NEW RELEASES (19.7.24)
Chose your new book from the newest of the new books:
All Fours by Miranda July $37
A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey. With July's wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman's quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectations while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrilling.
“A giddy, bold, mind-blowing tour de force by one of our most important literary writers. Funny, honest, rich with the energy of the mind, All Fours will jump-start your relation to language and cause you to think anew about the nature of desire.” —George Saunders
”All Fours is profound and bawdy and deeply human, a brilliant work of art from a completely blown open and fearless mind.” —Emma Cline
Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan $26
This tender and fierce novel set in the societal trauma of the Sri Lankan civil war has been awarded the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war subsumes Sri Lanka, her dream takes her on a different path as she watches those around her, including her four beloved brothers and their best friend, get swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. She must ask herself: is it possible for anyone to move through life without doing harm?
”V.V. Ganeshananthan's novel Brotherless Night reveals the moral nuances of violence, ever belied by black-and-white terminology.” —The New York Times
”A beautiful, brilliant book: tender and fierce as it is mournful. It is unafraid to look directly at the worst of the violence and erasure we have perpetrated or allowed to happen, but is insistent that we can still choose to be better.” —Danielle Evans
”With immense compassion and deep moral complexity, V. V. Ganeshananthan brings us an achingly moving portrait of individual and societal grief. "I want you to understand," the narrator of Brotherless Night insists, and by the end of this blazingly brilliant novel, we do: that in a world full of turmoil, human connections and shared stories can teach us how — and, as importantly, why — to survive.” —Celeste Ng
Mary and the Rabbit Dream by Noémi Kiss-Deáki $36
Mary Toft was just another eighteenth century woman living in poverty, misery and frequent pain. Mary Toft was the kind of person overlooked by those with power, forgotten by historians. Mary Toft was nothing. Until, that is, Mary Toft started giving birth to rabbits... In Mary and the Rabbit Dream, Noemi Kiss-Deaki reimagines Mary's strange and fascinating story — and how she found fame when a large swathe of England became convinced that she was the mother of rabbits. Mary and the Rabbit Dream is a story of bodily autonomy, of absurdity, of the horrors inflicted on women, of the cruel realities of poverty and the grotesque divides between rich and poor. It is a story told with exquisite wit, skill and a beautiful streak of subversive mischief.
“One of those novels that seemingly arrives from nowhere, fully-formed, as odd, disturbing and lingering as the most vivid of fever dreams. To create something so playfully provocative, subversive and gripping displays a rare literary talent. I’ve certainly never read anything like it.” —Benjamin Myers
“In Mary and the Rabbit Dream, Noémi Kiss-Deáki transforms the tale of Mary Toft into a stinging, witty critique of the oppressions heaped upon the bodies of impoverished women. This is a brave debut, one told with courage and wit, one which dissects a ruthless system of class and gender – and lays bare the concentric circles of power that still govern our world.” —Selby Wynn Schwartz
“Noémi Kiss-Deáki’s style is astonishing – hypnotic, poetic, persistent, wild, blazing and marvellous. As the novel unfolds you simply can’t believe what is happening – it’s outrageous, it’s cruel, it’s unfathomable and yet – it’s the way of the world. Here is Mary Toft’s tale, retold in dazzling prose that is both exquisite and furious. Noémi Kiss-Deáki reimagines the possibilities for historical fiction and Mary and the Rabbit Dream is utterly original and utterly brilliant." —Victoria Mackenzie
The Picnic: An escape to freedom and the collapse of the Iron Curtain by Matthew Longo $40
In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists did the unthinkable- they entered the forbidden militarised zone of the Iron Curtain — and held a picnic. Word had spread of what was going to happen. On wisps of rumour, thousands of East German 'holiday-makers' had made their way to the border between Hungary and Austria and packed the nearby camping sites, awaiting an opportunity, fearing prison, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The highest state authorities were choosing to turn a blind eye — but that could change at any moment. The stage was set for the greatest border breach in Cold War history — that day hundreds would cross from the Communist East to the longed-for freedom of the West. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union — the so-called end of history — all would flow from those dramatic hours. Drawing on dozens of original interviews with those involved — activists and border guards, escapees and secret police, as well as the last Communist prime minister of Hungary — Matthew Longo reconstructs not only this remarkable event but also its complex and bittersweet aftermath. Freedom had been won but parents had been abandoned and families divided. Love affairs faltered and new lives had to be built from scratch. The Picnic is the story of a moment when the tide of history turned. It shows how freedom can be both dream and disillusionment, and how all we take for granted can vanish in an instant.
