Dusty – Library Blog

Creativity in the Capital

August 30, 2021 Dusty

So… that dream project you never knew you wanted to do until you were handed the gift of time to daydream. The idea that gnaws at you even though family is eating up your attention. That collaborative script that you’ve been working on for a couple of years… So you want some prompts? Our eBook collection is brimming with ways to let your creativity out of that box in your head and out into the world. These titles are just the beginning, delve into your library’s online collection for more inspiration, ideas and seriously engaging game plans.

Cheap Movie Tricks, Rickey Bird (ebook)
Bird and Guevara show aspiring filmmakers how to overcome common movie and video production problems.
· How planning and shooting a short film today can lead to a feature-length project tomorrow
· Everything you need to know about writing a movie project on a burger budget (adapted from Overdrive description)

Screenwriting is Storytelling, Kate Wright (ebook)
While most screenwriting books focus on format and structure, Kate Wright explains how to put story at the center of a screenplay. A compelling story, complete with intriguing characters and situations created with these screenwriting tricks of the trade can become a box office blockbuster film. (adapted from Overdrive description)

So Close to Being the Sh*t, Y’all Don’t Even Know, Retta (Audiobook)
Parks and Recreation star Retta takes us on her not-so-meteoric rise from roaches to riches. Throwing her hard-working Liberian parents through a loop, Retta abandons her plan to attend med school after graduating Duke University to move to Hollywood to star in her own sitcom—like her comedy heroes Lucille Ball and Roseanne. Retta’s unique voice and refreshing honesty will make you laugh, cry, and laugh so hard you’ll cry. And she just might inspire you to reach for the stars, too. (adapted from Overdrive description)

Hamshack Raspberry Pi, Dwight Standfield (ebook)
Are you an Amateur Radio enthusiast? Or are you looking to get into this amazing hobby because you’ve heard about some of the interesting things you can do like tracking satellites, communicating in Morse code or perhaps playing a game over the air, and you want to try them out? Best of all, you’ll be able to complete the projects discussed in the book by yourself without any problems because they are so easy and straightforward. (adapted from Overdrive description)

Woodworking, Andrea Brugi and Samina Langholz (ebook)
Using simple techniques, Tuscany-based woodworkers Samina Langholz and Andrea Brugi teach you how to make 20 beautiful wood objects for the home. From an egg cup made from a reclaimed beam and broom handle to a chopping board featuring a hand-carved “butterfly”, here are a wonderful selection of approachable carpentry projects that don’t require complicated tools, and can be done easily in the home. Suitable for all levels of expertise. (adapted from Overdrive description)

Discover Torch Enameling, Steven James (ebook)
After teaching this technique successfully for years, Steven is introducing all-new projects in this book. In a series of 25 small projects (pendants and beads), Steven will explore creating structural metal work (such as hinges) and applying enamel effects such as faux raku. Simple techniques include sawing/cutting/punching; dapping; riveting; lashing; soldering; and enameling. All these techniques are simplified and the only torch needed is a hand-held one that can be used in a home studio. (Overdrive description)

How to Write One Song, Jeff Tweedy (ebook)
One of the century’s most feted singer-songwriters, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, digs deep into his own creative process to share his unique perspective about song-writing and offers a warm, accessible guide to writing your first song, championing the importance of making creativity part of your everyday life and experiencing the hope, inspiration and joy that accompanies it. (Overdrive description)

Amazing Glaze, Gabriel Kline (ebook)
Join author and Odyssey Clayworks founder Gabriel Kline on a journey that makes glazing less intimidating and more fun. Start in the “glaze kitchen” where you’ll set yourself up for success, then move on to learning the tools and techniques for getting your glaze right every time. Gabriel shares dozens of tried-and-true recipes and combinations for both mid-range and high-fire glazes. A variety of artist features and stunning gallery work from today’s top artists will leave you inspired and ready to get glazing. (adapted from Overdrive description)

Creating a Martian colony

October 7, 2019October 8, 2019 Dusty

Mars has become a kind of mythic arena onto which we have projected our Earthly hopes and fears.”
– Carl Sagan

Fiction writers since the days of Edgar Rice Burroughs have speculated on what or who might live on Mars, and how humans might fare together or alone in a new environment. Current space-faring aspirations have inspired various nations to investigate the ‘red planet’, from the NASA Mars rover — your name could make the interplanetary voyage — to the UAE Hope probe due to launch next year. Chinese students can experience life on a Martian base in the Gobi desert as China prepares an orbiter and rover for the 2020 launch window.

