What Time Is It?
4.390 kr.“Patience, patience, because the great movements of history have always begun in those small parenthesis that we call ‘in the meantime.’” — John Berger
The last book that John Berger wrote was this precious little volume about time titled What Time Is It?, now posthumously published for the first time in English by Notting Hill Editions. Berger died before it was completed, but the text has been assembled and illustrated by his longtime collaborator and friend Selçuk Demirel, and has an introduction by Maria Nadotti.
What Time Is It? is a profound and playful meditation on the illusory nature of time. Berger, the great art critic and Man Booker Prize–winning author, reflects on what time has come to mean to us in modern life. Our perception of time assumes a uniform and ceaseless passing of time, yet time is turbulent. It expands and contracts according to the intensity of the lived moment. We talk of time “saved” in a hundred household appliances; time, like money, is exchanged for the content it lacks. Berger posits the idea that time can lengthen lifetimes once we seize the present moment. “What-is-to-come, what-is-to-be-gained empties what-is.”
Mamma og ég (kilja)
4.590 kr.Mamma og ég er saga mæðginanna Kolbeins Þorsteinssonar og Ástu Sigurðardóttur rithöfundar. Ásta var þjóðþekkt sem rithöfundur og nánast goðsögn vegna skrifa sinna.
Einkalíf hennar var þó enginn dans á rósum og undirstrikar að sitt hvað er gæfa eða gjörvileiki. Ásta glímdi við óreglu lengst af ævi sinni og barðist við þá djöfla sem fylgja fíkninni. Börnin voru tekin af henni og send í fóstur. Barnsfaðir hennar lét sig börnin litlu varða.
Kolbeinn segir söguna frá sjónarhóli barnsins og lýsir þeim mikla sársauka sem fylgir því að vera móðurlaus í umsjón barnaverndarnefndar og vandalausra og horfa upp á mömmu sína hverfa inn í myrkur stjórnlausrar neyslu.
Litvindar
4.890 kr.Björg Örvar er myndlistarkona og skáld. Um tíu ára skeið bjó hún á Stokkseyri og var þar með vinnustofu. Dvölin á Stokkseyri var henni mikill innblástur og eru flest ljóðin þaðan runnin. Áður hafa komið út eftir Björgu ljóðabók og skáldsaga.
Ágúst og íslenska veðrið
4.390 kr.Hér er Ágúst – lundi sem elskar ævintýri! Hann ákveður að dvelja á Íslandi yfir veturinn og lendir í vetrarstormi. Með hjálp vitru uglunnar Júlíu uppgötvar hann norðurljósin og lærir hvernig ský, þoka og regnbogar myndast. Hlý og fyndin saga um veður, vináttu og bláberjakökur, fullkomin fyrir forvitna landkönnuði.
Kæri fáviti
4.690 kr.Í Kæri fáviti skiptast þrjár ólíkar raddir á að segja frá – útskúfaður rithöfundur, þekkt leikkona og róttækur femínisti. Í gegnum tölvupóstsamskipti þeirra fáum við innlit í heim sem er gegnsýrður af kynbundinni valdbeitingu, afleiðingum #MeToo, fíkn, vináttu og leit að merkingu í heimi sem virðist oft vera að hrynja.
Kæri fáviti er óþægilega heiðarleg og snjöll samtímasaga frá einum áhrifamesta höfundi Frakklands. Bókin varð að metsölubók og hratt af stað mikilli umræðu um kynferðislega áreitni og jafnrétti á tímum samfélagsmiðla.
New Yorker valdi Kæra fávita á lista yfir bestu bækur ársins 2024.
Kristín Jónsdóttir þýddi úr frönsku.
Spadework for a Palace
4.390 kr.Spadework for a Palace bears the subtitle “Entering the Madness of Others” and offers an epigraph: “Reality is no obstacle.” Indeed. This high-octane obsessive rant vaults over all obstacles, fueled by the idées fixe of a “gray little librarian” with fallen arches whose name—mr herman melvill—is merely one of the coincidences binding him to his lodestar Herman Melville (“I too resided on East 26th Street . . . I, too, had worked for a while at the Customs Office”), which itself is just one aspect of his also being “constantly conscious of his connectedness” to Lebbeus Woods, to the rock that is Manhattan, to the “drunkard Lowry” and his Lunar Caustic, to Bartok. And with this consciousness of connection he is not only gaining true knowledge of Melville, but also tracing the paths to “a Serene Paradise of Knowledge.” Driven to save that Palace (a higher library he also serves), he loses his job and his wife leaves him, but “people must be told the truth: there is no dualism in existence.” And his dream will be “realized, for I am not giving up: I am merely a day-laborer, a spade-worker on this dream, a herman melvill, a librarian from the lending desk, currently an inmate at Bellevue, but at the same time—may I say this?—actually a Keeper of the Palace.”