Winner of the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Writing (non-Fiction)
”Longo covers the Picnic at ground level, evoking the dramatic events in vivid colour. Anecdotes and impressions are woven through the historical narrative, providing an insight into how deeply this history still matters today. The chain of events in 1989 and its historical context are outlined with clarity and verve. The narrative is spiked with Longo's commentary and anecdotes from his trips, making The Picnic a deeply personal account of a fascinating milestone of Cold War history.” —Katja Hoyer, Telegraph
Choice by Neel Mukherjee $37
A publisher, who is at war with his industry and himself, embarks on a radical experiment in his own life and the lives of those connected to him; an academic exchanges one story for another after an accident brings a stranger into her life; and a family in rural India have their lives destroyed by a gift.
These three ingeniously linked but distinct narratives, each of which has devastating unintended consequences, form a breathtaking exploration of freedom, responsibility, and ethics. What happens when market values replace other notions of value and meaning? How do the choices we make affect our work, our relationships, and our place in the world? Neel Mukherjee's new novel exposes the myths of individual choice, and confronts our fundamental assumptions about economics, race, appropriation, and the tangled ethics of contemporary life. Choice is a scathing, compassionate quarrel with the world, a masterful inquiry into how we should live our lives, and how we should tell them.
”Choice is funny, horrible, ironic, damning, affecting and deadly serious.” —Financial Times
”In his dazzling new novel, Neel Mukherjee dissects how economics rules our lives and impoverishes our souls. Choice is by turns comic, lyrical and heartbreaking. It burns brightly with fierce intelligence, with wisdom and compassion, and achieves what so few novels even attempt: it makes the reader think deeply about how we've come to live this way, at what cost, and about those who pay the greatest price.” —Monica Ali
”In each panel of this masterful triptych exquisite prose gradually crescendos to jaw-dropping revelations. Possessed of great moral seriousness, Choice is also very funny in its satirical excoriation of the obsession with calculating life in purely economic terms in so many realms of contemporary life. It is, in short, a deeply human novel, and a humane one. We come to realize that a human life is not simply the result of rational choices but rather, as Mukherjee puts it, the lull between them — a rich and swaying lull, thick with love and responsibility.” —Namwali Serpell
A Body Made of Glass: A history of hypochondria by Caroline Crampton $40
"There is a twilight zone between illness and health, and that's where I dwell." An ache, a pain, a mysterious lump, a strange sensation in some part of your body, the feeling that something is not right. The fear that something is, in fact, very wrong. These could be symptoms of illness. But they could also be the symptoms of hypochondria — an enigmatic condition that might be physiological or psychological or both. Caroline Crampton tells the story of hypochondria, beginning in the age of Hippocrates and taking us right through to the wellness industry today. Along the way, we encounter successive generations of doctors positing new theories, as well as quacks selling spurious cure-alls to the desperate. And we meet those who have suffered with conditions both real and imagined, including Moliere, Darwin, Woolf, Freud, Larkin, and Proust (whose symptoms and sensitivities gradually narrowed his life to the space of his cork-lined bedroom). Crampton also examines the gendered nature of the medical response, the financial and social factors at play, and the ways in which modern technology simultaneously feeds our fears and holds out the promise of relief. Drawing on Crampton's own experience of surviving a life-threatening disease only to find herself beset by almost constant anxiety about her health, A Body Made of Glass explores part of the landscape of illness that most memoirs don't reach: the territory beyond survival or cure, where body and mind seem locked in a strange and exhausting kind of dance. The result is both a fascinating cultural history of hypochondria and a moving account of what it means to live with this invisible, elusive and increasingly wide-spread condition.