For the rest of us, interplanetary exploration is only a page turn away, with a heady mix of nostalgia, fast-paced action, intrigue and Martian terrain that is envisioned from the lush to the inhospitably harsh. Simon Morden’s sequel to One Way continues a thrilling science fiction series that places convicts on the red planet’s surface. The Arabella of Mars series by David D. Levine is a space opera nostalgia package bedecked with regency props, political intrigue and a swashbuckling heroine. And Richard K Morgan’s Thin Air dives into corruption and kidnapping in a vividly rendered Martian outpost. Something for all tastes in these voyages of the imagination. Enjoy!

Lost Mars : stories from the golden age of the red planet
“Since the 1880s, after an astronomer first described “channels” on the surface of Mars, writers have been fascinated with the planet, endlessly speculating on what life on Mars might look like and what might happen should we make contact with the planet’s inhabitants. This wonderful collection offers ten wildly imaginative short stories from the golden age of science fiction by such classic sci-fi writers as H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, and J. G. Ballard, as well as hard-to-find stories by unjustly forgotten writers from the genre.” (Catalogue)

No way / Morden, Simon
“In this sequel to the unnerving One Way, Frank Kitteridge, who’s been abandoned on Mars by the unscrupulous builders of the first base there, learns that survivors at another base are itching to exploit him for all he’s worth. To get back home, he must fight back now.” (Catalogue)

Arabella the traitor of Mars / Levine, David D.
“At last husband and wife, Arabella and Captain Singh seem to have earned the attention of great men, ones who have new uses in mind for the Mars Company captain and his young wife. Both Company and Crown have decided that it is time to bring Mars into the folds of Empire, and they think Singh is the perfect man to do it. Now, Arabella must decide between staying loyal to the man she loves and the country of her father or betraying all that she has known to fight alongside the Martians in a hopeless resistance against the Galaxy’s last remaining superpower.” (Catalogue)

A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs (ebook)
This science fiction planetary romance, packed full of dangerous feats and swordplay, is set on a dying Mars. Civil War veteran John Carter is unexpectedly transported to Barsoom, the planet we call Mars, and finds with the weaker gravity that he has super-human strength. In combat he finds respect and belonging with the Tharks, an aggressive race of green four-armed nomads. But when the Tharks capture the human-like Dejah Thoris, Carter feels the need to help this beautiful princess of Mars.” (Overdrive description)

Thin air / Morgan, Richard K.
“An ex-corporate enforcer, Hakan Veil, is forced to bodyguard Madison Madekwe, part of a colonial audit team investigating a disappeared lottery winner on Mars. But when Madekwe is abducted, and Hakan nearly killed, the investigation takes him farther and deeper than he had ever expected. And soon Hakan discovers the heavy price he may have to pay to learn the truth.” (Catalogue)

Retrograde / Cawdron, Peter
“Mankind has long dreamed of reaching out to live on other planets, and with the establishment of the Mars Endeavour colony, that dream has become reality. The fledgling colony consists of 120 scientists, astronauts, medical staff, and engineers. Buried deep underground, they’re protected from the harsh radiation that sterilizes the surface of the planet. The colony is prepared for every eventuality except one–what happens when disaster strikes Earth?” (Catalogue)

Red rising / Brown, Pierce
“Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. He works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. But they have been betrayed. Darrow discovers that vast cities and sprawling parks cover the planet, and Reds are nothing more than slaves to the decadent Gold ruling caste. Now he will sacrifice everything and stop at nothing to bring down his enemies.” (Catalogue)

Villains we love to hate

August 30, 2019August 29, 2019 Dusty

I’m not a monster – I’m just ahead of the curve.

