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SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
What happens when the person you've built your entire life on is suddenly gone?
This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma's deceptively simple What I'd Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely.
In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humor, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.
The gripping history of Taiwan, from the flood myths of indigenous legend to its Asian Tiger economic miracle--and the renewed threat of invasion by China.
Once dismissed by the Kangxi Emperor as nothing but a 'ball of mud', Taiwan has a modern GDP larger than that of Sweden, in a land area smaller than Indiana. It is the last surviving enclave of the Republic of China, a lost colony of Japan, and claimed by Beijing as a rogue province--merely the latest chapters in its long history as a refuge for pirates, rebels, settlers, and outcasts.
Jonathan Clements examines the unique conditions of Taiwan's archaeology and indigenous history, and its days as a Dutch and Spanish trading post. He delves into its periods as an independent kingdom, Chinese province, and short-lived republic, and the transformations wrought by 50 years as part of the Japanese Empire. He examines the traumatic effects of its role as a lifeboat in 1949 for two million refugees from Communism, and the conflicts emerging after the suspension of four decades of martial law, as its people debate issues of self-determination, independence, and home rule.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
International Booker-nominated virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story--an epic tale that threads together a century of Korean history.
In contemporary Seoul, a laid-off worker stages a months-long sit-in atop a sixteen-story factory chimney. During the long and lonely nights, he talks to his ancestors, chewing on the meaning of life, on wisdom passed down the generations.
Through the lives of those ancestors, three generations of railroad workers, Mater 2-10 vividly portrays the struggles of ordinary Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century. It is at once a gripping account of a nation's longing to be free from oppression, a lyrical folktale that reflects the blood, sweat, and tears shed by modern industrial laborers, and a culmination of Hwang's career--a masterpiece thirty years in the making.
A true voice of a generation, Hwang shows again why he is unmatched when it comes to depicting the roots and reality of a divided nation and bringing to life the trials and tribulations of the Korean people.
The Last Yakuza tells the history of the yakuza like it's never been told before in this gripping, true crime story by the author of Tokyo Vice.
Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese, living in small-town Japan. He has two talents: playing guitar and picking fights. When his dream of being a rock star fails to materialize, he turns to the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer performance, loyalty, and brute force--the yakuza.
Saigo, nicknamed Tsunami, quickly realizes that even within the organization, opinions are as varied as they come, and a clash of philosophies can quickly become deadly. One screw-up can cost you your life, or at least a finger.
The internal politics of the yakuza are dizzyingly complex, and between the ever-shifting web of alliances and the encroaching hand of the law that pushes them further and further underground, Saigo finds himself in the middle of a defining decades-long battle that will determine the future of the yakuza.
Written with the insight of an expert on Japanese organized crime and the compassion of a longtime friend, investigative journalist Jake Adelstein presents a sprawling biography of a yakuza, through postwar desperation, to bubble-era optimism, to the present. Including a cast of memorable yakuza bosses--Coach, the Buddha, and more--this is a story about the rise and fall of a man, a country, and a dishonest but sometimes honorable way of life on the brink of being lost.
This is a handbook for change. Because we all know ways in which life could be better. And it can be better. We can make it better.
We don't need to wait for a leader or savior. We don't need to limit ourselves to comments and clicks. In this stunningly original comic-book tour of a serious topic, Jeff Sparrow and Sam Wallman explore 12 powerful ideas distilled from the history of struggle for better lives, better working conditions, and a better world. They show how solidarity can be built across growing divisions--without compromising our values.
'Strife' is just another word for making yourself heard. In fun, short, shareable chapters, 12 Rules for Strife shows how together we can change everything.
In the eighteenth century, India's share of the world economy was as large as Europe's. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die from starvation.
British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial gift--from the railways to the rule of law--was designed in Britain's interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain's Industrial Revolution was founded on India's deindustrialization and the destruction of its textile industry. In this bold and incisive reassessment of colonialism, Tharoor exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britain's stained Indian legacy.
An epic family saga beginning with the Russian Revolution and swirling across a century, encompassing war, loss, love requited and unrequited, ghosts, joy, massacres, tragedy. And hot chocolate.
At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste...
Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband, Simon, to his posting at the center of the Russian Revolution in St Petersburg. Stasia's is only the first in a symphony of grand but all too often doomed romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century.
Tumbling down the years, and across vast expanses of longing and loss, generation after generation of this compelling family hears echoes and sees reflections. A ballet dancer never makes it to Paris and a singer pines for Vienna. Great characters and greater relationships come and go and come again; the world shakes, and shakes some more, and the reader rejoices to have found at last one of those glorious old books in which you can live and learn, be lost and found, and make indelible new friends.
A modern-day quest novel, by one of Korea's most renowned novelists.
Princess Bari tells the story of a young girl, frail and brave, who escapes from famine and death in North Korea in the 1990s. Seeking refuge in China before crossing oceans in the hold of a cargo ship, she disembarks in London, with its bewildering mix of cultures, religions, and languages.
