shapton's website.

Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li          $38
A woman's teenage son takes his own life. It is incomprehensible. The woman is a writer, and so she attempts to comprehend her grief in the space she knows best: on the page, as an imagined conversation with the child she has lost. He is as sharp and funny and serious in death as he was in life itself, and he will speak back to her, unable to offer explanation or solace, but not yet, not quite, gone.
"As always, Li writes with a shimmering and deeply felt precision. The tone is both astringent and faintly mischievous, recalling the dialogue in a J.M. Coetzee novel or the wordplay of Ali Smith and Lydia Davis." - Guardian
"Controlled understatement, scrupulous and unsparing lucidity - a work of great moral poise and dignity. I have not read such a compelling work in years." - Independent
>> Li wrote the book following the suicide of her own son. 
>> Read Thomas's review of Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life. 

Spring by Ali Smith          $34
What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times? Spring. The great connective. With an eye to the migrancy of story over time, and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown Smith opens the door.

"Her best book yet." - Observer

Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley           $48
"There are some writers who never let you down. They’re not big stars and their books are not preceded by a tsunami of hype. They simply do what writers do best, producing novels that are so apparently effortless that a wise reader recognises just how difficult they must be to construct. Tessa Hadley is one such writer. Throughout her career, Hadley has explored the middle-class existence, its ennui and its deceptions, with great skill. She has a keen psychological insight that allows her to create multifaceted characters that remain with the reader long after the story has come to an end. It’s no surprise, then, that Late in the Day is a powerful addition to her already distinguished body of work. Really, a rather brilliant novel." - John Boyne, Irish Times
>>Listed for the 2019 Folio Prize. 

The Baby by Marie Darrieussecq         $35
The Baby is a mother's project and a writer's project - how to reconcile these two demanding roles? What is a baby? And why are there so few of them in literature?
"Vintage Darrieussecq: tender, disturbing and indelible." - Chloe Hooper

How to Take Off Your Clothes by Hadassah Grace        $25
Hadassah's poetry deals with themes of love, sex and depression. She describes it" "Politically it's about leaning in to the negative stereotypes projected onto women, and exploring what it means to embrace and humanise them. Personally it's about me working through the loss of the life I thought I would have. Overall it's about how, no matter what happens, women always have shared experiences of moving through the world."
>>'Ruined Women'.

Halibut on the Moon by David Vann        $37
 The new utterly convincing and compelling novel from Whangaroa resident David Vann, reimagining his father's final days. Middle-aged and deeply depressed, Jim arrives in California from Alaska and surrenders himself to the care of his brother Gary, who intends to watch over him. Swinging unpredictably from manic highs to extreme lows, Jim wanders ghost-like through the remains of his old life, attempting to find meaning in his tattered relationships with family and friends. As sessions with his therapist become increasingly combative and his connections to others seem ever more tenuous, Jim is propelled forwards by his thoughts, which have the potential to lead him, despairingly, to his end.
>> Read an extract. 

Still Water: The deep life of the pond by John Lewis-Stempel         $40
Superb nature writing about the animals and plants that live in and around an English pond. 
"Britain's finest living nature writer." - The Times
>>Also available: The Wood. 

Contre-Jour: A triptych after Pierre Bonnard by Gabriel Josipovici       $32
Written with great subtlety and economy, Josipovici's novel, told from the perspectives of Pierre Bonnard, his wife and their daughter, reveals the depths of pain and harm that not only give rise to art but also result from the circumstances of its production. From the author of the Goldsmiths shortlisted The Cemetery in Barnes. 
"What is caught in the paintings and the novel is a pristine look, a moment between words." - Michael Rosen
"Its translucence fosters an extraordinary purity of form and concept. It is serious, even challenging about the conditions of artistic production." - Observer
"Josipovici proves once again to be one of the very best writers now at work in the English language." - Guardian

Dig. by A.S. King       $24
An estranged family’s tragic story is incrementally revealed in this surreal young adults' novel.  Family abuse and neglect and disordered substance use are part of the lives of many of the characters here, but, at the root, this white family has been poisoned by virulent racism.
"Heavily meditative, this strange and heart-wrenching tale is stunningly original." - Kirkus
>>A.S. King on identifying the author's purpose.

Potato by Rebecca Earle       $22
Everyone eats potatoes, but what do they mean? To the United Nations they mean global food security (potatoes are the world's fourth most important food crop). To 18th-century philosophers they promised happiness. Nutritionists warn that too many increase your risk of hypertension. For the poet Seamus Heaney they conjured up both his mother and the 19th-century Irish famine. The potato is entangled with the birth of the liberal state and the idea that individuals, rather than communities, should form the building blocks of society. Potatoes also speak about family, and our quest for communion with the universe. Thinking about potatoes turns out to be a good way of thinking about some of the important tensions in our world.