-The Joker

That uncomfortable sensation when you find yourself enjoying everything your fictional villain does. Well maybe not everything. Fiction abounds with a wealth of antiheroes, all the way back to Beowulf where you might find yourself sympathising with a monster. A recent treatment of that story in The mere wife does provoke thoughts of who we think of as monstrous. Obsession is not always an undoing, Moriarty’s mind games elevate both Sherlock Holmes and the readers’ experience. The glamour of the high life, with it’s ego stroking attributes is the aim for many, but what if no obstacle, moral or otherwise would deter you, enter Tom Ripley, designed by Patricia Highsmith. Or Dexter, a sociopath with a mission, tempering his murderous endgame with rules.

Those who transgress for personal gain abound in the selection of titles below, chilling to think that these are librarian’s favourites! Classic characters are reprised in graphic novel form and delving into our electronic vault will locate the original inspiration. Recent additions to our catalogue will entertain while making you cringe and maybe provide a wry smile of recognition. Enjoy!

Parker: The Outfit, Donald E. Westlake (ebook)… Villain: Parker
Cooke is back and following up the New York Times best-selling Hunter with a heart-pounding sequel: The Outfit. After evening the score with those who betrayed him, and recovering the money he was cheated out of from the syndicate, Parker is riding high, living in swank hotels and enjoying the finer things in life again. Until, that is, he’s fingered by a squealer who rats him out to the Outfit for the price they put on his head… and they find out too late that if you push Parker, it better be all the way into the grave! (Overdrive description)

Dirty Money, Richard Stark (Audiobook) Villain: Parker (so professional he gets 2 titles)
Master criminal Parker takes another turn for the worse as he tries to recover loot from a heist gone terribly wrong. Parker and two cohorts stole the assets of a bank in transit, but the police heat was so great they could only escape if they left the money behind. Now Parker and his associates plot to reclaim the loot, which they hid in the choir loft of an unused country church. As they implement the plan, people on both sides of the law use the forces at their command to stop Parker and grab the goods for themselves.Parker will do whatever it takes to redeem his prize, no matter who gets hurt in the process. (Overdrive description)

Gone girl / Flynn, Gillian (print), (DVD) Villain: … not giving it away
“On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors… the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Trouble is, if Nick didn’t do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet? With her razor-sharp writing and trademark psychological insight, Gillian Flynn delivers a fast-paced, devilishly dark, and ingeniously plotted thriller that confirms her status as one of the hottest writers around.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Codename Villanelle / Jennings, Luke Villain… toss a coin
“She is the perfect assassin. A Russian orphan, saved from the death penalty for the brutal revenge she took on her gangster father’s killers. Ruthlessly trained. Given a new life. New names, new faces – whichever fits. Her paymasters call themselves The Twelve. But she knows nothing of them. Konstantin is the man who saved her, and the one she answers to. She is Villanelle. Without conscience. Without guilt. Without weakness. Eve Polastri is the woman who hunts her. MI5, until one error of judgment costs her everything. Then stopping a ruthless assassin becomes more than her job. It becomes personal. ” (Catalogue)

Use of weapons / Banks, Iain Villain: Elethiomel
“The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances’ foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks and military action. The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought. The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman’s life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a lost cause. But not even its machine could see the horrors in his past…” (Catalogue)

Charcoal Joe : an Easy Rawlins mystery / Mosley, Walter Villain: Mouse
“Picking up where his last adventures in Rose Gold left off in L.A. in the late 1960s, Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins has started a new detective agency. Easy’s friend Mouse introduces him to Rufus Tyler, a very old man everyone calls Charcoal Joe. Joe’s friend’s son, Seymour (young, bright, top of his class in physics at Stanford), has been arrested and charged with the murder of a white man from Redondo Beach. Joe tells Easy he will pay and pay well to see this young man exonerated, but seeing as how Seymour literally was found standing over the man’s dead body at his cabin home, and considering the racially charged motives seemingly behind the murder, that might prove to be a tall order.” (Catalogue)

Ripley’s game / Highsmith, Patricia Villain: Ripley
“With its sinister humor and genius plotting, Ripley’s Game is an enduring portrait of a compulsive, sociopathic American antihero. Tom Ripley detested murder, unless it was absolutely necessary. If possible, he preferred someone else to do the dirty work. In this case, a victim of a fatal disease, who will murder for a reward in order to provide for his young widow and child.” (Catalogue)