”Clarity and beauty combine with terror and dark comedy — essential reading for everyone who has a body.” —Lucy Worsley
”A thoughtful and touching examination of what it means to be well. Crampton's unflinching honesty and skill with words make for a tender and often heart-breaking history of medicine. Every medical professional should read this book.” —Subhadra Das
Vertigo: The rise and fall of Weimar Germany, 1918—1933 by Harald Jähner $40
Germany, 1918 — a country in flux. The First World War is lost, traditional values are shaken to their core, revolution is afoot and the victory of democracy beckons. Everything must change with the times. The country is abuzz with talk of the 'new woman', the 'new man', 'new living' and 'new thinking'. What follows is the establishment of the Weimar Republic, an economic crisis and the transformation of Germany. A triumphant procession of liberated lifestyles emerges. Women conquer the racetracks and tennis courts, go out alone in the evenings, cut their hair short and cast the idea of marriage aside. Unisex style comes into fashion, androgynous and experimental. People revel in the discovery of leisure, filling up boxing halls, dance palaces and the hotspots of the New Age, embracing the department stores' promise of happiness and accepting the streets as a place of fierce battles. So much of this short burst of life between the wars seems amazingly modern today, including, amidst a frenzy of change, the backlash from those who did not see themselves reflected in this new culture. Little by little, deep divisions in society began to emerge. Divisions that would have devastating consequences, altering the course of the twentieth century and the lives of millions around the world.
”Vertigo is outstanding. Harald Jahner's gift for illuminating the big picture with telling detail gives the reader an uncanny sense of what it was actually like to be present in Germany during the Weimar Republic. This is history at its very best.” —Julia Boyd
Analogue: A field guide by Deyan Sudjic $70
Covering sound, vision, communication and information, Analogue: A Field Guide is an evocative trip through an era of innovative design, profiling 250 classic objects from radios to turntables, TVs to cameras, and typewriters to telephones. Along the way, it surveys all the iconic brands as well as the technological developments that have made these devices possible. There is a growing nostalgia for physical, real-world interaction with design and technology and a desire to reconnect with both things and people, something that has been eroded by the digital revolution. The wide-ranging approach of this book enables it to show the deeper cultural and social significance of the analogue era, with the authority to convince those who know a lot about each category and the breadth to attract the non-specialist. Ideal for those nostalgic for physical media, as well as those who collect, use and maintain these older technologies. Impressive.
The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada (translated from Japanese by David Boyd) $30
Asa's husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family's home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for work, and tries to find interesting ways of killing time. One day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole — a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. This is the first in a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape filled with eccentric characters and unidentifiable creatures, leading her to question her role in this world, and eventually, her sanity.
”A great book.” —Patti Smith
”Surreal and mesmerizing.” —New York Times
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad $26
After years away from her family's homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. On her arrival, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new. When Sonia meets the charismatic Mariam, a local director, she joins a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Soon, Sonia is rehearsing with a dedicated, if competitive, group of men — yet as opening night draws closer, it becomes clear just how many obstacles stand before the troupe. Amidst it all, the life she once knew starts to give way to the exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home. New papernack edition.
