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Title: Alfred And Emily
Author: Doris Lessing
Binding: PB
ISBN: 9780007282708
RRP: $27.99
Our Price: $25.19 incGST BUY
I think my father's rage at the trenches took me over, when I was very young, and has never left me. Do children feel their parents' emotions? Yes, we do, and it is a legacy I could have done without. What is the use of it? It is as if that old war is in my own memory, my own consciousness. In this extraordinary book, the new Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, both of them irrevocably damaged by the Great War. Her father wanted the simple life of an English farmer, but shrapnel almost killed him in the trenches and thereafter he had to wear a wooden leg. Her mother Emily's great love was a doctor, who drowned in the Channel, and she spent the war nursing the wounded in the Royal Free Hospital. In the first half of this book, Doris Lessing imagines the lives her parents might have made for themselves had there been no war at all, a story that has them meeting at a village cricket match outside Colchester as children but leading separate lives. This is followed by a piercing examination of their lives as they actually came to be in the shadow of that war, their move to Rhodesia, a damaged couple squatting over Doris' childhood in a strange land. Here I still am, says Doris Lessing, trying to get out from under that monstrous legacy, trying to get free. With the publication of Alfred and Emily she has done just that.
Title: Bomb, Book And Compass : Joseph Needham And The Great Secrets Of China
Author: Simon Winchester
Binding: PB
ISBN: 9780670913794
RRP: $32.95
Our Price: $29.66 incGST BUY
Before fate intervened, Joseph Needham was a distinguished biochemist performing research at Cambridge University, married to a fellow scientist and an ardent member of the local Communist party. In 1937 he was asked to supervise a young Chinese student named Lu Gwei-Djen and in that moment began the two greatest love affairs of his life - Lu and China. At Lu's insistence, Needham travelled to China where he immersed himself in the country's history and culture. For the next fifty-eight years he established himself as the pre-eminent China scholar of all time, documenting everything from Chinese medicine to philosophy to nautical history, and formulating the belief that China would one day achieve world prominence - a belief that is being borne out today. By the end of his life Needham had become a truly global figure, travelling endlessly and honoured by all except the university where he worked. And in 1989, after a fifty-two year affair, he finally married the woman who had first inspired his passion. The Great Secrets of China is Simon Winchester at his best - at once a magnificent portrait of one man's remarkable and passionate life and a riveting exploration of the country that so engaged him.
Title: Dear Gabriel : Letter To An Autistic Son
Author: Halfdan W Freihow
Binding: PB
ISBN: 9781741755589
RRP: $23.95
Our Price: $21.56 incGST BUY
A father, trying to understand both his autistic son and himself, has written a painfully honest and heartfelt memoir encompassing their conversations, adventures, struggles, and achievements. With great love and profound wonder, Halfdan W Freihow describes his complex relationship with his youngest son, Gabriel, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. Though their relationship is sometimes fraught with frustration and misunderstanding, it endures and flourishes with parental pride and, ultimately, unconditional love. Taking the form of a personal letter, and set against the haunting yet beautiful coastal landscape in which the family lives, Freihow's intimate tale evokes a rich sense of childhood magic. A tender and brutally honest testament to love and the power of family, Dear Gabriel reaches out to all parents as they try to understand and nurture their children, regardless of any obstacles that may stand in their way.
Title: Fellini's Book Of Dreams
Author: Federico Fellini
Binding: HB
ISBN: 9780847831357
RRP: $200.00
Our Price: $180.00 incGST BUY
Federico Fellini is one of the most beloved and revered filmmakers of the twentieth century, having entertained audiences worldwide with his ability to breathe life into imagery normally confined to human memory and emotion. His insights into the world of dreams have contributed to his many famous cinematic creations, including La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and La Strada. A unique combination of memory, fantasy and desire, this illustrated volume is a personal diary of Fellini's private visions and night-time fantasies. Fellini, winner of four Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, kept notebooks filled with unique sketches and notes from his dreams from the 1960s onward. This collection delves into his cinematic genius as it is captured in widely detailed caricatures and personal writings. This dream diary exhibits Fellini's deeply personal taste for the bizarre and the irrational. His sketches focus on the profound struggle of the soul and are tinged with humour, empathy, and insight. Fellini's Book of Dreams is an intriguing source of never-before-published writings and drawings, which reveal the master filmmaker's personal vision and his infinite imagination.
Title: Lopsided
Author: Meredith Norton
Binding: PB
ISBN: 9780733621895
RRP: $32.99
Our Price: $29.69 incGST BUY
One ordinary woman's journey through breast cancer and out the other side. Meredith Norton is in love and moves to Paris to be with her husband. She thought that coming to grips with the French and how they live life was hard enough - and then she discovered that she had breast cancer. Funny, sharp and witty, Meredith chronicles her experiences, starting with her bizarre symptoms while living in Paris, to moving back home to California and her compulsive parents with their five TV sets. Irreverent and incredibly funny, Meredith rails against self-pity and victimhood and rants about the innumerable copies of Lance Armstrong's cancer survival book offered by well meaning friends. And deals with my pig-hunting Buddhist ex-boyfriend who believed that organic meat and meditation could make me better. Most astounding was my unrevelation, the revelation that I would not be having a revelation, something to help me progress towards the enlightened being I hope to become effortlessly.
Title: Renegade : The Gospel According To Mark E Smith
Author: Mark E Smith
Binding: HB
ISBN: 9780670916740
RRP: $49.95
Our Price: $44.96 incGST BUY
Still going after thirty years, The Fall is one of the most distinctive British bands, their music - odd, spare, cranky and repetitious - an acknowledged influence on The Smiths, The Happy Mondays, Nirvana and Franz Ferdinand. And Mark E Smith is The Fall - forty-seven members have come and gone over the years yet he remains its charismatic leader, a professional outsider and all-round enemy of compromise, a true enigma. There have been a number of biographies of the legendary Smith, but this is the first time he has opened up in a full autobiography. For the first time we get to hear his full, candid take on the ups and downs of a band as notorious for its in-house fighting as for its great music; and on a life that has endured prison in America, drugs, bankruptcy, divorce and the often bleak results of a legendary thirst.