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| A Very Special Offer on a Very Special Book |
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TJ/Double Negative by David Goldblatt and Ivan Vladislaviċ
This October, Umuzi are publishing an extraordinary, limited edition collaboration piece: TJ/Double Negative is a joint project by the photographer David Goldblatt and the writer Ivan Vladislaviċ. The publication, comprising a book of photographs and a novel written especially as a companion peice, creates a vibrant conversation between image and text. The two volumes are presented as a beautifully sleeved set.
This is a limited edition piece, priced at R1000, but the Book Lounge is offering a unique opportunity to get hold of one at a special price.
If you order before September 30th, you will receive 10% discount from the published price.
Orders will be guaranteed on receipt of a 50% deposit
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| Book Lounge Giveaway |
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Troublemakers: The Best of South Africa's Investigative Journalism edited by Anton Harber and Margaret Renn
In light of the threatened Media Tribunal, this month’s Book Lounge Giveaway is a book that champions the quality of current investigative journalism in South Africa.
The Troublemakers is a showcase of the top entries received for the prestigious 2009 Taco Kuiper Awards for Investigative Journalism. The contents include some of the most outstanding pieces of investigative journalism in South African print and broadcast media during the previous year. These multi-layered, well-crafted and well-told exposés all deal with issues and events affecting South Africa and every one of the top entries had a major impact on the world around it.
The contributors include: Gcina Ntsaluba, Thanduxolo Jika, Rob Rose, Stephan Hofstatter, James Myburgh, Yolandi Groenewald, Adriaan Basson, Alex Eliseev, Julian Rademeyer, Pearlie Joubert, Fred Kockott and Jan de Lange, writing on subjects as diverse as housing, xenophobia, taxis, business fraud, the environment, Caster Semenya, the justice system, Jacob Maroga and much more.
These articles have appeared in the Daily Dispatch, Sunday Times, Mail & Guardian, City Press, Sunday Tribune, Star, Weekend Argus and on Politicsweb and FinMedia24.
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We have 2 copies of this book to give away. To enter in the draw, simply email your name to booklounge@gmail.com. Winners to be selected on September 20th.
Many thanks to Jacana.
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| ...and speaking of which |
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Pale Native by Max du Preez
The recent publication of the second and updated edition of Max du Preez’s memoir, Pale Native, could not be more timely given the struggles currently being waged about freedom for information and the role of the media. For those with short memories (or those too young to remember), Pale Native provides a sharp reminder of a not-too-distant time in our country’s history when access to information was severely restricted and the media was anything but free.
Du Preez’s account of the life and times of the trailblazing Afrikaans anti-apartheid newspaper, Vrye Weekblad takes us not just back to that time in our country’s past, but into the madness and creative chaos of the VW’s newsroom. But Pale Native covers much more ground than just the years of Vrye Weekblad. Du Preez writes poignantly about his childhood and his shocking life-changing experiences as a young journalist in Namibia. The chapters dealing with his putting together the weekly Special Report on the Truth Commission and his subsequent work on Special Assignment are equally riveting. One would expect a book penned by a top journalist to be better written than most accounts of our recent past and that expectation is fulfilled. Du Preez has a well-deserved reputation for speaking his mind and angering those whom he sees as deserving of his penned wrath. What is sometimes forgotten is that he is an outstanding writer as well. A fine book from an iconic journalist whose career has reflected the integrity of the man. As a country, we should give thanks for the Max du Preezs of the world instead of trying to muzzle them. And the best way to give thanks, is of course to read them.
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| Book of the Month Part 1 |
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Room by Emma Donoghue
Room, by the multi award-winning writer Emma Donoghue, is an extraordinary and compelling story; and an inventive and assured piece of writing. It has just been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and is sure to find itself on the shortlist on September 7th.
Narrated by Jack, the book opens on his fifth birthday. He tells us about his routines and what he does in the morning, describing his familiar surroundings as he goes. As he does so talking about his familiar surroundings, it gradually dawns on the reader that Jack and his mother are completely trapped in one room - that his mother is the victim of a kidnapping, and that Jack, the result of that kidnapping, has never, ever been outside.
For all of his life so far, Jack’s mother has assured him that the world they see on TV is just that – a make-believe world. But now, at the age of five, he is asking more questions, and she decides that the time has come to tell him the truth. At first he refuses flatly to believe, but gradually his eyes open and his mother, in her desperation, conscious of time running out, hatches a plan to escape with Jack.
What follows is nail-biting - this is a truly gripping book, and an extraordinary insight into the experience of a kidnap victim. The beauty of Jack’s narration is that it is left to the reader to entirely comprehend the truth of where Jack is and why, and therefore to insert their own feelings of horror and sadness at this terrible situation – far more powerful than any description could be. Through him we get to overhear things that he doesn’t understand, but which we do only too well. We see our own familiar world for the first time through his eyes, and through his very tight bond with his mother we get to feel her pain and desperation too. Shocking, unsettling, moving, funny and sometimes exhilarating, this is a tribute to the will to survive, and to the powerful love between mother and child. Very highly recommended.
