SOLD A Sydney-sider travels through Turkey

 

SOLD

Rare book. Excellent condition. PB. 370pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia

... a portrait of a country and a people on the edge, posing eternal questions about friendship, identity and how many carpets one man can possibly need.

About the author

Brendan Shanahan is a writer based in Sydney and Las Vegas. He writes regularly for various publications internationally and is the author of The Secret Life of the Gold Coast (2004) and In Turkey I am Beautiful (2008). The latter was described as 'laugh out loud funny' by the Sydney Morning Herald, named 'one of the best travel books ever' by the Sun Herald and listed in the year's 10 best non-fiction works by ABC Radio National.

SOLD Historical fiction from Amitav Ghosh

 

SOLD

Mint condition. PB. 404pp. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Once upon a time, an Indian writer named Amitav Ghosh set out as an Indian slave, name unknown, who some seven hundred years before had traveled to the Middle East. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with twentieth-century desires and discontents. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself immersed in those of his modern Egyptian neighbors.
 
Combining shrewd observations with painstaking historical research, Ghosh serves up skeptics and holy men, merchants and sorcerers. Some of these figures are real, some only imagine, but all emerge as vividly as the characters in a great novel. In an Antique Land is an inspired work that transcends genres as deftly as it does eras, weaving an entrancing and intoxicating spell.

SOLD Asian identities in Australia

 

SOLD

PB. 323pp. $35 including postage anywhere in Australia.

The presence of Asians within Australia continues to be represented in the media as a problem for social cohesion, and a source of panic. This book explores this controversial topic in contemporary Australian society and culture. For the first time in the post-Hanson era, it looks at how Australia and Asia are already intertwined.

SOLD Memoir of one of the world's great chefs

 

SOLD

PB. 214pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia.

Sous Chef takes you behind the swinging doors of a busy restaurant kitchen, putting you in chef's shoes for an intense, high-octane twenty-four hours. Follow him from the moment he opens the kitchen in the morning, as he guides you through the meticulous preparation, the camaraderie in the hours leading up to service and the adrenalin-rush as the orders start coming in. Thrilling, addictive and bursting with mouth-watering detail, Sous Chef will leave you breathless and awestruck - walking into a restaurant will never be the same again.

About the Author

Michael Gibney began working in restaurants at the age of sixteen and assumed his first Sous Chef position at twenty-two. He moved up to Executive Sous Chef while at Tavern on the Green in New York, where he managed an eighty-person staff.

Over the course of his career, he has had the opportunity to work alongside cooks and chefs from Noma, Mugaritz, El Bulli, the Fat Duck, Alinea, Per Se, Daniel, Jean Georges, Eleven Madison Park, Le Bernardin, Bouley, Ducasse, Corton, wd~50 and Momofuku among others. Gibney holds a BFA in painting from Pratt Institute and an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. He lives in Brooklyn.

Facts and figures (and humour) for/from the toilet

 

A set of 2 essential readings for those who enjoy shithouse information. 488 and 500pp. PB. Hours of entertainment on the dunny.

$55 for both volumes including postage anywhere in Australia.

SOLD A Saudi woman gets behind the wheel to take on patriarchy

 

SOLD

PB. 295pp. $25 including postage anywhere in Australia. One more copy.

Manal al-Sharif was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. As a young girl she would burn her brother's boy band CDs in the oven because music was haram: forbidden by certain interpretations of Islamic law.

By her twenties she was a computer security engineer. But as she became older, the unequal way in which women are treated became too much to bear: she was branded a slut for talking to male colleagues at work; her school-age brother had to chaperone her on business trips and, while she kept a car in her garage, she was forbidden from driving down Saudi streets.

Her personal rebellion began the day she got behind the wheel of a car: an act that ultimately led to her arrest and imprisonment. Manal's Women2Drive campaign inspired other women to take action. Manal has been lauded by the Oslo Freedom Forum, described by Time Magazine as one of the most 100 most influential people in the world, and she was awarded the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent.

Daring to Drive is an account of Manal al-Sharif's fight for equality in an unequal society. A visceral coming-of-age tale, it is also a celebration of resilience, the power of education and the strength of female solidarity in the face of hardship.