Issue #250 October 2010 Atlas of Out of the Black Land Remote Islands Kerry GREENWOOD Pb $29.95 Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will 18th Dynasty Egypt is peaceful and prosperous under the dual Judith SCHALANSKY rule of the Pharaohs Amenhotep III C 144pp Hb $45.00 and IV, until the younger Pharaoh Tom McCarthy Schalansky was born in 1980 begins to dream new and terrifying on the wrong side of the Berlin dreams. Ptah-hotep, a young peasantnt boyboy studyingstudying Hb $39.95 Wall. The Soviets wouldn’t let anyone travel so to be a scribe, wants to live a simple life in a Nile everything she learnt about the world came from hut with his lover Kheperren. But Amenhotep IV her parents’ battered old atlas. An acclaimed appoints him as Great Royal Scribe. Surrounded Parrot and Olivierr novelist and award-winning graphic designer, by bitterly envious rivals and enemies, how long will she has spent years creating this, her own Ptah-hotep survive? The child-princess Mutnodjme in America imaginative atlas of the world’s loneliest places. sees her beautiful sister Nefertiti married off to the Peter Carey She lures us across all the oceans of the world to impotent young Amenhotep. But Nefertiti must bear Tp $32.95 50 remote islands - from St Kilda to Easter Island royal children, so the ladies of the court devise a and from Tristan da Cunha to Disappointment shocking plan. Kheperren, meanwhile, serves as Island - and proves that some of the most scribe to the daring teenage General Horemheb. memorable journeys can be taken by armchair But while the Pharaoh’s shrinking army guards the The Finkler travellers. On one page are perfect maps, on the Land of the Nile from enemies on every border, other unfold bizarre stories from the history of the a far greater menace impends. For, not content Question islands themselves. Rare animals and strange with his own devotion to one god alone, the newly- Howard Jacobsonn people abound: from marooned slaves to lonely renamed Akhnaten plans to suppress the worship Tp $32.99 scientists, lost explorers to confused lighthouse of all other gods. His horrifi ed court soon realise keepers, mutinous sailors to forgotten castaways. that the Pharaoh is not merely deformed, but Recently awarded the prize of Germany’s most irretrievably mad - and that the biggest danger to beautiful book, Die Ziet magazine describes: the Empire is in the royal palace itself. “Tenderly tracing one fi nger over the maps, we The Long Song lose ourselves in the beauty of fi ligree lines, Obama’s Wars Andrea Levy points and letters. We smell the sea, hear the Bob WOODWARD surf breaking, see icebergs and rocks, and under 464pp Hb $39.99 Tp $32.99 our feet feel fi ne sand. Anyone who opens this is Working behind the scenes for 18 likely to get as lost as Robinson Crusoe.” months, Woodward has written In a The Briefest the most intimate and sweeping portrait of Obama making Strange Room Punctuation Guide the critical decisions on the Damon Galgut Ever! Afghanistan War, the secret war in Pb $29.99 Ruth COLMAN Pakistan and the worldwide fi ght againstitt terrorism. i 88pp Pb $16.95 Drawing on internal memos, classifi ed documents, Not sure when you should start meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews a new sentence? Or whether with the key players, including Obama himself, this a comma should go before or is an original, fl y-on-the-wall account of Obama and Room after a word? Or if you should use an apostrophe his team in this time of turmoil and uncertainty. Emma Donoghue or not? Colman strips out all the jargon to make Tp $32.99 understanding punctuation easy. This concise and The Axe and the Oath practical guide sheds light on the most common Ordinary Life in questions: When do I end a sentence? Where the Middle Ages should I put commas? Should I capitalise that or Robert FOSSIER not? How do I make something a possessive? 400pp Hb $57.00 How do I treat quotes and lists? When should I What did men and women eat, use a hyphen? It’s not that hard, really. Just a few drink and wear in the Middle Ages? simple rules, presented in a simple way and you’ll How did they work, fi ght, pray be writing perfect sentences that say what you and laugh? This book reduces medievalieval life to its want to say, and what you mean to say. This little most elemental functions. It encompasses not only book started life as a self-published, spiral-bound material and social conditions, thought and belief, book which our customers would buy in lots of but the natural environment as well. Viewed in their Labour Day Mon 4 Oct fi ve for friends. 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She it is Mizzy he comes face to face with. From that running a children’s hostel, funded by her own feels more comfortable in their world than she has moment on, it is Mizzy who occupies all of Peter’s money, to save some of the ragged children who ever felt among humans - until she meets John thoughts. His fascination with him is erotic but not roam, neglected and hungry, throughout Calcutta’s Thigpen, a very married reporter who braves the exactly sexual. Without ever really falling out of myriad streets. She is beautiful and regal, and ever-present animal rights protesters outside the love with his wife, he tumbles into love with her Jerry is soon under her spell. He is beguiled by her lab to see what’s really going on inside. 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