“Emma Donoghue's writing is superb alchemy, changing innocence into horror and horror into tenderness. Room is a book to read in one sitting. When it's over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days.” Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife
“I loved Room. Such incredible imagination, and dazzling use of language. And with all this, an entirely credible, endearing little boy. It's unlike anything I've ever read before.” Anita Shreve
“Room is likely to attract comparisons with Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones and it deserves equal success…In the hands of a lesser author, Room could have felt both exploitative and sensationalist thanks to its subject matter. Instead, it makes the reader think about the importance of freedom and its costs. Above all though, it is a novel about the love between a mother and her child. Which is why, despite its darkest of settings, Room is an affecting and uplifting read.” Evening Standard
“Room is set to be one of the big literary hits of the year…It is a brave act for a writer, but happily one that Donoghue, still only 40 but on her seventh novel, has the talent to pull off. For Room is in many ways what its publisher claims it to be: a novel like no other…To read this book is to stumble on a completely private world. Every family unit has its own language of codes and in-jokes, and Donoghue captures this exquisitely…the grotesque is consistently balanced with the uplifting and there is a moment, halfway through the novel, where you feel you would fight anyone who tried to wrestle it from your grasp with the same ferocity that Ma fights for Jack, such is the author's power to make out of the most vile circumstances something absorbing, truthful and beautiful…Jack's introduction to the confusing world of freedom is handled with incredible skill and delicacy…In the hands of this audacious novelist, Jack's talk is more than a victim-and-survivor story: it works as a study of child development, shows the power of language and storytelling, and is a kind of sustained poem in praise of motherhood and parental love.” Observer
"This is a novel, and a child, that will not be confined…To this reader, at least, its effect is almost exhilarating.” Boyd Tonkin, Independent
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| Book of the Month Part 2 |
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The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism by David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen
The unknown story of the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in Germany’s forgotten African Empire – an atrocity that foreshadowed the Nazi genocides forty years later.
On 12 May 1883, the German flag was raised on the coast of South-West Africa, modern Namibia – the beginnings of Germany’s African Empire. As colonial forces moved in , their ruthless punitive raids became an open war of extermination. Thousands of the indigenous people were killed or driven out into the desert to die. By 1905, the survivors were interned in concentration camps, and systematically starved and worked to death. Years later, the people and ideas that drove the ethnic cleansing of German South West Africa would influence the formation of the Nazi party. The Kaiser’s Holocaust uncovers extraordinary links between the two regimes: their ideologies, personnel, even symbols and uniform. The Herero and Nama genocide was deliberately concealed for almost a century. Today, as the graves of the victims are uncovered, its re-emergence challenges the belief that Nazism was an aberration in European history. The Kaiser’s Holocaust passionately narrates this harrowing story and explores one of the defining episodes of the twentieth century from a new angle. Moving, powerful and unforgettable, it is a story that needs to be told.
“Besides being a rivetingly written, chilling African tragedy, this is a book that makes us see the roots of the Holocaust in a different way. It is amazing that previous writers have paid so little attention to this history, and appalling that some of the Allied nations joined the Germans in trying to cover it up.” Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost
“A chilling work that lifts the veil on a forgotten genocide, Imperial Germany's slaughter of modern Namibia's early peoples. This is history writing at its most compelling: forensic analysis, authoritative sourcing, courageous conclusions. In any reckoning of the colonial age, The Kaiser's Holocaust must be read.” Tim Butcher, author of Blood River
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| Fiction to Fascinate |
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The Passage by Justin Cronin
Amy Harper Bellafonte is six years old and her mother thinks she's the most important person in the whole world. She is. Anthony Carter doesn't think he could ever be in a worse place than Death Row. He's wrong. FBI agent Brad Wolgast thinks something beyond imagination is coming. It is. The Passage. Deep in the jungles of eastern Colombia, Professor Jonas Lear has finally found what he's been searching for - and wishes to God he hadn't. In Memphis, Tennessee, six-year-old girl Amy is left at the convent of the Sisters of Mercy and wonders why her mother has abandoned her. In a maximum security jail in Nevada, a convicted murderer called Giles Babcock has the same strange nightmare, over and over again, while he waits for a lethal injection. In a remote community in the California mountains, a young man called Peter waits for his beloved brother to return home, so he can kill him. Bound together in ways they cannot comprehend, for each of them a door is about to open into a future they could not have imagined. And a journey is about to begin. An epic journey that will take them through a world transformed by man's darkest dreams, to the very heart of what it means to be human. And beyond. This is an utterly gripping read, full of surprises and turns – you think you know what to expect, but you really, really don’t! Highly recommended.
