NEW RELEASES (31.5.24)
Start winter with a book still warm from the carton.
Click through to our website for your copies:
Long Island by Colm Tóibín $37
Eilis Lacey is Irish and married to Tony Fiorello. They live in a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, surrounded by Tony's large Italian family. Spring 1976. Eilis is now in her forties with two teenagers. An Irishman knocks on her door and tells her his wife is pregnant with Tony's child. Eilis has choices to make.
”Brilliantly written with a deft touch, it is only at the end that the breath you have been holding will be exhaled, but only briefly. —Stella
"A masterful novel full of longing and regret." —Stuart Douglas
"Heartbreak, wistfulness, cracking dialogue: this is Toibin at his best." —Robbie Millen, The Times
"Glittering with all of Toibin's intelligence and humane wit." —Colin Barrett
Our Strangers by Lydia Davis $45
Lydia Davis is a virtuoso at detecting the seemingly casual, inconsequential surprises of daily life and pinning them for inspection. In Our Strangers, conversations are overheard and misheard, a special delivery letter is mistaken for a rare white butterfly, toddlers learning to speak identify a ping-pong ball as an egg and mumbled remarks betray a marriage. In the glow of Davis's keen noticing, strangers can become like family and family like strangers. This book has taken six months to come back into stock, so we will celebrate it as if it were a new release!
”This is a writer as mighty as Kafka, as subtle as Flaubert and as epoch-making, in her own way, as Proust.” —Ali Smith
”Davis captures words as a hunter might and uses punctuation like a trap. Davis is a high priestess of the startling, telling detail, a most original and daring mind.” —Colm Toibin
Ela! Ela! To Turkey and Greece, A journey home through food by Ella Mittas $45
A collection of recipes and stories from cook and food writer Ella Mittas. Inspired by her time working in a village in the mountains of Crete and the hot, loud streets of Istanbul, as well as her Greek heritage, they represent a journey of food, culture and belonging. These simple, comforting recipes are a mix of things Ella saw, ate and was taught on her travels, though years of cooking them have made them something more her own. Above all, they represent community — the reason Mittas ever wanted to cook at all.
In Italy: Venice, Rome, and beyond by Cynthia Zarin $23
Here we encounter a writer deeply engaged with narrative in situ – a traveller moving through beloved streets, sometimes accompanied, sometimes solo. With her we see anew the Venice Biennale, the Lagoon and San Michele, the island of the dead; the Piazza di Spagna, the Tiber, the view from the Gianicolo; the pigeons at San Marco and the parrots in the Doria Pamphili. Zarin’s attention to the smallest details, the loveliest gesture, brings Venice, Rome, Assisi and Santa Maria Maggiore vividly to life for the reader.
”These pieces induce a comparable sense of being pleasurably lost, of wanting to live imperfectly in the present tense.” —Observer
A History of Women in 101 Objects by Annabelle Hirsch $55
The way we remember the past today remains dishearteningly patriarchal: a place where women have always been oppressed by men, from ancient times to the present day. A History of Women in 101 Objects tells a new story of female history, revealing the evolution of the role women have played in society through the quiet power of their everyday items. Much of what we've read about history focuses on the men in power: women's stories are too often hidden or considered unremarkable. But in this collection, Annabelle Hirsch curates a compendium of women and their things, uncovering the thoughts and feelings at the heart of women's daily lives, to offer an intimate and lively alternative history. The objects date from prehistory to today and are assembled chronologically to show the evolution of how women were perceived by others, how they perceived themselves, how they fought for freedom. For example, what do handprints on early cave paintings tell us about the role of women in hunting? What does a mobile phone have to do with femicides? Or Kim Kardashian's diamond ring with Elena Ferrante?
”I love this book — a new feminist history of the world — stirring, provocative and carefully researched.” —Lauren Elkin
Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville $40
A novel of the life of Kate Grenville's complex, conflicted grandmother — a woman Kate feared as a child, and only came to understand in adulthood. Dolly Maunder was born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors were starting to creak ajar for women. Growing up in a poor farming family in country New South Wales but clever, energetic and determined, Dolly spent her restless life pushing at those doors. Most women like her have disappeared from view, remembered only in family photo albums as remote figures in impossible clothes, or maybe for a lemon-pudding recipe handed down through the generations. Restless Dolly Maunder brings one of these women to life as someone we can recognise and whose struggles we can empathise with.
