Essays, Journals, Letters & Other Prose Works

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
Read more

From cultural icon Margaret Atwood comes a brilliant collection of essays -- funny, erudite, endlessly curious, uncannily prescient -- which seek answers to Burning Questions such as- Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? How much of yourself can you give away ...without evaporating? How can we live on our planet? Is it true? And is it fair? What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism? In over fifty pieces Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humour at our world, and reports back to us on what she finds. The roller-coaster period covered in the collection brought an end to the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump and a pandemic. From debt to tech, the climate crisis to freedom; from when to dispense advice to the young (answer- only when asked) to how to define granola, we have no better questioner of the many and varied mysteries of our human universe. 'Brilliant and funny' Joan Didion 'She's taken our times and made us wise to them' Ali Smith 'Lights a fire from the fears of our age . . . Miraculously balances humor, outrage, and beauty' New York Times Book Review 'All over the reading world, the history books are being opened to the next blank page and Atwood's name is written at the top of it' Anne Enright, Guardian 'The outstanding novelist of our age' Sunday Times ** A 2022 Book to Look Forward To in The Times, i, Financial Times, Guardian, Evening Standard, New Statesman, Cosmopolitan and SheerLuxe **
Read more

Award-winning poet Joanna Preston's beautifully crafted second collection charts a course for the journey from child to woman. Her voice swoops the reader from the ocean depths to the roof of the world, from nascent saints, Viking raids and fallen angels to talking cameras and an... astronaut in space.
Read more

A rich and exciting compendium of speeches, letters, stories and poems for kids, by the global bestselling author of Stories for Boys Who Dare to be Different.

'Almost nothing in life is only what it seems.' Soldier, journalist, historian, author of forty books, Jan Morris led an extraordinary life, witnessing such seminal moments as the first ascent of Everest, the Suez Canal Crisis, the Eichmann Trial, The Cuban Revolution and so much... more.
Read more