"Cronin's massive novel transcends its cliches and delivers a feverishly readable post-apocalyptic-cum-vampire chiller. It's not only a brilliantly told story, with thrilling plot twists and graphic action sequences, but a moving psychological portrait of survivors facing up to the poignant fact of a lost past and a horrifically uncertain future." Guardian
"For most of this enthralling novel, it's not difficult to discern why the publisher is so excited. Cronin writes with verve and versatility, and is just as good in action scenes as he is in handling more literary material. His reinvention of vampires niftily ditches Transylvanian cliches and his future world is richly imagined. Above all, Amy is a superb creation, believably human yet beguilingly enigmatic." Sunday Times
"If you only take one book away with you this summer, make it The Passage. It's an absorbing, nightmarish dream of a book, a terrifying apocalyptic thriller, populated by believable, sympathetic characters. Once you start reading it, you won't want it to end." The Times
"This epic tale is truly exhilarating stuff but what makes The Passage work so well is not its massive canvas, but the concentration on its human characters, notably six-year-old redhead Amy Harper Bellafonte." Daily Express
"Epic, apocalyptic, heart-wrenching, catastrophic, mesmerisizing..." Daily Mirror
“Every so often a novel-reader's novel comes along: an enthralling, entertaining story wedded to simple, supple prose, both informed by tremendous imagination. Read 15 pages, and you will find yourself captivated; read 30 and you will find yourself taken prisoner and reading late into the night. It had the vividness that only epic works of fantasy and imagination can achieve. What else can I say? This: read this book and the ordinary world disappears.” Stephen King
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Let the Dead Lie by Malla Nunn
South Africa, 1953. The National Party’s rigid race laws have split the nation and a gruelling poverty grips many on the edges of its society.
When former Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper stumbles across the body of a child, Jolly Marks, at the Durban docks, he can little imagine what the discovery will lead him to.
Soon Cooper finds himself under suspicion for not only Jolly’s murder, but others as well. The only way he can clear his name is to find out who the real killer was – and he’s got 48 hours in which to do it. His investigations will lead him into Durban’s murky underworld of pimps, prostitutes, strange and sinister preachers, and those on the wrong side of the race laws. For there is more to Jolly’s barbaric murder than Cooper could ever have realized…
This follow-up to the brilliant first novel, and first encounter with Detective Emmanuel Cooper, A Beautiful Place to Die, does not disappoint – gripping stuff!
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Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor
It's Dublin 1907, a city of whispered rumours. A young actress begins an affair with a damaged older man, the leading playwright at the theatre where she works. Rebellious and flirtatious, Molly Allgood is a girl of the inner city tenements, dreaming of stardom in America. She has dozens of admirers but in the backstage of her life there is a secret. Her lover, John Synge, is a troubled genius, the son of a once prosperous landowning family, a poet of fiery language and tempestuous passions. Yet his life is hampered by convention and by the austere and God-fearing mother with whom he lives. Scarred by a childhood of loneliness and severity he has long been ill, but he loves to walk the wild places of Ireland. The affair, sternly opposed by friends and family, is turbulent, sometimes cruel, often tender. Many years later, an old woman makes her way across London on the morning after a hurricane. Christmas is coming. As she wanders past bombsites and through the city's forlorn beauty, a snowdrift of memories and lost desires seems to swirl. She has twice been married: once widowed, once divorced, but an unquenchable passion for life has kept her afloat as her dazzling career has faded. A story of love's commitment, of partings and reconciliations, of the courage involved in living on nobody else's terms, Ghost Light is a profoundly moving and ultimately uplifting novel.
“Masterful in its management of re-imagined lives and the time they inhabit.” Financial Times
“[A] superbly written, magically evocative novel.” Scotsman
“O'Connor has fashioned the delicate bloom of a love story...Beautifully written and charming.” Independent
“Displays typical imaginative virtuosity and emotional depth...As well as being impressively well crafted...wreathed in language of Joycean richness.” Sunday Times
“An astonishing command of voice and period detail.” Daily Telegraph
“Ghost Light is as fine-boned and delicately wrought as a bird's skeleton, each part interlinking and making a beautiful whole.” Telegraph
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Inheritance by Nicholas Shakespeare
Andy Larkham is late. He is due at the funeral of his favourite school teacher, who once told him: 'It's hard work being anyone.' It's especially hard for Andy - stuck in a dead-end job, terminally short of cash and with a fianceé who is about to ditch him. When the funeral leads to unexpected consequences, Andy has to ask himself: how far will he go to change his life? From early-twentieth-century Turkey to modern day London, Nicholas Shakespeare takes us on an extraordinary journey that explores the temptations of unexpected wealth, the secrets of damaged families and the price of being true to oneself. At once a love story spanning many decades and a tragedy of betrayal and missed opportunities, it is a romance for our times.
