New Shoots
‘… incredible, so poetic and visceral. Devi is a powerful and uncompromising writer but the moments of tenderness and humanity throughout made the lack of it all the more stark. I'm so glad it's been translated, we need more books like this on shelves!’ — Deirdre Sullivan, author of Tangleweed and Brine
The Young Adult edition (for readers 16+) of Eve Out of Her Ruins, featuring a preface by Ananda Devi, is out today.
Young Adult edition | £7.99 | isbn 978183801448
Audiobook | £9.99 | isbn 9781838490416
The audiobook - our first! - produced by Cast Iron Books, is brilliantly read by young actors Saffron Coomber (Eve), Mohammad Mansaray (Saad), Anant Varman (Clélio), and Vaani K Sharma (Savita), and is available here. See also this video clip by Saffron Coomber.
Both editions were made possible thanks to Arts Council England Emergency Funding received last year. On 20 May, Ananda Devi will be taking part in a creative writing and translation workshop exploring the notions of place and identity across languages, with sixth form students at Farnborough College. This workshop is designed and delivered in collaboration with Shadow Heroes, and sponsored by the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni.
On Monday 17 May, the French Institute is holding a hybrid online/on-site event as part of the new edition of the Beyond Words literary festival. Rebecca Watson, one of the Observer's Top 10 debut novelists and author of little scratch, and Julia Kerninon, Rebecca Watson's French translator and author of A Respectable Occupation (Les Fugitives, 2020) discuss how young women authors can bring a different voice to the literary world. A conversation chaired by writer Lauren Elkin and interspersed with readings by Olivia Ross. Click here for more details and to book tickets.
Books: they don't
grow on trees
‘Fuck this for a farce, it was March.’ – Noémi Lefebvre, Poetics of Work, trans. Sophie Lewis
‘…perhaps civilisation, with all its nuance and complexity, is too easily out-muscled by simpler arguments, even wrong ones.’ — Rónán Hession, on Poetics of Work, for The Irish Times
For one week only, we invite you to use the code WRITEoSPRING for free UK postage and 24.35% off the cover price of 5 irreverent and ever more urgently relevant titles, from searing cries of MAYDAY to spring rituals to delight and disorient:
Take to the streets of Lyon with the narrator of Poetics of Work, torn between the push to find a job and the pull to write.
‘Noémi Lefebvre's Poetics of Work is a bold amoral tantrum against the thorn in our psyche: the so-called luminary father-figure gaslighting our sense of personal and collective lyricism.’ — Yelena Moskovich, author of The Natashas and Virtuoso
Looking for a subversive read for a sunny afternoon in the park? Look no further than this sensual, pastoral novella, whose fairy-tale atmosphere only enhances its sharp, feminist heart.
‘The Governesses is a cruel and exhilarating book’ — Marie Claire
In this spring like no other, discover the story of an isolated elderly woman’s sinister rebirth into something rich and strange when a new romance enters her life.
‘The Living Days is never a predictable novel, indeed it is never less than perplexing and unsettling.’ — The Irish Times
As we wait for art galleries to reopen, here's a tantalising taster with Sylvie Weil's memoir in pieces Selfies, inspired by self-portraits by artists from the 13th century to the present, as so many portals to significant moments from Weil's own life.
‘An illuminating survey of the author's various identities, in a fractured world, as mother, lover and writer.’— Michèle Roberts
‘A new genre is born: the short selfie collection! Lively, inventive, compassionate, aching, morally compex and troubling, I loved these self-portraits more than anything I've read lately.’ — Lauren Elkin
How better to celebrate being able to meet up with family again than with Nathalie Léger’s The White Dress, a no-holds-barred exploration of her Proustian narrator’s conflicted relationship with her ageing mother, masterfully wrapped in an exploration of women’s art and patriarchal violence? One to discuss during an outdoor meet-up – if you’re brave enough!
‘Virtuosic’ – recently wrote Eula Biss, in The New Yorker (see Biss' thrilling 'Nathalie Léger’s Hall of Mirrors').