The doll factory / Macneal, Elizabeth Villain: Silas
“London. 1850. The Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park and among the crowd watching the spectacle two people meet. For Iris, an aspiring artist, it is the encounter of a moment – forgotten seconds later, but for Silas, a collector entranced by the strange and beautiful, that meeting marks a new beginning. When Iris is asked to model for pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees on the condition that he will also teach her to paint. Suddenly her world begins to expand, to become a place of art and love. But Silas has only thought of one thing since their meeting, and his obsession is darkening . . .” (Catalogue)

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (Audiobook) Villain: Mrs Danvers
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .
The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady’s maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives—presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

First published in 1938, this classic gothic novel is such a compelling read that it won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century. “(Overdrive description)

Afrofuturism – the future won’t write itself

August 21, 2019August 14, 2019 Dusty

There are many definitions of Afrofuturism; the one I gravitate towards refers to media that explores futures for black individuals and the black community. This is where it intersects with science fiction and fantasy—writers and artists often use technology and the fantastical as elements in these explorations.

(From Book Riot)

Afrofuturism has expression in other mediums – a small nod here to musical artists ranging from Sun Ra to Janelle Monae and Missy Elliott, not just for their musical talents, but for their visual representation of Afrofuturism, using music videos or personal style to tell of celebrated identity reaching beyond the present. This year the Hugo awards has Monae’s Dirty Computer in the lineup for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. The movie Black Panther pulled in accolades and attention beyond the usual Marvel film viewers. Nnedi Okorafor of Binti fame is the voice behind the Blank Panther Shuri series.

Our selection below showcases a few key library titles in a variety of formats (print, eBooks etc.). Enjoy!

The Rosewater insurrection / Thompson, Tade
“All is quiet in the city of Rosewater as it expands on the back of the gargantuan alien Wormwood. Those who know the truth of the invasion keep the secret.
The government agent Aminat, the lover of the retired sensitive Kaaro, is at the forefront of the cold, silent conflict. She must capture a woman who is the key to the survival of the human race. But Aminat is stymied by the machinations of the Mayor of Rosewater and the emergence of an old enemy of Wormwood.” (Catalogue)

The City Born Great, N. K. Jemisin (eBook)
“In this standalone short story by N. K. Jemisin, author of The Fifth Season, the winner of this year’s Hugo Award for Best Novel, New York City is about to go through a few changes. Like all great metropolises before it, when a city gets big enough, old enough, it must be born; but there are ancient enemies who cannot tolerate new life. Thus New York will live or die by the efforts of a reluctant midwife…and how well he can learn to sing the city’s mighty song.” (Overdrive description)

The Prey of Gods, Nicky Drayden (eAudiobook)
“A new hallucinogenic drug sweeping the country. An emerging AI uprising. And an ancient demigoddess hellbent on regaining her former status by preying on the blood and sweat of every human she encounters. It’s up to a young Zulu girl powerful enough to destroy her entire township, a queer teen plagued with the ability to control minds, a pop diva with serious daddy issues, and a politician with even more serious mommy issues to band together to ensure there’s a future left to worry about.” (Overdrive description)

BTTM FDRS / Daniels, Ezra Claytan
“Once a thriving working-class Chicago neighbourhood, the ‘Bottomyards’ is now the definition of urban blight. When an aspiring fashion designer named Darla and her image-obsessed friend, Cynthia, descend upon the neighbourhood in search of cheap rent, they soon discover something far more seductive and sinister lurking behind the walls of their new home. At turns funny, scary, and thought provoking, BTTM FDRS unflinchingly confronts the monsters – both metaphorical and real – that are displacing cultures in urban neighbourhoods today.” (Catalogue)

Syndetics book cover The rage of dragons / Evan Winter.
“The Omehi people have been fighting an unwinnable war for almost two hundred years. One in every two thousand women has the power to call down dragons. One in every hundred men is able to magically transform himself into a bigger, stronger, faster killing machine. Everyone else is fodder, destined to fight and die in the endless war. Young, gift-less Tau knows all this, but he has a plan of escape. Only, he doesn’t get the chance.” (Syndetics summary)

An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon (ebook), (eAudiobook)
“Welcome to the Tarlands aboard the space vessel HSS Matilda. The Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, who they consider to be less than human. When the autopsy of Matilda‘s sovereign reveals a surprising link between his death and her mother’s suicide some quarter-century before, Aster retraces her mother’s footsteps.” (Overdrive description)