“Shakespeare is a tremendous and captivating writer.” Independent
“Shakespeare at his empathetic best, as he mines the fragile seam of our desire to be loved for who we are.” Sunday Telegraph
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The Lariat and Other Writings by Jaime de Angulo
Regarded as one of the most colorful and captivating writers of the 20th century, Jaime de Angulo came to America to become a cowboy, not an author. And he did become a cowboy - and a doctor, and a psychologist, and a highly regarded anthropologist. However, it was as a writer that he ultimately found his true calling. His stories uniquely represented the bohemian sensibility of the time, and he was known for infusing intellectualism into his coyote tales and shamanic mysticism. So vivid were his tales that Ezra Pound called him "the American Ovid," and William Carlos Williams claimed that de Angulo was "one of the most outstanding writers that I have ever encountered."
The Lariat, which may well be his most important piece of fiction, is highlighted in this prize collection, along with other writings that have long been unavailable.
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| Succulent Short Stories |
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Stories to get you through the Night
Stories to Get You Through the Night is a collection to remedy life's stresses and strains. Inside you will find writing from the greatest of classic and contemporary authors; stories that will brighten and inspire, move and delight, soothe and restore in equal measure. This is an anthology to devour or to savour at your leisure, each story a journey to transport the reader away from the everyday. Immersed in the pages, you will follow lovers to midnight trysts, accompany old friends on new adventures, be thrilled by ghostly delights, overcome heartbreak, loss and longing, and be warmed by tales of redemption. Whether as a cure for insomnia, to while away the hours on a midnight journey, or as a brief moment of escapism before you turn in, the stories contained in this remarkable collection provide the perfect antidote to the frenetic pace of modern life - a rich and calming selection guaranteed to see you through the night. It features stories by: Katherine Mansfield, Alice Munro, Anton Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Haruki Murakami, Wilkie Collins, Kate Chopin, Elizabeth Gaskell, The Brothers Grimm, John Cheever, Arthur Conan Doyle, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling, Helen Simpson, Richard Yates, James Lasdun, Martin Amis, Angela Carter, Somerset Maugham and Julian Barnes.
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Stories: All New Tales compiled by Al Sarantonio & Neil Gaiman
A hugely original anthology of imaginative fiction edited by bestselling authors Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio - one hell of a huge book of great stories which will unite all readers and fans of imaginative fiction.
Rather than being dictated by genre, Stories is a collection of the very best original fiction from some of the most imaginative writers in the world, as well as a showcase for some of fiction's newer stars.
Contributors include: Roddy Doyle; Joyce Carol Oates; Joanne Harris; Neil Gaiman; Michael Marshall; Smith; Joe R. Lansdale; Walter Mosley; Richard Adams; Jodi Picoult; Michael Swanwick; Peter Straub; Lawrence Block; Jeffrey Ford; Chuck Palahniuk; Diana Wynne Jones; Stewart O’Nan; Gene Wolfe; Carolyn Parkhurst; Kat Howard; Jonathan Carroll; Jeffrey Deaver; Tim Powers; Al Sarrantonio; Kurt Andersen; Michael Moorcock; Elizabeth Hand; Joe Hill
"An unmissable collection." Guardian
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Pretty Monsters: Stories to Keep You Up at Night by Kelly Link
Boiling up a unique brew of fairytale, fantasy, horror, myth and mischief, Kelly Link creates a world like no other, where ghosts of girlfriends past rub up against Scrabble-loving grandmothers with terrifying magic handbags, wizards sit alongside morbid babysitters, and we encounter a people-eating monster who claims to have a sense of humour.
“Intoxicating. These stories will come alive, put on zoot suits, and wrestle you to the ground. They want you and you will be theirs.” Alice Sebold
“Kelly Link is the literary descendant of Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka.” Audrey Niffenegger
“Link's stories play in a place few writers go, a netherworld between literature and fantasy, Alice Munro and JK Rowling.” Time
“Wonderfully odd and original [and] very scary indeed.” Sarah Waters
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| Engrossing Non-Fiction for Everyone |
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Hitch 22: A Memoir by Christopher Hitchens
Over the last thirty years, Christopher Hitchens has established himself as one of the world's most influential public intellectuals. His originality, bravery, range, and wit made him first a leading iconoclast of the political left and then, later in his career, a formidable advocate of secular liberalism. When the Twin Towers were attacked in September 2001, Hitchens was re-energised again, quickly emerging as one of the fiercest and most influential advocates of war on Iraq. In this long-awaited and candid memoir, Hitchens re-traces the footsteps of his life to date, from his childhood in Portsmouth, with his adoring, tragic mother and reserved Naval officer father; to his life in Washington DC, the base from which from he would launch fierce attacks on tyranny of all kinds. Along the way, he recalls the girls, the boys and the booze; the friendships and the feuds; the grand struggles and lost causes; and, the mistakes and misgivings that have characterised his life. Hitch-22 is moving and funny, charming and infuriating, enraging and inspiring. It is an indispensable companion to the life and thought of one of the pre-eminent political writers.
