They used to be inseparable. They used to be young, brave & brilliant
- amazingly beautiful & terrifyingly alone. August, Sylvia,
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Published in 1962, this is an emotionally intense novel of love, hatred, race & liberal America in the 1960s. Set in Greenwhich Village, Harlem & France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott & the friends who search for an understanding of his life & death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way. ...

Saturday, November 23rd, 2013. It was just another day in America; an unremarkable Saturday on which ten children & teens were killed by gunfire. The youngest was nine; the oldest was nineteen. White, Black & Latino, they fell in suburbs, hamlets & ghettos. None made the national news. There was no outrage about their passing. It was just another day in the death of America, where on a daily average
- seven children & teens are killed by guns. Younge picked this day at random, searched for their families & tells their stories. The nine-year-old opened the door & was shot in the head by his mother`s ex-boyfriend. The eleven-year-old was killed by his friend at a sleep over in rural Michigan. The eighteen-year-old gang member, on Chicago`s South Side, was shot in a stairwell just days after being released from prison. Through ten moving chapters
- one for each child
- Younge explores the way these children lived & lost their short lives. He finds out who they were, who they wanted to be, the environments they inhabited, & what this might tell us about society at large. What emerges is a searing portrait of childhood & youth in contemporary America.


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SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE, THE JHALAK PRIZE, & THE BREAD & ROSES AWARD. Saturday, 23rd November 2013. It was just another day in America. & as befits an unremarkable day, ten children & teens were killed by gunfire. Far from being considered newsworthy, these everyday fatalities are simply a banal fact. The youngest was nine; the oldest nineteen. None made the news. There was no outrage at their passing. It was simply a day like any other day. Gary Younge picked it at random, searched for the families of these children & here, tells their stories. Another Day in the Death of America explores the way these children lived & lost their short lives, offering a searing portrait of the vulnerability of youth in contemporary America. ...

It`s 1975 & in Luanda, the capital of Angola, an apocalyptic atmosphere prevails as the Portuguese residents hurriedly desert the city. Determined to cover events as four hundred years of colonial rule come to an end, Kapuscinski hitched a lift on one of the last Portuguese military aircraft flying to Angola. There he discovered the terrifying spectacle of a civil war whithin the war for national independence: a murderous, messy struggle in which many of the participants can scarcely tell one another apart. Shot through with wit & irony, Kapuscinsky`s superb account vividly conveys the heat, confusion, fear & unrelenting tension of a country tragically divided by its new freedom. & he demonstrates an extraordinary capacity to describe & to explain the individual meaning of grand political abstractions. ...

Another Day at Sea by Geoff Dyer is the first title from Writers in Residence; a collectable set of books that bring together some of the greatest writers & photographers on the planet to reveal the normally faceless organizations that shape the modern world. The arresting, full-colour photography, depicting a subculture that is by turns surprising, hilarious, beautiful & insane, is by Chris Steele-Perkins, an award-winning Magnum photographer. Writers in Residence finds a third way between books & magazines, with every book in the set designed by Jeremy Leslie of mag Culture. ? Meeting the Captain, the F-18 pilots & the dentists, experiencing everything from a man-overboard alert to the Steel Beach Party, Dyer guides us through the most AIE (acronym intensive environment) imaginable. Underlying Dyer`s efforts to overcome the disadvantages of being the oldest, tallest (actually, second tallest), & most self-conscious person on the boat is an intense fascination with the military world. In recording daily life on board the ship, Dyer illuminates a society where discipline & conformity, dedication & optimism, become a form of self-expression. ? ...

In November 2011, Geoff Dyer fulfilled a childhood dream of spending time on an aircraft carrier. Dyer`s stay on the USS George Bush, on active service in the Arabian Gulf, proved even more intense, memorable, & frequently hilarious, than he could ever have hoped. In Dyer`s hands, the warship becomes a microcosm for a stocktaking of modern Western life: religion, drugs, chauvinism, farting, gyms, steaks, prayer, parental death, relationships & how to have a beach party with 5000 people on a giant floating hunk of steel. Piercingly perceptive & gloriously funny, this is a unique book about work, war & entering other worlds. ...

Usman is visiting post-war London from Pakistan when he meets a young aspiring artist called Lydia who has, like himself, come out of an unhappy marriage. Just as the lonely strangers` friendship begins to blossom into something deeper Usman has to return to Karachi, leaving Lydia behind. Two years later, Lydia impulsively abandons her life in London & boards a ship to Karachi, where the two are married. But as the years flit by Usman feels distanced from his life & realises that he hasn`t noticed the buds of the gulmohar tree unfurl. A beautiful account of a marriage that is in turns wry & unashamedly romantic. ...

Another Kyoto is an insider`s meditation on the hidden wonders of Japan`s most enigmatic city. Drawing on decades living in Kyoto, & on lore gleaned from artists, Zen monks & Shinto priests, Alex Kerr illuminates the simplest things
- a temple gate, a wall, a sliding door
- in a new way.`A rich book of intimate proportions.. . In Kyoto, facts & meaning are often hidden in plain sight. Kerr`s gift is to make us stop & cast our eyes upward to a temple plaque, or to squint into the gloom of an abbot`s chamber` Japan Times` Kerr & Sokol have performed a minor miracle by presenting that which is present in Kyoto as that which we have yet to see. I know that I will never pass a wall, or tread a floor, or sit on tatami the same way again` Kyoto Journal

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In the years between 1930 & 1980, some of the best-known photographers from around the world came to London & made its streets, buildings & communities their subject. For some, the British capital was to become home; for others it remained a foreign city, as enigmatic perhaps as any they had visited. Each brought their own distinctive perspective, subverting or perpetuating national stereotypes, seeking out the typical or the exotic, attempting to penetrate the fabled British reserve with their lens. Together their work creates a portrait of a great world city, changing & mutating, a restless & fascinating muse. This remarkable book, accompanying a major exhibition at Tate Britain in London`s Olympic year, demonstrates the breadth & variety of the responses London provoked from visiting photographers during the period, from portraits to reportage, from social realism to whimsy & humour, the changes in their technique & attitude demonstrating developments in photography itself. Essays by selected critics will address both the photographers` contributions & the history of London. Artists represented feature some of the greatest names in twentieth century photography, including Eve Arnold, Dorothy Bohm, Bill Brandt, Henri-Cartier Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Elliot Erwitt, Robert Frank, Leonard Freed, Emil Hoppe, Inge Morath, Dora Maar, Irving Penn, Willy Ronis & Al Vandenberg. ...