Do you dream of Terra-Two? / Oh, Temi (print) (eBook)
“A century ago, scientists theorised that a habitable planet existed in a nearby solar system. Today, ten astronauts will leave a dying Earth to find it. It will take the team 23 years to reach Terra-Two. Twenty-three years spent in close quarters. Twenty-three years with no one to rely on but each other. Twenty-three years with no rescue possible, should something go wrong. And something always goes wrong.” (Catalogue)

Home / Okorafor, Nnedi
“It’s been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza University. A year since Binti was declared a hero for uniting two warring planets. A year since she found friendship in the unlikeliest of places. And now she must return home to her people, with her friend Okwu by her side, to face her family and face her elders. But Okwu will be the first of his race to set foot on Earth in over a hundred years, and the first ever to come in peace. After generations of conflict can human and Meduse ever learn to truly live in harmony?” (Catalogue)

Parable of the sower / Butler, Octavia E
“The time is 2025. The place is California, where small walled communities must protect themselves from hordes of desperate scavengers and roaming bands of people addicted to a drug that activates an orgasmic desire to burn, rape, and murder. When one small community is overrun, Lauren Olamina, an 18 year old black woman with the hereditary train of “hyperempathy” which causes her to feel others’ pain as her own–sets off on foot along the dangerous coastal highways, moving north into the unknown.” (Catalogue)

Mansfield in translation

June 26, 2019June 26, 2019 Dusty

The Doll’s House by Katherine Mansfield has just been translated by Karena Kelly into te reo Māori, Te Whare Tāre. This short story looks at the class distinctions woven into young colonial New Zealand. The translation has been published by The Katherine Mansfield House and Garden. Mansfield’s Thorndon home and family artifacts are maintained by this organisation at 25 Tinakori Road in Wellington.

Te Whare Tāre / Mansfield, Katherine
“Te Whare Tare is a te reo Māori translation of Katherine Mansfield’s well known story, The Doll’s House. First published in English in 1922. Te reo Maori translation by Karena Kelly published in 2018.” (Catalogue)

Wellington draws people from all over the world, keen to see Katherine Mansfield’s early influences in person. An early recreation of this short story filmed in 1975 influenced Trish Bowles’ illustrations of the sophisticated picture book, where Mansfield’s text has been embellished for all to enjoy.

Katherine Mansfield’s childhood home Chesney Wold was the inspiration for the model of her own doll’s house held as part of the collection at Katherine Mansfield House & Garden.

Chesney Wold, Karori Road, ca 1901. Karori Historical Society : Photographs. Ref: PAColl-5277-1-11. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

You can also read The Doll’s House in Mansfield’s short story collections:

Bliss, Katherine Mansfield (ebook)
‘Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at — nothing — at nothing, simply.’ This book includes Bliss, The Daughters of the Late Colonel and The Doll’s House. (adapted from Overdrive description)

One of the latest biographies describing the childhood of Mansfield and her family details the dire health issues of the era, but also the freedom the family had to socialise with the variety of people that made up Wellington in that era. Kathleen Beauchamp was a keen observer of her social and physical surroundings and was inspired to write about people from an early age.

A strange beautiful excitement : Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington, 1888-1903 / Yska, Redmer
“How does a city make a writer? Described by Fiona Kidman as a ‘ravishing, immersing read’, A Strange Beautiful Excitement is a ‘wild ride’ through the Wellington of Katherine Mansfield’s childhood. From the grubby, wind-blasted streets of Thorndon to the hushed green valley of Karori, author Redmer Yska, retraces Mansfield’s old ground: the sights, sounds and smells of the rickety colonial capital, as experienced by the budding writer”(adapted from Catalogue)

The Man Booker International and Translated Fiction!

June 21, 2019July 28, 2022 Dusty

The Man Booker International Prize recognises material that has been crafted in concert by both an author and translator, and the importance of their relationship in shaping the language and understanding of the story. This year the Man Booker International Prize went to Omani writer Jokha Alharth and translator Marilyn Booth for Celestial Bodies, the first time an Arabic writer has been awarded the 14-year-old prize.