"If Hitchens didn't exist, we wouldn't be able to invent him.” Ian McEwan
“Razor-sharp...Outstanding.” A.C. Grayling, Independent on Sunday
“If you are...invited to debate with Christopher Hitchens, decline. His witty repartee, his ready-access store of historical quotations, his bookish eloquence, his effortless flow of well-formed words...would threaten your arguments even if you had good ones to deploy.” Richard Dawkins, TLS
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The Unlikely Secret Agent by Ronnie Kasrils
Although the Book Lounge does not have a romance section per sé, it does not mean that we don’t adore a great love story. So much better when it is a true one. Ronnie Kasrils has written a biographical account of his wife Eleanor's time as an undercover courier for the ANC in Durban in the early 60s.
Eleanor, who was a bookseller, often embarked on dangerous missions to take messages from Durban to Johannesburg and back until she was caught by the Secret Branch of the Police. Throughout what reads like a thriller, Ronnie Kasrils recounts his wife’s daring escape, as well as their growing romance. The Eleanor the reader meets in the book is a gracious yet feisty woman who believed in a better South Africa, decades before the release of Mandela. Her staying power as a comrade, as a believer in the struggle is indeed a call to individual commitment. Struggle and change do not happen in 15 years - all things involving humankind take time.
As a reader you are constantly aware of the love and respect that Ronnie Kasrils has for his wife, even today, after her death last year. Her passion and his respect flow through every sentence and they ignite a spark in the reader, questioning their own commitment to what they stand for.
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The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The History of the Wartime Codebreaking Centre by the Men and Women Who Were There by Sinclair McKay
Until the mid-seventies Bletchley Park remained a secret.
At a rambling Victorian house in the Buckinghamshire countryside, thousands of young people decoded and translated intercepted messages, whilst some of Britain’s most brilliant minds effectively invented modern computing. Their greatest collective achievement was the cracking of the Enigma code. The intelligence gained was instrumental in turning both the Battle of Britain and the war in North Africa, and, according to official historians, their efforts shortened the war by at least two years.
But no-one talked about it. All had signed the Official Secrets Act, and everyone kept their word. Only recently have the last surviving veterans told their remarkable story.
Now, through dozens of new interviews, Sinclair McKay reveals what life was like for the men and women who worked at Bletchley Park, trapped in an odd, secret territory somewhere between civilian and military. It’s an amazing compendium of memories – of portentous arrival at a gloomy railway station in the dead of night; of eccentric geniuses like Alan Turing who solved astonishing intellectual problems; of gruelling night shifts, exhilarating dances, ardent romances sealed down peaceful country lanes – and, above all, of the implacable secrecy that meant that married couples working in adjacent huts knew nothing of each other’s work, even decades after the end of the war.
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Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated edited by Dave Eggers &Lola Vollen
Beverly Monroe spent seven years in prison for murdering her companion of thirteen years; in fact, he had killed himself. Christopher Ochoa was persuaded to confess to a rape and murder he did not commit, and served twelve years of his life sentence before he was freed by DNA evidence. Michael Evans and Paul Terry each spent twenty-seven years in prison for a brutal rape and murder they did not commit. They were teenagers when they entered prison; they were middle-aged men when DNA proved their innocence.
After spending years behind bars, hundreds of men and women with incontrovertible proof of their innocence - including 120 from death row - have been released from America's prisons. They were wrongfully convicted because of problems that plague many criminal proceedings - inept defence lawyers, overzealous prosecutors, deceitful and coercive interrogation tactics, bad science, snitches, and eyewitness misidentification. The lives of these victims of the U.S. criminal justice system were effectively wrecked. Finally free, usually after more than a decade of incarceration, they re-enter society with nothing but the scars from a harrowing descent into prison only to struggle to survive on the outside.
The thirteen men and women portrayed here, and the hundreds of others who have been exonerated, are the tip of the iceberg. There are countless others - thousands by all estimates - who are in prison today for crimes they did not commit. These are the stories of some of the wrongfully convicted, who have managed, often by sheer luck, to prove their innocence. Their stories are spellbinding, heartbreaking, unimaginable, and ultimately inspiring. After reading these deeply personal accounts, you will never look at the criminal justice system the same way.
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The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
An enchanting story about 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox. Potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined...