Loving Sylvie by Elizabeth Smither     $37
Sylvie rows across a lake to her wedding. Madeleine flees to Paris and works in Le Livre Bleu bookshop. Isobel is summoned to her doctor's surgery late one afternoon. Smither weaves the stories of three generations of women and life in three cities - Auckland, Paris, Melbourne - into this well-observed novel. 
"Elizabeth Smither brings wit, warmth and wisdom to this absorbing and beautifully written inter-generational story." - Peter Simpson
>> Someone we know reviews the book.

Blooms: Contemporary floral design        $80
A survey of work by more than 70 contemporary floral designers who are truly extending the boundaries of their art. Your mouth will drop open. 
>> Have a look inside and resist if you can. 

High Heel by Summer Brennan         $22
Fetishised, demonized, celebrated, outlawed, the high heel is central to the iconography of modern womanhood. But are high heels good? Are they feminist? What does it mean for a woman (or a man) to choose to wear them? Meditating on the labyrinthine nature of sexual identity and the performance of gender, Brennan moves from film to fairytale, from foot binding to feminism, and from the golden ratio to glam rock.

Selected Writings by René Magritte      $23
Available for the first time in English, these various writings (letters, apologia, appreciations of fellow artists, interviews, farcical film scripts, prose poems, manifestos) give insight into the various incarnations of the artist: Surrealist, literalist, celebrity, rascal.

Mind on Fire: A memoir of madness and recovery by Arnold Thomas Fanning           $30
''Mind on Fire is a truly powerful, arresting, haunting account. Arnold Thomas Fanning has reckoned with the darkest matter of his heart and mind, and I challenge anyone not to be moved by that.'' - Sara Baume
''In this strange and singular book, Fanning mercilessly excavates the infernal underworld of his own years of madness. The book is ultimately not quite like anything else I've read, and brought me as close to the lived reality of mental illness as I have ever been. It's a significant achievement: a painful, inexorable work of autobiography, whose existence is its own form of redemption.'' - Mark O'Connell
''Incredibly important.'' - Emilie Pine
>> Short-listed for the 2019 Wellcome Prize. 

The Unnamable Present by Roberto Calasso         $40

Tourists, terrorists, secularists, hackers, fundamentalists, transhumanists, algorithmicians - in this book Roberto Calasso considers the tribes that inhabit and inform the world today, a world that feels more elusive than ever before. Yet once contrasted with the period between 1933 and 1945, when the world made a partially successful attempt at self-annihilation, the new millennium begins to take on an unprecedented form. What emerges is something illusory, ever-shifting and occasionally murderous - the unnamable present.

Novels in Three Lines by Félix Fénéon       $36
Posing as news snippets, which may or may not represent actual events, Fénéon's briefest-of-brief 'novels' appear originally in the Paris daily newspaper Le Matin in 1906. They still read as Molotov cocktails of irony hurled against both literature and life.
>> Read a selection.  

Home Child: A child migrant to New Zealand by Dawn McMillan and Trish Bowles         $28
A beautiful picture book telling the story of Pat Brown, a post-WW2 child migrant from London who now lives in Nelson. 
>>The book will be launched at VOLUME at 4:30 PM on Wednesday 24 April on Pat's 80th birthday. All welcome (there will be cake). 

The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the far right by Enzo Traverso        $35

Traverso puts the current cocktail of right-wing populism, identitarianism, Islamophobia, and regressive nationalist anti-globalism into a historical context: what we are seeing is neither the reproduction of old fascisms nor something wholly new. 

Homemade by Eleanor Ozich           $40
Clever, eco-conscious recipes for daily household goods: mayonnaise, crackers, yoghurt, bread, muesli bars, hummus, cheese, food wraps, cleaners, air fresheners, balms, hand scrubs and candles. 

The Bad Seed by Charlotte Grimshaw        $38
The Night Book and Soon in one vicious volume. An unflinching look at politics and power, contemporary New Zealand society and the arid morality of the privileged.
>>And a TV series!

Shimshal by Pam Henson      $30
An insightful an sympathetic account of life in a remote Muslim village in the highlands of Pakistan. Henson has also recorded villagers' autobiographical stories in Women of Shimshal. 

Humiliated and Insulted by Fyodor Dostoyevsky     $19
Degradation, childhood trauma, unrequited love, irreconcilable relationships - what more could you want? 

Death Wins a Goldfish: Reflections from a grim reaper's year-long sabbatical by Brian Rea         $30
Death never has a day off, so he has accumulated a lot of leave entitlement. HR insists he use it up, so off Death goes to take a break in the Land of the Living. How do the living relax and enjoy themselves? Graphic novel.