Also on the shortlist: Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha, a fictionalized account of the author’s grandmother and her expulsion to Siberia as part of Stalin’s forced de-kulakization program of the 1930s. Conflict and close proximity of your enemies is addressed in Homeland while in Death is Hard Work Khalid Kahlifa looks at the division within a family as a deathbed wish places siblings on a dangerous road.

Full Man Booker International Prize Shortlist

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer
The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, translated by Anne McClean
The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán, translated by Sophie Hughes
The Pine Islands by Marion Poschmann, translated by Jen Calleja

For access to the shortlisted titles (as well as a few bonus works!) simply click on the items below:

Drive your plow over the bones of the dead / Tokarczuk, Olga (print) (eBook)
“Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead takes place in a remote Polish village, where Duszejko, an eccentric woman in her sixties, recounts the events surrounding the disappearance of her two dogs. Filled with wonderful characters like Oddball, Big Foot, Black Coat, Dizzy and Boros, this subversive, entertaining noir novel offers thought-provoking ideas on our perceptions of madness, injustice and getting away with murder.” (Adapted from the catalogue.)

The Years / Annie Ernaux (ebook)
“The Years is both an intimate memoir “written” by entire generations, and a story of generations telling a very personal story. Like the generation before hers, the narrator eschews the “I” for the “we” (or “they”, or “one”) as if collective life were inextricably intertwined with a private life that in her parents’ generation ceased to exist.” (Adapted from the Overdrive description.)

The shape of the ruins / Vásquez, Juan Gabriel
“When a man is arrested at a museum for attempting to steal the bullet-ridden suit of a murdered Colombian politician, few notice. But soon this thwarted theft takes on greater meaning as it becomes a thread in a widening web of popular fixations with conspiracy theories, assassinations, and historical secrets; and it haunts those who feel that only they know the real truth behind these killings.” (Adapted from the catalogue.)

The pine islands / Poschmann, Marion
“When Gilbert Silvester, a journeyman lecturer on beard fashions in film, awakes one day from a dream that his wife has cheated on him, he flees–immediately, irrationally, inexplicably–for Japan. In Tokyo he discovers the travel writings of the great Japanese poet Basho. Suddenly, from Gilbert’s directionless crisis there emerges a purpose: a pilgrimage in the footsteps of the poet to see the moon rise over the pine islands of Matsushima.” (Adapted from the catalogue.)

Homeland / Aramburu, Fernando
“Miren and Bittori have been best friends all their lives, growing up in the same small town in the north of Spain. With limited interest in politics, the terrorist threat posed by ETA seems to affect them little. When Bittori’s husband starts receiving threatening letters from the violent group, however–demanding money, accusing him of being a police informant–she turns to her friend for help. But Miren’s loyalties are torn: her son Joxe Mari has just been recruited . . .” (Adapted from the catalogue.)

The old slave and the mastiff / Chamoiseau, Patrick
“In the darkness, an old man grapples with the spirits of all those who have gone before him; the knowledge that the past is always with us, and the injustice that can cry out from beyond the grave. From a writer hailed by Milan Kundera as the “heir of Joyce and Kafka,” The Old Slave and the Mastiff portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs–a wise, loving tribute to the Creole culture of Martinique.” (Adapted from the catalogue.)

Death is hard work / Khalīfah, Khālid (print) (eBook)
“Abdel Latif, an old man, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. Before he dies, he tells his youngest son Bolbol that his final wish is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya in the Aleppo region. Though Abdel Latif was not the ideal father, Bolbol decides to persuade his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and their father’s body to Anabiya. But the country is a warzone . . .” (Adapted from the catalogue.)

Zuleikha / I︠A︡khina, Guzelʹ
“Soviet Russia, 1930. Zuleikha, the “pitiful hen,” lives with her brutal husband Murtaza and her mother-in-law. When Murtaza is executed by communist soldiers, she is sent into exile to a remote region on the Angara River in Siberia. Hundreds die of hunger and exhaustion on the journey and over the first difficult winter, yet exile is the making of Zuleikha. As she gets to know her fellow survivors, Zuleikha begins to build a new life far removed from the one she left behind.” (Adapted from the catalogue.)

Wellington City Libraries

Te Matapihi Ki Te Ao Nui

Author: Dusty