The Ephrussis came from Odessa, and at one time were the largest grain exporters in the world; in the 1870s, Charles Ephrussi was part of a wealthy new generation settling in Paris. Marcel Proust was briefly his secretary and used Charles as the model for the aesthete Swann in Remembrance of Things Past. Charles' passion was collecting; the netsuke, bought when Japanese objects were all the rage in the salons, were sent as a wedding present to his banker cousin in Vienna. Later, three children - including a young Ignace - would play with the netsuke as history reverberated around them. The Anschluss and Second World War swept the Ephrussis to the brink of oblivion. Almost all that remained of their vast empire was the netsuke collection, smuggled out of the huge Viennese palace (then occupied by Hitler's theorist on the 'Jewish Question'), one piece at a time, in the pocket of a loyal maid - and hidden in a straw mattress. In this wonderfully original memoir, Edmund de Waal travels the world to stand in the great buildings his forebears once inhabited. He traces the network of a remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century. And, in prose as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves, he tells the story of a unique collection which passed from hand to hand - and which, in a twist of fate, found its way home to Japan.
“This book is impossible to put down. You have in your hands a masterpiece.” Sunday Times
“Few writers have ever brought more perception, wonder and dignity to a family story.” Irish Times
“Buy two copies of his book; keep one and give the other to your closest bookish friend.” Economist
“He is wonderful on place, forever turning doorknobs, real and imaginary, and inviting the reader in.” Observer
“A book that combines the charm of a personal memoir with the resonance of world history.” Scotsman
“Complex and beautiful.” Literary Review
“(de Waal) weaves together with great delicacy various strands of the lives of a glamorous dynasty.” Telegraph
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What If Latin America Ruled the World? How the South Will Take the North into the 22nd Century by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
For most Europeans and Americans, Latin America is still little more than their underdeveloped sibling, its inhabitants pitching up on its shores or struggling across the Rio Grande into the USA. It's a place of exuberant music, mesmerising football, extravagant beauty, fantastic literature, drug trafficking and guerrilla warfare - in short, exotic, dangerous and exciting. In this counterintuitive and fascinating book, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, who teaches international Law and International Affairs at London University, shows how, unafraid to turn its back on some commonly held economic views that have now lost their currency, Latin America is in fact making its presence felt from Lima to Shanghai, from Brazilia to London and from Buenos Aires to New York. While the world acknowledges the continuing importance of the US in international affairs, few people have noticed that with Spanish language and culture in the ascendant the US is quietly but quickly becoming the next Latin American country. In fact, Guardiola-Rivera argues, the next Barack Obama is as more than likely to be of Latino origin. Both a hidden history of the modern world from the silver peso (the world's first truly global currency) to the recent shift away from globalism and an imaginative vision rooted in a sure understanding of the past, What If Latin America Ruled the World? is certain to provoke interest and controversy.
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Driving Home by Jonathan Raban
Charting a course through the Pacific Northwest, through American history and recent world events, Driving Home is a must for fans of Jonathan Raban, as well as a great introduction to anyone not yet familiar with his writing.
For over thirty years now, Jonathan Raban has written about movement; about people and places in transition, of journeys undertaken and destinations never quite reached but, also, of what it means to belong, to feel rooted. Yet if these themes are evident in any one of Raban's books, then it is Driving Home - a collection of pieces spanning two decades - where we can see Raban's preoccupations most clearly. Writing about public, personal and political spaces, about books, current affairs and literature, his tone is intimate yet, with an outsider's eye for the absurd, never nostalgic, and always fresh. Variously frank, witty and provocative, Driving Home is part essay collection, part diary - and an engrossing read too.
“Driving Home teems with acerbic humour but it contains, too, a wealth of astute cultural and historical observation of the Pacific north-west...There is much else in this volume to celebrate, in particular a long piece called "Mississippi Water", which must surely be counted as one of the finest examples of the reporting of a natural disaster ever published…600 relentlessly intelligent pages of erudite, acerbic, witty and combative prose.” Patrick McGrath, Guardian Book of the Week
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Sex, Bowls and Rock n Roll by Alex Marsh
The story of a man who gives up the rock ‘n’ roll dream… to play bowls.
Alex Marsh wanted to be a rock star - but it didn’t work out. Instead he toiled away in the big city - only to give up his career, move to rural Norfolk, and become a househusband.
But he isn’t a very good one. Whilst his pride won't let him admit it, he struggles with the cooking, the housework and the isolation. He hires a cleaner without telling his wife, his repertoire of baked potatoes exhausts quickly. He becomes hooked on daytime television and computer solitaire. He is in danger of becoming weird.
So he takes up bowls.
In Sex & Bowls & Rock and Roll we follow a season in the life of the village bowls team, a group of amateur sportsmen and mild eccentrics. In doing so we see this unfashionable pastime in a whole new light, and very funny it is too.