In this foreign city, Bari finds work as a masseuse--but she doesn't just heal the body, she also comforts souls, having learnt from her beloved grandmother to read the pain and nightmares of others. Alone and in a strange land, Bari will have to fight, through pain and deepening sadness, to find love and the will to stay alive.
With Princess Bari, Hwang Sok-yong entwines an old Korean myth, which tells of an abandoned princess travelling to the ends of the earth to find the elixir of life that will bring peace to the souls of the dead, with the ethereal and haunting backdrop of the modern world.
Contradicts the conventional wisdom that native peoples were primitive hunter-gatherers
History has portrayed Australia's First Peoples, the Aboriginals, as hunter-gatherers who lived on an empty, uncultivated land. History is wrong.
In this seminal book, Bruce Pascoe uncovers evidence that long before the arrival of white men, Aboriginal people across the continent were building dams and wells; planting, irrigating, and harvesting seeds, and then preserving the surplus and storing it in houses, sheds, or secure vessels; and creating elaborate cemeteries and manipulating the landscape. All of these behaviors were inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag, which turns out have been a convenient lie that worked to justify dispossession.
Using compelling evidence from the records and diaries of early Australian explorers and colonists, he reveals that Aboriginal systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required--for the benefit of all Australians.
Dark Emu, a bestseller in Australia, won both the Book of the Year Award and the Indigenous Writer's Prize in the 2016 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards.
A timely and inspiring work of comics journalism--the history of unions and why we need them (and a first-hand account of working in an Amazon warehouse).
Workers of the world, unite! From comics journalist Sam Wallman comes a thoughtful plunge into the history of unions. Through distinctive art and sharp-eyed reporting, Wallman ushers us into the hidden aisles of 21st-century labor conditions, and shows us recent labor movements and union triumphs--all while framing current conditions against the history of unions and the earliest rallying cries for worker rights.
It's an entry point for younger generations, and a reminder for workers who have had their livelihood reduced by capitalist pressures. It's also a primer for those new to the power of collective action.
From an Amazon warehouse in Melbourne (where Sam worked for a year), to Britain and Bangladesh, to Walmart in China and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance strike against the Trump-era refugee ban of 2017, this book is a highly original and visual exploration of the power of unions.
A sly and playful novel about the many faces we all have.
Fifteen-year-old Berta says that beautiful things aren't made for her, or that she isn't destined to have them, or that the only things she deserves are ugly. It's why her main activity, when she's not at school, is playing the prosopagnosia game--standing in front of the mirror and holding her breath until she can no longer recognise her own face. An ibis is the only animal she wants for a pet.
Berta's mother is in her forties. By her own estimation, she is at least twenty kilos overweight, and her husband has just left her. Her whole life, she has felt a keen sense of being very near to the end of things. She used to be a cultural critic for a regional newspaper. Now she feels it is her responsibility to make her and her daughter's lives as happy as possible.
A man who claims to be the famous Mexican artist Vicente Rojo becomes entangled in their lives when he sees Berta faint at school and offers her the gift of a painting. This sets in motion an uncanny game of assumed and ignored identities, where the limits of what one wants and what one can achieve become blurred. Art, culture, motherhood, and the search for meaning all have a part to play in whether S nia Hern ndez' characters recognise what they see within.
For the first time, a Rohingya speaks up to expose the persecution facing his people
I am three years old and will have to grow up with the hostility of others. I am already an outlaw in my own country, an outlaw in the world. I am three years old, and don't yet know that I am stateless.
Habiburahman was born in 1979 and raised in a small village in western Burma. When he was three years old, the country's military leader declared that his people, the Rohingya, were not one of the 135 recognized ethnic groups that formed the eight national races. He was left stateless in his own country.
Since 1982, millions of Rohingya have had to flee their homes as a result of extreme prejudice and persecution. In 2016 and 2017, the government intensified the process of ethnic cleansing, and over 700,000 Rohingya people were forced to cross the border into Bangladesh.
Here, for the first time, a Rohingya speaks up to expose the truth behind this global humanitarian crisis. Through the eyes of a child, we learn about the historic persecution of the Rohingya people and witness the violence Habiburahman endured throughout his life until he escaped the country in 2000.
First, They Erased Our Name is an urgent, moving memoir about what it feels like to be repressed in one's own country and a refugee in others. It gives voice to the voiceless.
Is the shift to renewable energy and digital devices going to free us from severe pollution, material shortages, and military tensions?
Rare metals are essential to electric vehicles, fighter jets, wind turbines, and solar panels, and also to our smartphones, computers, tablets, and other everyday connected objects. But consumers know very little about how they are mined and traded, or the environmental, economic, and geopolitical costs of this dependence.
