Other Prose: Classical, Early & Medieval

This is the breakout non-fiction book from award-winning New Zealand writer Mohamed Hassan. From Cairo to Takapuna, Athens to Istanbul, How To Be A Bad Muslim maps the personal and public experience of being Muslim through essays on identity, Islamophobia, surveillance, migration... and language. Traversing storytelling, memoir, journalism and humour, Hassan speaks authentically and piercingly on mental health, grief and loss, while weaving memories of an Egyptian immigrant fighting childhood bullies, listening to life-saving '90s grunge and auditioning for vaguely-ethnic roles in a certain pirate movie franchise. At once funny and chilling, elegiac and eye-opening, this is a must-read book from a powerfully talented writer. "Mohamed Hassan takes the things we universally love - food, music, family, dreams of travel, a heart's desire - and affirms their gorgeous ordinariness. Then he reveals how othering shatters what we share; how it splinters "us" to create confusion, ignorance, hurt and even hate. Sometimes his writing is gently observational, sometimes sad, sometimes justly angry, but always important, timely and true." - John Campbell "The book is amazing. Mohamed Hassan is so talented. In How To Be A Bad Muslim, he pulls off that rare trick of taking a poet's grace and applying it to his essays, making them as beautiful to read as they are illuminating." - Dominic Hoey "Mohamed's is a fresh voice but most of all, an important voice. We already have his poetry, which has been rightly recognised, but now New Zealand literature is all the richer for his elegant and powerful non-fiction." - Rachael King "Mohamed Hassan writes from a space that nobody else stands in; a space borne of deep understanding and lived experience. He is Muslim, a child of Egypt and the Middle East and a child of New Zealand; a global traveler and reporter with his finger very firmly on the socio-politics of the globe and our place in it. He has a depth of vision, a level of craft and a talen
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Throughout her life, my Mother struggled with poverty and masculine violence. She was born in the late 1960s. At 16, she had to leave school because she was pregnant. At 19, she already had two children, no qualifications, and a husband she hated. Sometimes he would try to beat h...er, but my mother always fought back. After two or three years, she left him and met my father; she was in love with him, and one year later they had a baby, me. They were happy, but very quickly my father changed. Watching her when I was a child, I thought her life was already fixed forever- the village, the lack of money, the toxic presence of my father. She was in her thirties but she was like a shadow; I dreamt of replacing her, of having another Mother, more smily, more shiny. I ran away from her and from my family to study in Paris. The silence grew between us. I didn't know her anymore. But one day, the year of her 45th birthday, she called me in the middle of the night. 'I did it. I left your Father'. She found a job. She fought hard in order to get a rent-controlled house and made new friends. She met a man but she refused to live with him. For the first time in her life, she moved to a big city, she wore make-up, and she started to travel. When I saw her in Paris after her liberation, I couldn't believe the person in front of me was the Mother I knew in my childhood. When I left her she told me 'I am so happy now'. This book is the story of her Liberation - of a woman's Liberation. Struggles is perhaps douard's most tender book yet- an exquisite and loving portrait of a mother, an honouring of her self-discovery and liberation.
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The most famous and influential work of English fantasy ever published, retold for a new generation of readers by one of the world's leading Arthurian experts, and illustrated by internationally acclaimed Tolkien artist, John Howe.

Why read non-fiction? Is it just to find things out? Or is it for pleasure, challenge, adventure, meaning? Here, in seventy new pieces, some of the most original writers and thinkers of our time give their answers. From Hilton Als on reading as writing's dearest companion to Nicc...i Gerrard on reading for her life; from Malcolm Gladwell on entering the minds of others to Michael Lewis on books as secret discoveries; and from Lea Ypi on the search for freedom to Slavoj Zizek on violent readings, each offers their own surprising perspective on the simple act of turning a page. The result is a celebration of seeing the world in new ways - and of having our minds changed.
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Part memoir, part essay collection, Megan Dunn's ingenious, moving, hilariously personal Things I Learned at Art School tells the story of her early life and coming-of-age in New Zealand in the '70s, '80s and '90s. From her single mother's love life to her Smurf collection, from ...the mean girls at school to the mermaid movie Splash, from her work in strip clubs and massage parlours (and one steak restaurant) to the art school of the title, this is a dazzling, killer read from a contemporary voice of comic brilliance. Chapters include (but are not limited to)- The Ballad of Western Barbie; A Comprehensive List of All the Girls Who Teased Me at Western Heights High School, What They Looked Like and Why They Did It; On Being a Redhead; Life Begins at Forty- That Time My Uncle Killed Himself; Good Girls Write Memoirs, Bad Girls Don't Have Time; Videos I Watched with My Father; Things I Learned at Art School; CV of a Fat Waitress; Nine Months in a Massage Parlour Called Belle de Jour; Various Uses for a Low Self-esteem; Art in the Waiting Room and Submerging Artist. Praise for Things I Learned At Art School- 'Megan Dunn is the perfect antidote to the literary sad-girl industrial complex. She has the best deadpan of the southern hemisphere. Wickedly funny and frequently disconcerting, these odd, savage gems have gravy for days.' - Hera Lindsay Bird 'I've been waiting for this cask wine drenched cruise through a juicy world of low art, popular culture, lurex, and frosty pussies. Dunn is bewilderingly funny and smart.' - Kiran Dass 'Dazzling. There is humour as black as night and all the stories are just so madly, moreishly readable.' - Steve Braunias 'I think Megan Dunn is a major writer waiting to happen.' - Bill Manhire 'Megan Dunn is a comic genius. The world needs more of her writing.' - Susanna Andrew, Metro Praise for Tinderbox- Megan Dunn's wry, whip-smart memoir about Fahrenheit 451, literary ambition & the last days of Borders Bookstores is funny & insightful as he
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