But Alex hasn’t quite given up on his dreams of rock stardom. Discovering that some of his mates down the pub are a bit handy with bass and drums he makes one final stab at being in a band, with an eagerly awaited local gig. It is a complete disaster.
Join Alex has he comes to terms with life as a domestic disappointment, attempts to learn the fine art of bowls and finally realises that supporting the Sultans Of Ping at the Pink Toothbrush in Rayleigh really was the highpoint of his musical career.
Sex & Bowls & Rock and Roll is a hilarious account of the life of a genuinely modern man. Everyone will recognise themselves (or their husbands) and you will be hard pressed not to laugh out loud.
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Why Translation Matters by Edith Grossman
Why Translation Matters argues for the cultural importance of translation and for a more encompassing and nuanced appreciation of the translator's role. As the acclaimed translator Edith Grossman writes in her introduction, "My intention is to stimulate a new consideration of an area of literature that is too often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented."
For Grossman, translation has a transcendent importance: "Translation not only plays its important traditional role as the means that allows us access to literature originally written in one of the countless languages we cannot read, but it also represents a concrete literary presence with the crucial capacity to ease and make more meaningful our relationships to those with whom we may not have had a connection before. Translation always helps us to know, to see from a different angle, to attribute new value to what once may have been unfamiliar. As nations and as individuals, we have a critical need for that kind of understanding and insight. The alternative is unthinkable."
Throughout the four chapters of this bracing volume, Grossman's belief in the crucial significance of the translator's work, as well as her rare ability to explain the intellectual sphere that she inhabits as interpreter of the original text, inspires and provokes the reader to engage with translation in an entirely new way.
“Edith Grossman, the Glenn Gould of translators, has written a superb book on the art of the literary translation. Even Walter Benjamin is surpassed by her insights into her task, which she rightly sees as imaginatively independent. This should become a classic text.” Harold Bloom
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Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever
From avalanches to glaciers and seals to snowflakes, from igloos to icebergs, permafrost to hoarfrost, chilblains to frostbite, Bill Streever unearths the consistent, ongoing influence of cold on the planet. Evoking history, myth, geography and ecology, Streever's quest for icy, forty-below cold gains purchase in July, while he's taking a dip in an Arctic swimming hole; in September, while excavating our planet's ice ages; and in October, while exploring animals' hibernation habits, from humans to wood frogs to bears. In March he even does his best to escape it, bundling up in layers of polyester, spandex and Primaloft fill to face thermometers reading twenty-three below. Streever visits an underground Cold War-era tunnel, where preserved remains mingle with new-fangled machinery and gear; weighs in on the scientific quest to reach absolute zero (-459 F); and describes how refrigeration evolved from worldwide ice shipping to the chemical coolants we know today.
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| Something Beautiful |
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The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid: Facsimile Edition by Oliver Byrne
This title presents the elements of Euclid in living color. This is a rare and beautiful geometry primer from the 19th century. In 1847, Charles Whittingham of the Chiswick Press published an extraordinary edition on Euclidean geometry, authored by an obscure mathematician called Oliver Byrne. As Surveyor of Her Majesty's Settlements in the Falkland Islands, Byrne had already published mathematical and engineering works, but never anything like this. Written and designed by Byrne to simplify Euclid's propositions, this remarkable example of Victorian printing has been described as one of the oddest and most beautiful books of the 19th century. Each proposition is set in Caslon italic, with a four line initial: the rest of the page is a unique riot of red, yellow and blue: on some pages letters and numbers only are printed in color, sprinkled over the pages like tiny wild flowers, demanding the most meticulous register: elsewhere, solid squares, triangles and circles are printed in gaudy and theatrical colors, attaining a verve not seen again on the pages of a book until the era of Dufy, Matisse and Derain.
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The Red Book by David Shrigley
International pop artist David Shrigley's intuitive scrawls and deadpan humor mine unsettling truths and deliver anxious amusements. This all-new collection of his addictively entertaining work welcomes the uninitiated and rewards the faithful with a fresh dive into Shrigley's dark, strange world.
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History in the Making: The Visual Archives of Kulwant Roy collected by Aditya Arya
A priceless collection of photographs by press photographer Kulwant Roy telling the story of India from the 1930s to 1960s
Press photographer Kulwant Roy’s prints and negatives remained forgotten in boxes for over twenty-five years after his death until their inheritor Aditya Arya, a photographer himself, began cataloguing them. In the process, he discovered a rare and valuable visual archive, including many unpublished pictures, of a momentous era in India’s history.
Some of the rare visual documentation includes the Muslim League meetings, INA trials, the signing of the Indian Constitution, as well as significant post-Independence milestones such as the building of the Bhakra Nangal Dam. Enriched by an insightful text, written by historian Indivar Kamtekar, this book is a collector’s item for anyone who wishes to discover the multilayered dimensions behind India’s ‘tryst with destiny’.