Larfur Lauks: Lifandi og deyjandi í Reykjavík
4.990 kr.Brúnt slabb, öskrandi rok, syndaaflausn í eftirpartýi, geislavirk kvennfyrirlitning, æla í pítsukassa, mótsagnir í dós, adrenalín-perrar og 18 ára heimdellingur með fortnite-vandamál. Brotinn kjálki eftir rafhlaupahjólaslys, tæpur gaur með pit viper gleraugu, lifandi á fornri frægð og mamma þín er að chilla með fólki sem þú þekkir ekki.
Í slysabarni íslensku þjóðarinnar, Reykjavík, leynast tuttugu-og-eitthvað ára stefnuleysingjar á víð og dreif um göturnar. Þeir sveiflast um á milli láglaunastarfa, skrá sig í og úr námi, allt gert á ísland.is í hálfkæringi á djamminu. Mjólkin súrnuð, atvinnuleysisbæturnar búnar, morgundagurinn er ekkert nema svikull vinur.
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer
4.390 kr.One winter evening bestselling crime author, Elín S. Jónsdóttir goes missing.
There are no clues to her disappearance and it is up to young detective, Helgi, to crack the case before it’s leaked to the press.
As he interviews the people closest to her – a publisher, an accountant, a retired judge – he realises that Elín’s life wasn’t what it seemed. In fact, her past is even stranger than her stories.
As the case of the missing crime writer becomes more mysterious by the hour, Helgi must uncover the secrets of a very unexpected life . . .
Annah, Infinite
5.490 kr.This is an escape story.
In Annah, Infinite, the dominant narratives surrounding Paul Gauguin’s famous painting Annah la Javanaise (1893-94) are turned upside down. The book argues a simple point: what if the portrait is not one of a consenting muse, but a child in pain?
Annah, Infinite questions the colonial power that has defined the infamous subject’s unknown history. Through the mythology of Annah, Okka draws attention to the systems of ablenormativity, racism, and sexism that shape what we learn of art history and what we see on museum walls.
Alongside her critique, the author engages with Annah la Javanaise through poetry, fiction, and visual art. A work of emotional heft, Okka asks us to acknowledge the possibility of pain in every single portrait, as well as the possibility of escape.
The Setting Sun
3.690 kr.Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Ozamu Dazai died, a suicide, in 1948. But the influence of his book has made “people of the setting sun” a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.
Wild Dark Shore
3.490 kr.Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world’s largest seed bank. As Shearwater risks being lost to rising sea levels, the island’s researchers have fled, and only the Salts remain.
Until, during the worst storm in living memory, a stranger washes ashore. The family nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, but it seems she isn’t telling the whole truth about why she’s there. And when Rowan stumbles upon sabotaged radios and a recently dug grave, she realises that she’s not the only one on the island with a secret.
A novel of breathtaking twists and dizzying beauty, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love.
Political Girl: Life and Fate in Russia
6.990 kr.What can you do when your country becomes a repressive authoritarian state?
2014: Russia prepares to host the Winter Olympics. Russia invades Crimea. Putin is re-elected president. Several political prisoners are amnestied and released early from prison.
Maria Alyokhina is among them. She had spent two years in a penal colony after performing the punk prayer ‘Virgin Mary, Banish Putin’ with her friends in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. They had warned the rest of the world of the dangers of authoritarianism, but the Russia she finds when she gets out of prison is even more oppressive. What can you do, she asks, when your country has been seized by all-powerful men who are waging war against another country and their own citizens?