Short-listed for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
”The writing sparkles with Grenville's gift for transcendently clear imagery. This is a work of history, biography, story and memoir, all fused into a novel that suggests the great potential of literary art as redeemer, healer and pathway to understanding.” —Guardian
Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler $65
Butler confronts the attacks on gender that have become central to right-wing movements today. Global networks have formed 'anti-gender ideology movements' dedicated to circulating a fantasy that gender is a dangerous threat to families, local cultures, civilization — and even 'man' himself. Inflamed by the rhetoric of public figures, this movement has sought to abolish reproductive justice, undermine protections against violence, and strip trans and queer people of their rights. But what, exactly, is so disturbing about gender? In this vital, courageous book, Butler carefully examines how 'gender' has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations and transexclusionary feminists, and the concrete ways in which this phantasm works. Operating in tandem with deceptive accounts of critical race theory and xenophobic panics about migration, the anti-gender movement demonises struggles for equality and leaves millions of people vulnerable to subjugation. An essential intervention into one of the most fraught issues of our moment, Who's Afraid of Gender? is a call to make a broad coalition with all those who struggle for equality and fight injustice.
”Who's Afraid of Gender? calls for gender expression to be recognized as a basic human right, and for radical solidarity across our differences. With masterful analysis of where we've been and an inspiring vision for where we must go next, this book resounds like an impassioned depth charge.” —Esquire
”If we want to see the political temperature fall to something that might allow for progress, there are few thinkers better placed to guide us than Butler. Crucially, Butler sets out an ethical vision for how gender freedoms and rights might be better integrated within a collective broader struggle for a social and economic world that eliminates precarity and provides health care, shelter, and food for everyone everywhere.” —Angela Saini
Papyrus: The invention of books in the Ancient world by Irene Vallejo $30
Long before books were mass produced, those made of reeds from along the Nile were worth fighting and dying for. Journeying along the battlefields of Alexander the Great, beneath the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, at Cleopatra's palaces and the scene of Hypatia's murder, award-winning author Irene Vallejo chronicles the excitement of literary culture in the ancient world, and the heroic efforts that ensured this impressive tradition would continue. Weaved throughout are fascinating stories about the spies, scribes, illuminators, librarians, booksellers, authors, and statesmen whose rich and sometimes complicated engagement with the written word bears remarkable similarities to the world today: Aristophanes and the censorship of the humourists, Sappho and the empowerment of women's voices, Seneca and the problem of a post-truth world. New edition.
”In this generous, sprawling work Vallejo sets out to provide a panoramic survey of how books shaped not just the ancient world but ours too. While she pays due attention to the physicality of the book, Vallejo is equally interested in what goes on inside its covers. And also, more importantly, what goes on inside a reader when they take up a volume and embark on an imaginative and intellectual dance that might just change their life. As much as a history of books, Papyrus is also a history of reading. “ —Guardian
A Thread of Violence: A story of truth, invention, and murder by Mark O’Connell $33
In 1982 Malcolm Macarthur, the wealthy heir to a small estate, found himself suddenly without money. The solution, he decided, was to rob a bank. To do this, he would need a gun and a car. In the process of procuring them, he killed two people, and the circumstances of his eventual arrest in the apartment of Ireland's Attorney General nearly brought down the government. The case remains one of the most shocking in Ireland's history and the words used to describe the crimes (grotesque, unprecedented, bizarre, and almost unbelievable) have remained in the cultural lexicon as the acronym GUBU. Mark O'Connell has long been haunted by the story of this brutal double murder. But in recent years this haunting has become mutual. When O'Connell sets out to unravel the mysteries still surrounding these horrific and inexplicable crimes, he tracks down Macarthur himself, now an elderly man living out his days in Dublin and reluctant to talk.
”Like all great books, A Thread of Violence is the document of a great writer's obsession. Mark O'Connell draws the reader into a deeply engrossing story, and at the same time into a complex investigation of human brutality and of narrative writing itself. This is a superb and unforgettable book.” —Sally Rooney
”Phenomenal. It's very dark, necessarily, but I found it very rich. Macarthur seems as though he's being generous and open, but there's also this manipulative side of him. It's like a chess game between the two of them, which I found really compelling. No contemporary literary mind seems to me more subtle, perceptive or trustworthy. An eerie, philosophically probing book. A Thread of Violence instils the certitude not only that no one else could have written this book, but that no other need ever be written on the subject. It's a marvel of tact, attentiveness, and unclouded moral acuity.” —Guardian
The Curtain and the Wall: A modern journey along Europe’s Cold War border by Timothy Phillips $28
The Iron Curtain divided the continent of Europe, north to south, with the Berlin Wall as its most visible, infamous manifestation. Since the Cold War ended and these borders came down, Europe has transformed itself. But we cannot consign the tensions and restrictions of the past to history. At a time when Russia is once again making war and when divisions elsewhere in Europe are on the rise, these old fault lines have new resonance. What do the Curtain and the Wall mean today? What have they left in their wake? In this book, Timothy Phillips travels the route of the Iron Curtain from deep inside the Arctic Circle to the meeting point of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. He explores the borderlands where the clash of civilisations was at its most intense between 1945 and 1989, and where the world's most powerful ideologies became tangible in reinforced concrete and barbed wire. He looks at the new Europe that emerged from the ruins. The people he meets bear vivid witness to times of change. There are those who look back on the Cold War with nostalgia and affection. Others despise it, unable to forgive the hard and sometimes lost decades that their families, friends and nations endured. In these historic landscapes lie buried many of the seeds of our world's current disputes - over borders, and about belonging and the meaning of progress.
