Spring and Summer 2013
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Spring and Summer 2013 MELVILLE HOUSE DEBT THE FIRST 5,000 YEARS DAVID GRAEBER The acclaimed international bestseller, now in paperback: David Graeber’s “fresh . fascinating . thought-provoking . and exceedingly timely” (Financial Times) history of debt Acclaimed anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom, not to mention centuries of accepted economic theory: He shows that for 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. Ever since, arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. Indeed, the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive from ancient and nearly forgotten debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. Without knowing it, Graeber NOW AVAILABLE writes, we are still fighting these battles today. 978-1-61219-129-4 Key points and quotes $22.00 / $22.00 CAN. + ECONOMICS / HISTORY Winner of 2012 Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing PAPERBACK + Winner of 2012 Gregory Bateson book prize, awarded by the Society for 5 3 544 PAGES, 5 ⁄8" × 8 ⁄8" Cultural Anthropology EBOOK: 978-1-61219-098-3 + Hardcover has sold more than 75,000 copies internationally WORLD Marketing and publicity Praise for Debt: • “An alternate history of the rise of money and markets, a sprawling, erudite, Radio tour: national & regional provocative work.” —Bloomberg Businessweek public radio, news shows, business/ • “David Graeber’s Debt is like no book I have ever read, a meditation on money, finance shows debt, gifts, and religion. It is graceful, lucid, free of jargon and crammed full of Op-ed campaign connections and revelations that will delight the curious reader. It will change Targeting religious media your life.” —Peter Carey, author of Parrot and Olivier in America Jewish-interest magazines to • “One of the year’s most influential books.” —Paul Mason, The Guardian highlight biblical/historical • “Written in a brash, engaging style, the book is a philosophical inquiry into the narrative of the book nature of debt—where it came from and how it evolved.” Media targeted on reaching readers of —Thomas Meaney, The New York Times Book Review history, particularly ancient history Pitching to paperback columns in About the author daily newspapers DAVID GRAEBER teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He Nytimes.com (display ads) is the author of Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, Lost People: Magic and the Advertising in the Chronicle of Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Possibilities: Higher Education Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire, and Direct Action: An Ethnography. He has written for Harper’s, The Nation, The Baffler, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New Left Review. In the summer of 2011, he was one of the original organizers of Occupy Wall Street, and he coined its infamous slogan: “We are the 99 percent.” 2 MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING | MHPBOOKS.COM Spring 2013 MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING | MHPBOOKS.COM 3 NEW FINNISH GRAMMAR A NOVEL DIEGO MARANI Translated by Judith Landry With echoes of The English Patient and Out Stealing Horses, this moving tale of a man who loses not only his identity but his memory of speech has become a surprise bestseller and critical favorite in the UK Trieste, 1943: A badly wounded man in a Finnish navy uniform is found on the quay. He bears no identification other than the words “Sampo Karjalainen” stitched into the collar of his jacket. And when the man regains consciousness he has lost his memory and cannot even remember what language he speaks. But the Finnish doctor who found him believes that the man is a fellow countryman, and struggles to teach him his own language before being finally forced to send the still-fragile man home to Helsinki . where the Nazis and Russians are about to stage one of World War II’s most pitched battles, and where “Sampo” hopes ON SALE: to find his identity—before it’s too late. JANUARY 29 A sweeping saga of lost identity, memory, love and war, as well as a celebration 978-1-61219-285-7 of the fiendishly difficult and beautiful Finnish language, from one of Italy’s most $15.95 / $15.95 CAN. acclaimed new writers. LITERARY FICTION PAPERBACK Key points and quotes 1 1 208 PAGES, 5 ⁄2" × 8 ⁄4" EBOOK: 978-1-61219-286-4 + First U.S. publication, from a highly acclaimed Italian author NORTH AMERICA + First published in English by a tiny British press (Dedalus), the book became a surprise hit thanks to the handselling efforts of numerous indie booksellers Marketing and publicity who fell in love with it, and thanks to unanimous and lavish raves from leading publications First of three novels by Marani to