As Maria recounts her brave and colourful protests, we are drawn straight into the world of grassroots opposition and witness the absurd measures the Russian state takes to contain protest. And when the full-scale war against Ukraine starts and the Russian opposition is repeatedly silenced, Maria and her activist friends continue to resist despite the high stakes. They fight increasingly absurd cycles of detention and house arrest: sometimes with the smallest acts such as going for a walk or having a rainbow ice cream, until, faced with a new prison sentence, she escapes Russia in May 2022 dressed as a food delivery courier.
Her story, like her life, is fiercely courageous, darkly funny and highly inspiring to anyone who wants to stand up for the truth.
Nymph
3.990 kr.Not yet thirty, Bathory has assembled a peculiar résumé: model, sex worker, linguist, Latin scholar, and assassin. The last of these has been the family trade for generations. Growing up, Bathory, her mother, and her father made an isolated, strange, and loving – if very unusual – family unit. Her lonely childhood games mimicked spycraft and wet-work, while her parents watched and shared their arcane theories about love and death.
As a student in New York, her life changes on accepting a job at a dilapidated card shop in Manhattan. This is a front for an agency that allows her to put her inherited skills to use while pursuing romance in the city.
However, steering clear of attachment is as dangerous as anything else she does and means sidestepping a certain alluring figure from her father’s past. She is equally intent on dying young, a less difficult proposition given her heritage, the company she keeps – call girls, conflicted cops, trustfund hoodlums – and the people pursuing her.
Will Bathory escape both fate and family, or does satisfaction and salvation lie only in their embrace?
The Future of Truth
4.390 kr.What if a lie could be true?
At the heart of this fascinating and iconoclastic book lies Werner Herzog’s concept of ‘ecstatic truth’ – a truth that is often hidden behind the facts and our conceptions of reality but can be gleaned through the poetic imagination, in art, literature and cinema, when we open ourselves up to an aesthetic experience.
Written in Herzog’s inimitable style, these stories, anecdotes and reflections take us from present-day deep fakes and the opportunities and perils of AI to ancient Egypt and Rome, where rulers resorted to lies and propaganda in the same way as governments do today; from Scott and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole to alien abduction claims and the making of Herzog’s own films. With its singular vision and unique voice, The Future of Truth is a compelling meditation on the relationship between fact and fiction – evidence and imagination – by one of today’s most fascinating and idiosyncratic thinkers.
The Cosmic Oval
3.190 kr.The Cosmic Oval is an elliptical entrance into an exploration of feminist cosmologies, storytelling and the many ways of knowing and imagining the hot blue beginnings of time. By turn dreaming and waking, Ella Finer’s essay enters history and imagination from the sleep side, taking its cue from Anne Carson. Finer attends to cultural memory as composition, gathering cosmic guides with whom to listen beyond what is given to hear.
In west London, the entrance to architect and theorist Charles Jencks’ Cosmic House is overlooked by The Cosmic Oval, a representation of the origin of the universe referencing both contemporary scientific discoveries about its elliptical shape and ancient cosmogonic myths. Invited by the Cosmic House to write an imagined conversation between figures who inhabit the frieze surrounding the Oval, such as Hannah Arendt, Imhotep and John Donne, Finer re-orchestrates cultural history to explore social scenes of study and the way knowledge moves through bodies and time.
The Site of Memory
2.990 kr.The Site of Memory describes Toni Morrison’s work of literary archaeology. She offers insights into how she arrives at a text through the act of imagination bound up with memory and shows how she explores two worlds – the actual and the possible – via the nimbus of emotion surrounding the journey of an image: from picture to meaning to text.
Exploring the radical possibilities of literature and the limits of history, Morrison finds a truth deeper than documentation in the silences and omissions in African American narratives of the past. Fiction, for Morrison, is a practice of ethical restoration: a means to recover what history has neglected through the ‘flooding’ of a rush of imagination. In The Site of Memory, ancestral presence, emotion and imagination converge. If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.
Among the Thugs
4.990 kr.They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin’ Sammy. They like lager (in huge quantities), the Queen, football clubs (especially Manchester United), and themselves. Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England’s soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. Now Bill Buford, editor of the prestigious journal Granta, enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of a George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of a Hunter Thompson.
Hvaðan og hvert / Wherefrom and Whereto
9.990 kr.Þessi bók sýnir málverk Jóhönnu Boga frá margra áratuga tímabili. Auk þess eru að finna hugleiðingar Jóhönnu og annarra um ýmislegt sem tengist list hennar.