12 Theses of Attention edited by D. Graham Burnett and Stevie Knauss $20
"True attention takes the unlivable, and makes it livable." So say the Friends of Attention in their visionary and epigrammatic analysis of attentional freedom in our time. Directly confronting the pathologies of our attention economy, this slim text, written by an underground collective of activist-critics, utopian dreamers, and peaceful insurgents, stakes out the terrain of a new politics — one that centers on the truly human use of our capacity to attend. It is widely recognized that unprecedented technologies, operating at unprecedented scales and with near-total ubiquity, continuously "frack" our faculties of eye and mind, extracting revenue by capturing our most precious and intimate resource: our attention. What can be done? Informed by the radical traditions of figures as diverse as Simone Weil and adrienne maree brown, and drawing on contemporary philosophy of mind no less than the eccentricities of slacker-surrealists, Twelve Theses on Attention offers a surprising and lyrical answer. The book is illustrated with stills from a set of related films by a diverse group of young filmmakers.
Harlequin Butterfly by Toh EnJoe (translated from Japanese by David Boyd) $25
Successful entrepreneur A.A. Abrams is pursuing the enigmatic writer Tomoyuki Tomoyuki, who appears to have the ability to write expertly in the language of any place they go. Abrams sinks endless resources into finding the writer, but Tomoyuki Tomoyuki always manages to stay one step ahead, taking off moments before being pinned down. But how does the elusive author move from one place to the next, from one language to the next? Ingenious and dazzling, Harlequin Butterfly unfurls one puzzle after another, taking us on a mind-bending journey into the imagination.
”The novel is perhaps most provocative as a meditation on language. A satisfying and reflective read” —Asian Review of Books
Brave Kāhu and the Pōrangi Magpie by Shelley Burne-Field $20
Poto is the perfect fledgling – the apple of her father's eye and a natural at hunting and flying. Anything a kāhu is supposed to be good at, Poto can do best of all. She can't understand why her sister Whetū gets cross with her – it's not her fault she's good at everything! As for her baby brother Ari, he's so weird and annoying. After their mother is killed by a flock of magpies, Poto and Whetū have to get an injured Ari to safety before a deadly foretold earthquake arrives, unleashing a flood and destroying their home. With the help of the birds and new friends they meet on the way, the hawk siblings journey through the Valley, keeping an eye out for a menacing flock of magpies who are on a mission to take back the Valley for their own. Can they stop Tū the makipai and her flock from ruining the harmony of the Valley? Will aroha win out over hate? And will Poto realise that everyone has something special to offer, even if they can't do everything quite like she does?
Maurice and Maralyn: A whale, a shipwreck, a love story by Sophie Elmhirst $45
Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maralyn has an idea: sell the house, build a boat, leave England - and its oil crisis, industrial strikes and inflation — forever. It is hard work, turning dreams into reality, but finally they set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway there, their beloved boat is struck by a whale. It sinks within an hour, and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On their tiny raft, over the course of days, then months, their love is put to the test. When Maurice begins to withdraw into himself, it falls upon Maralyn to keep them both alive. Their pet turtle helps, as does devising menus for fantasy dinners and dreaming of their next voyage. Filled with danger, spirit and tenderness, this is a book about human connection and the human condition; about how we survive — not just at sea, but in life.
”Electrifying. A tender portrait of two unconventional souls blithely defying the conventions of their era and making a break for freedom.” —Fiona Sturges, Guardian
”Easily one of the most captivating works of narrative nonfiction I've ever read.” —Oliver Burkeman
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler $30
When pioneering marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen is offered the chance to travel to the remote Con Dao Archipelago to investigate a highly intelligent, dangerous octopus species, she doesn't pause long enough to look at the fine print. DIANIMA — a transnational tech corporation best known for its groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence — has purchased the islands, evacuated their population and sealed the archipelago off from the world so that Nguyen can focus on her research. But the stakes are high: the octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence and there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of their advancements. And no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.
”A first-rate speculative thriller, by turns fascinating, brutal, powerful, and redemptive.” —Jeff Vandermeer