”Enter Ghost retells Hamlet for now, dropping its readers deep into the contemporary tensions of the West Bank, asking crucial and layered questions. Hammad is a calm and vital storyteller, a writer of real rhythmic grace.” —Ali Smith
”How can a production of Hamlet in the West Bank resonate with the residents’ existential issues? Enter Ghost is a beautiful, profound meditation on the role of art in our society and our lives.” —Monica Ali
”Beautifully written, poignant yet forceful, thoughtful and thought provoking, but above all challenging the reader to respond to the question facing the characters in the novel: how to live under occupation while preserving your dignity and humanity? Hammad answers this question through taking us into the hearts and minds of the characters in the novel and through that into the heart and mind of Palestine.” —Azar Nafisi
The King’s Witches by Kate Foster $38
Denmark, 1589. Princess Anne is betrothed to King James VI of Scotland — a geo-political royal marriage designed to forever unite the two countries. But first, she must pass the trial period: one year of marriage in which she must prove herself worthy of being Scotland's new Queen. If the King and the Scottish royal court find her wanting, she faces disgraced and permanent exile. Determined to fulfil her duties to King and country, Anne resolves to be the perfect royal bride. Until she meets Lord Henry. By her side is Kirsten, her loyal and pious lady's maid. But whilst tending to Anne's every need, she has her own motives for the royal marriage to be a success . . . On the other side of the border in North Berwick, a young housemaid by the name of Jura is dreaming of a new life. With an abusive master and a soured relationship with a young farmer's son, she secretly practises the charms taught to her by her mother. When the tension reaches breaking point, Jura makes a run for it: to Edinburgh. But it isn't long before she finds herself caught up in the witchcraft mania that has gripped the capital, and her freedom and her future are on the line. Will Anne, Kirsten and Jura be able to save each other, and in doing so save themselves?
A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter (translated from German by Jane Degras) $33
In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be a relaxing trip, a chance to 'read thick books in the remote quiet and, not least, sleep to my heart's content', but when Christiane arrives she is shocked to realise that they are to live in a tiny ramshackle hut on the shores of a lonely fjord, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, battling the elements every day, just to survive. At first, Christiane is horrified by the freezing cold, the bleak landscape the lack of equipment and supplies... But as time passes, after encounters with bears and seals, long treks over the ice and months on end of perpetual night, she finds herself falling in love with the Arctic's harsh, otherworldly beauty, gaining a great sense of inner peace and a new appreciation for life. New edition.
The Dream Factory by Steph Matuku, illustrated by Zak Ātea Komene $22
An amazing building rises on the edge of town — it's the dream factory. Every night, it sends out magical mist. Flying cars, flower cakes and talking tigers fill people's dreams. And the next day, the people make those dreams come true. But when a kereru flies into the dream factory, and a feather floats into a cog, everything goes terribly wrong.
The Further Adventures of Miss Petitfour by Anne Michaels, illustrated by Emma Block $23
Miss Petitfour enjoys having adventures that are 'just the right size' for a 'single, magical day’. With her sixteen cats and the aid of a tablecloth as a makeshift balloon, Miss Petitfour soars — which is to say, she rises high in the air and flies — over her charmingly eccentric village, encountering adventures along the way. One never knows where the wind will take her in this delightfully seasonal collection of magical outings: perhaps to the aid of dearly loved friends and neighbours, including a hapless handyman and an onion-loving baby, or to a coconut-confetti parade, or in search of keys, lucky charms or even simply the perfect tablecloth for her next flight. A witty, whimsical, beautifully illustrated collection of tales that celebrate language, storytelling and all the pleasures of life, large and small.
Birds Aren't Real: The true story of mass avian murder and the largest surveillance campaign in U.S. history by Peter McIndoe and Connor Gaydos $35
Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? You haven't, have you? No one has, not in many, many years. They used to be everywhere. That's because they come out of the factory as adults. In the 1970s, the United States government killed off the entire bird population and replaced them with robotic bird replicas that are used for mass surveillance. Bird drones that recharge on power lines and leave 'liquid tracking devices' on your car are omnipresent while the American people live in blissful ignorance. Until now. In Birds Aren't Real, whistleblowers Peter McIndoe and Connor Gaydos trace the roots of a political conspiracy so vast and well-hidden that it almost seems like an elaborate hoax. These hero Bird Truthers have risked life and limb to spread the word, to free America and prevent other countries' governments from enacting a similar scheme.