This book reveals the dark side of the world that awaits us. It is an undercover tale of a technological odyssey that has promised much, and a look behind the scenes. Behind it all lurks China, which has captured the lion's share of the ownership and processing of rare metals we now can't do without. Drawing on six years of research across a dozen countries, this book shows that by breaking free of fossil fuels, we are in fact setting ourselves up for a new dependence--on rare metals that have become vital to our new ecological and digital society.
A revelatory and original contribution to our understanding of the role of religion in society and politics.
India's leading public intellectual, Shashi Tharoor, lays out Hinduism's origins and its key philosophical concepts, major texts and everyday Hindu beliefs and practices, from worship to pilgrimage to caste. He is unsparing in his criticism of extremism and unequivocal in his belief that what makes India a distinctive nation with a unique culture will be imperiled if Hindu fundamentalists--the proponents of Hindutva, or politicized Hinduism--seize the high ground. In his view, it is precisely because Hindus form the majority that India has survived as a plural, secular democracy.
A book that will be read and debated now and in the future, Why I Am a Hindu, written in Tharoor's captivating prose, is a profound re-examination of Hinduism, one of the world's oldest and greatest religious traditions.
Embrace the Scandinavian style of childrearing: practical, egalitarian, and free from outdated myths.
Expectant parents will be relieved to hear: Put away the vacuum--dust does not lead to allergy. Breastfeeding protects against allergies? Never has done, never will do. Stop boiling bottles and pacifiers--sterilizing is unnecessary in most industrial countries. Think you shouldn't drink alcohol when breastfeeding? Plain moralism.
Paediatrician Cecilia Chrapkowska runs the country's most popular parenting blog and is a specialist on vaccinations. Dr. Agnes Wold has been named Sweden's Woman of the Year for her tireless work in women's health. Together they present cutting-edge research from around the world which can guide you to make better parenting choices. But unlike so many books, they focus on the parent just as much as the child. Drawing on Sweden's famously generous parental leave and enlightened social policies, they demonstrate the importance of equal parenting and provide practical tools for parents everywhere to share responsibility equally.
From the progressive land in the North, this is the fact-based, feminist guide to parenting you have been waiting for.
A joy-filled cheer of appreciation for loud, trouble-making, outrageous kids.
Katerina Cruickshanks is a wild child, a trickster, and a ringleader. But when they wreak some serious chaos, their friends decide their shenanigans have gone too far and say, No more!
Brimming with humor and warmth, Katerina shows us that there's no such thing as being too much; it's just a matter of finding the friends who will love you as you are.
Natural Farming carries a simple but widely overlooked message: healthy soil makes healthy plants, which in turn make healthy animals and healthy people. The book explores the consequences in the soil of applications of superphosphate and other artificial fertilizers over decades, and explains soil chemistry in terms that every farmer can understand. It describes the exact role of each mineral and vitamin, both in the soil and in the body. And it explains how to prevent expensive disease outbreaks and minimize the use of costly artificial sprays and fertilizers.
The prescriptions are simple and can be applied to any farming enterprise market gardens, orchards, broadacre crops and pasture to restore the natural balance and fertility of the land, improve soil health, and increase productivity. The book is enlivened with accounts of spectacular successes in regenerating degraded land and curing animals that, in many cases, had been given up for dead.
Natural Farming is an essential handbook for any farmer, with detailed information on:
Natural Farming equips the farmer to get the best from the land using environmentally sustainable methods that save time, expense, and worry--and to supply the rising global demand for pure food.
A 2023 White Raven selection.
A brilliant onomatopoeic text accompanies the iconic illustrations of Anna Walker in this hilarious and utterly adorable frog adventure.
How will Frog escape the swoops, snips, and snaps of all sorts of animals in the forest and get to the party on time? This is a delightful, gripping, and funny adventure narrative aimed at very young readers, that will no doubt appeal to older children and adults alike.
Spring, summer, autumn, and winter
The seasons come and go, bringing changes both welcome and unexpected
Miki Sakamoto has spent a lifetime tending her garden and reflecting on its mysteries. Why do primulas bloom in snow? Do the trees really 'talk' to one another? What are the black birds saying today? And is there a mindful way to deal with an aphid infestation?
From rising early to walk barefoot on the grass each morning, to afternoons and evenings spent sipping tea in her gazebo or watching fireflies as she recalls her childhood in Japan, in Zen in the Garden Sakamoto shares observations from a life spent in contemplation--and cultivation--of nature.
Out on the road, no one speaks, everything talks.
Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She's never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue.
As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realizes this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals--first mammals, then birds and insects, too. As the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds, including Jean's infected son, Lee. When he takes off with Kimberly, heading south, Jean feels the pull to follow her kin.
Setting off on their trail, with Sue the dingo riding shotgun, they find themselves in a stark, strange world in which the animal apocalypse has only further isolated people from other species. Bold, exhilarating, and wholly original, The Animals in That Country asks what would happen, for better or worse, if we finally understood what animals were saying.