Sirocco is the eagerly awaited follow-up to the bestseller Persiana and has been met with rave reviews. Much more than just a beautiful cover, Sabrina Ghayour gives us a book full of delicious and accessible recipes. Dishes range from classics and comfort food to salads and sweet treats. Yum!
My Brilliant Friend is the gripping first volume in Elena Ferrante’s widely acclaimed Neapolitan Novels. This exquisitely written quartet creates an unsentimental portrait of female experience, rivalry and friendship. The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. They learn to rely on each other and discover that their destinies are bound up in the intensity of their relationship.
I found this book utterly gripping. Elena and Lila are the quintessential ‘frenemies’ with a relationship which is simultaneously beautiful and brutal. One friends success evokes both joy and jealousy in the other. Similarly ones girls failures lead to both sorrow and smug satisfaction from her friend. These characters are so powerfully and honestly written that it was almost confronting to read. Set against the back drop of poverty, violence and a rapidly changing social and political environment, My Brilliant Friend is a must read.
Since 2008, the Morbid Anatomy Library of Brooklyn, New York, has hosted some of the best scholars, artists and writers working along the intersections of the history of anatomy and medicine, death and the macabre, religion and spectacle. The Morbid Anatomy Anthology collects some of the best of this work in 28 lavishly illustrated essays. Included are essays by Evan Michelson on the catacombs of Palermo; Simon Chaplin (head of the Wellcome Library in London) on public displays of corpses in Georgian England; mortician Caitlin Doughty on demonic children; and Paul Koudounaris (author of Empire of Death) on a truck stop populated with human skulls. In addition are pieces on books bound in human skin, death-themed cafes in fin-de-siècle Paris, post-mortem photography, eroticised anatomical wax models, taxidermied humans and other animals, Santa Muerte, “artist of death” Frederik Ruysch, and much more.
This book is a treasure trove for lovers of the macabre!
In a future Earth where ghosts from “before” roam the post-apocalyptic landscape, a religion has sprung up around the mystery of these troublesome ghosts and the past they belonged to. Wasp is the current ‘Archivist’, divinely-appointed to trap and research ghosts before dispatching them. Every year she fights younger temple novices for her title, and every year she gets slower, and death comes a little closer. So when the ghost of a super-soldier seeks her help in finding his fallen comrade in the Underworld, Wasp strikes a deal which she hopes will buy her escape from the temple and a life that she hates.
Nicole Kornher-Stace has crafted a fascinatingly realised world, blending genres to create a strikingly original novel. Through Wasp’s journey we explore questions about friendship, morality and personal agency in the face of institutionalised power.
A brilliant literary debut, inspired by a true story: the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1829. Set against Iceland’s stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.
Graham Swift’s new novella, Mothering Sunday, is narrated by elderly writer Jane, looking back to event that occurred on one day in 1924 when she was just 22 and working as a house servant. We know much of what happens in the end very early in the story, but the pleasure of this novel is in Swift’s brilliant telling.
Mothering Sunday is a holiday given for servants to visit their mothers. However Jane, an orphan, uses her day off to meet with upper class neighbour Paul with whom she is having an affair. The detail with which Jane recounts this day, which will ultimately change the direction of her life, seems to slowly stretch out time and imbues the short novel with poignancy. Drenched in warm tones and late summer stillness, Swift unfurls the story with a sensual languor.
“… a novel that is powerfully affecting, a condensed masterpiece that traces the lifelong battle of one man’s conscience, one man’s art, with the insupportable exigencies of totalitarianism.” Alex Preston (The Guardian)
Barnes’ new novel is a fictional account of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s lifelong struggle to compose in Soviet Russia. In Barnes’ account, the composer is by nature (almost haplessly) non-conformist – not an ideal character trait in an era that spanned the initial revolution, then the reigns of Lenin, Stalin and Kruschev. Driven to compose, Shostakovich navigates the deadly vagaries of a totalitarian society where truth is impossible to know.
Though mordantly humorous at times, it is Barnes’ ability to convey Shostakovich’s latent dread that marks this novel out. Told in close third person, the novel recreates the bewildering menace of Soviet Russia. Quietly brilliant, this is a great novel.
In 1972, David Bowie released his groundbreaking album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. With it landed Bowie’s Stardust alter-ego: A glitter-clad, mascara-eyed, sexually-ambiguous persona who kicked down the boundaries between male and female, straight and gay, fact and fiction into one shifting and sparkling phenomenon of ’70s self-expression.
Together, Ziggy the album and Ziggy the stage spectacular propelled the softly spoken Londoner into one of the world’s biggest stars. A key passenger on this glam trip into the stratosphere was fellow Londoner and photographer Mick Rock. Rock bonded with Bowie artistically and personally, immersed himself in the singer’s inner circle, and, between 1972–1973, worked as Bowie’s official photographer.
This limited and numbered edition brings together the best of Rock’s Bowie portfolio with spectacular stage shots as well as intimate backstage portraits. Pictures for press, album jackets, and stills from promo movies sit alongside around 50 percent previously unseen images, offering unprecedented access to the many facets of Bowie’s personality and his fame. The book’s hologram cover, composed of different head-shots, rejoices in Bowie’s fearless experimentation and unpredictability.
Through the aloof and approachable, the playful and serious, the candid and the contrived, this is a tribute bursting with the daring and energy of a unique star and his eternal inspiration.
Limited to a total of 1,972 numbered copies signed by David Bowie and Mick Rock, this book is available as Collector’s Edition (No. 201-1,972)
The man. The movies. The life. The legend. He’s played a deranged groundskeeper, a bellowing lounge singer, a paranormal exterminator, and a grouchy weatherman. He is William James “Bill” Murray, America’s greatest national treasure. From his childhood lugging golf bags at a country club to his first taste of success on Saturday Night Live, from his starring roles in Hollywood blockbusters to his reinvention as a hipster icon for the twenty-first century, The Big Bad Book of Bill Murraychronicles every aspect of his extraordinary life and career.
He’s the sort of actor who can do Hamlet and Charlie’s Angels in the same year. He shuns managers and agents, and he once agreed to voice the lead in Garfield because he mistakenly believed it was a Coen Brothers film. He’s famous for crashing house parties all over New York City—and if he keeps photobombing random strangers, he might just break the Internet.
Part biography, part critical appreciation, part love letter, and all fun, this enormous full-colour volume, packed with colour film stills and behind-the-scenes photography, chronicles every Murray performance in loving detail, recounting all the milestones, legendary “Murray stories,” and controversies in the life of this enigmatic performer.
Fans of artist James Jean can finally rejoice. His long-awaited volume of collected works, Pareidolia, has arrived from Tokyo’s PIE Books. This book contains classic work as well as new art exclusive to this collection.
Born in 1978, Taiwanese-American James Jean became one of the most prolific artists/illustrators in commercial and fine art. Much of Jean’s art has only been available as album covers or other commercial art, making this a particularly special collection of both classic and new work. This volume contains over a dozen images that are exclusive to Pareidolia, including the cover. Bilingual introductions by contemporary artist Takashi Murakami and film director Guillermo del Toro are included.