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The Little Book of Shocking Global Facts & The Little Book of Shocking Food Facts
Combining startling graphic imagery with truly shocking facts gathered from the world's most authoritative sources, these two companion titles – The Little Book of Shocking Global Facts and The Little Book of Shocking Food Facts are powerful visual manifestos by one of the world's most respected graphic designers, Jonathan Barnbrook and his studio.
These startling yet visually stunning books are designed to present multiple truths about the environment and food production with the greatest impact, and raise al many questions as they answer. How is it that the developed world spends billions of dollars annually on weaponry, while the poor of the developing world have no access to education, medicines or even clean drinking water? What exactly is the relationship between cheap goods on the high street and the wage-slavery of sweatshops? How have large corporations branded the world in which we live? How is it that malnutrition is so widespread in the developing world, while obesity is rife in the developed world? What exactly is the nutritional value of junk food versus the health benefits of fresh fruit and vegetables? Do you know what really goes into the production of the food on your plate?
For all fans of Information is Beautiful, these are wonderfully designed presentations of things all of us should know – and they make great gifts too!
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Pappa in Afrika by Anton Kannemeyer
Anton Kannemeyer (aka Joe Dog) has been one of the most significant and controversial countercultural figures within especially the Afrikaans community for almost 20 years, but his work has long since transcended both that community and even the broader South African context. While still rooted in a ruthless and unflinching skewering of White middle-class South African anxieties, his scabrous wit allied to his distinctive graphic style has made him an internationally admired artist.
While still drawing on the tradition of the Bitterkomix annual he had created with erstwhile partner in crime Conrad Botes, Pappa in Afrika is much more akin to a proper artist monograph, showcasing Kannemeyer’s work, and with an illuminating and thought-provoking essay on Kannemeyer’s approach to especially race by Danie Marais. The artwork is bright and vibrant, and funny and disturbing (and mostly disturbing for being funny – this is laughter as self-defense and provocation). What is most striking about these images – which draw on all the stereotypes about race that no-one is supposed to believe in anymore – is the candour with which Kannemeyer is prepared to expose and examine the taboo but deepseated prejudices that endure for those generations that didn’t escape the conditioning of a racist society.
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Star Wars: The Scanimation Experience by Rufus Butler Sedler
From the creator of the wonderful Gallop, comes the truly awesome Star Wars experience. Using cutting edge Scanimation technology, this book will recreate your favourite film right before your eyes - gasp as you relive Darth Vader's final lightsaber duel with Obi Wan Kenobi; watch Luke's targeted descent into the trenches of the Death Star; and feel the force as Yoda and Emperor Palpatine lock in an epic Sith Lightning duel - and many more! Brilliant!
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| For the Young at Heart |
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ABC for Everyone - Alphabet Books
Alphabet books are no longer just for learning to read, many artists see it as a fun way of using illustration and wordplay to create a keepsake.
Lucy goes to Market by Imogen Clare is a delightful tale of a little girl who finds extraordinary things at the market, Marmelade Moons and Unicorn Umbrellas, a Brasilian Brass band and Yellow Yesterdays. The question is what will Lucy do with all her finds? Simply dreamy.
Amelia to Zora: 26 Women who Changed the World by Cynthia Chin-Lee is an amazing account of great women through time. Not all the women are well-known, but each page (or letter) tells their story in a beautiful painting collage format. J is for Jane Goodall, F for Frida Kahlo and T for Mother Teresa. It is a great book . The biographical snippets are encouraging and a great tribute to ordinary people achieving extraordinary goals.
With The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman one must expect twisted illustrations, and there is no disappointment! The talented Gris Grimly has outdone himself with the characters who are going on an underground adventure, map in hand and alphabet in heart. So much more than just an alphabet book for goth babies!
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The Museum Book by Jan Mark, illustrated by Richard Holland
A unique and fascinating guide exploring everything from the history of museums, to the very meaning of the word ‘museum', illustrated with beautiful collage-style art.
Suppose you went into a museum and you didn’t know what it was. From the first sentence of this brilliant book, Jan Mark inspires us to think. She muses on the Muses and the word museum, on why and how people collect things, on different kinds of museums (cabinets, buildings, villages, towns), on their contribution to science and on the notion of classification. She examines the Elgin Marbles (saved or stolen?), famous fakes, the dodo, and some great collectors.
Also available: The Time Book
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| Lest We Forget |
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“A free press can be good or bad but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad. “ Albert Camus
“Let it be impressed upon your minds, let it be instilled into your children, that the liberty of the press is the palladium of all the civil, political and religious rights.” Junius
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” Thomas Jefferson “The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy.” Benjamin Disraeli
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