be published by Melville House + Named “Book of the Year” by The Financial Times and The Spectator + Will appeal to anyone who has struggled to learn a new language Major critical hit in the UK: will use UK reviews to secure US feature coverage + Like The English Patient and Out Stealing Horses, this is also a WWII story, with the attendant love story, Nazis, divided loyalties—it’s a novel that can be enjoyed Large ARC campaign, to booksellers and review sections on many levels and for many reasons + New Finnish Grammar won four prestigious Italian book prizes: The Premio Email blasts to librarians and MFA programs Grinzane Cavour, the Premio Ostia Mare, the Premio Giuseppe Desi, and it was shortlisted for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Posters and shelf-talkers available Author Q&A for press kit Praise for New Finnish Grammar: • “I can’t remember when I read a more extraordinary novel, or when I was last so strongly tempted to use the word ‘genius’ of its author. Read it and brace yourself for something special.” —Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian About the author DIEGO MARANI was born in Ferrara in 1959. He works as a linguist for the European Union in Brussels. The author of six novels, he writes a weekly column for a Swiss newspaper in Europanto, a language he invented. His novels The Last of the Vostyachs and Las Adventures Des Inspector Cabillot are forthcoming from Melville House. JUDITH LANDRY is a translator of fiction French and Italian. Her translation of New Finnish Grammar has been awarded the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. 4 MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING | MHPBOOKS.COM Praise from the UK for New Finnish Grammar “It was, naturally, the flatness of the title that attracted me: it bespoke, in its quiet confidence, a deep, rich and eventful inner life. Deep and rich, did I say? That isn’t the half of it. I can’t remember when I read a more extraordinary novel, or when I was last so strongly tempted to use the word “genius” of its author.” —Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian “Marani’s miraculous novel is profound, moving, elusive and tragic.” —Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times’ Books of the Year “Don’t be put off by the unwelcoming title: this is an extraordinary book, as good as Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and with a similar mystery at its heart.” —The Spectator’s Books of the Year “We soon forget we are reading an English translation of an Italian novel. Sheer narrative vim is one reason for this. .What gives New Finnish Grammar its true interest, however, is its evocation of a place and language foreign to the author yet, to all appearances, intimately familiar.” —The Times Literary Supplement “A subtle exploration of how language shapes our sense of ourselves and the world. Fascinating.” —The Financial Times “New Finnish Grammar has a thoroughly European sensibility: intellectual, melancholy, mysterious, imbued with a sense of tragedy and history.” —The Independent on Sunday “A thoughtful, idiosyncratic book . entirely to be applauded.” —The Literary Review “I know that it is a book that I will be thrusting into people’s hands for years to come urging them to buy it, read it and spread the word. It is the least that I can do for the pleasure that it has given me.” —Euan Hirst, bookseller, Blackwell’s Bookshop, Oxford “This book is full of riches: a landscape so solidly created one can hear the ice crack, a moving examination of what makes a human being, and a restless brooding over the ideas of memory, belonging and identity. It is written in mirror-smooth prose and superbly translated.” —The Warwick Review “There is nothing easy and nothing obvious about New Finnish Grammar, a translated book about language, a story narrated by a man without an identity or a voice— a tremendously difficult thing to achieve, and here pulled off admirably.” —Daniel Hahn, Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation “A highly original, uniquely imagined work.” —Marina Warner, judge for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize MELVILLE HOUSE PUBLISHING | MHPBOOKS.COM 5 MARANOIA WEED, GREED, AND THE END OF CALIFORNIA DAVID ROSE In the spirit of Hunter Thompson’s Hell’s Angels or Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, a first-person account of a booming California business: weed When Californians voted on Proposition 19—the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act—in November 2010, many expected the state to become the first to fully legalize a Schedule I drug. After all, the pro-legalization movement had huge popular support, medical marijuana was already legal, and, well, pot was the state’s biggest agricultural money-maker.