Katrin:
The Tale of a Young Writer
Published by Crackers, Milan, 2024, 176 pp., 14 × 20 cm, English
Price: €15

Katrin. The Tale of a Young Writer is a novel by the artist Unica Zürn (Berlin 1916–Paris 1970). It was written in 1953, although it would never be published in her lifetime. This is the first translation of the tale from German into English.

Presented as a book for children, apparently written for her own daughter (named Katrin), Katrin also draws on the personal biography of Zürn herself, in terms of her relationship with her father and the city of Berlin after WWII, and her experience with people on the margins of a society characterized by great tensions.

Designed by Kiki Gordon.

#2024 #crackers #fiction #unicazurn
Continuity Girl
Naomi Pearce
Published by Unbidden Tongues, Rotterdam & Kunstverein München, München, 2022, 112 pages (b/w ill.), 12 × 16 cm, English
Price: €9

Unbidden Tongues #7: Continuity Girl unpacks the ‘forensic feminist methodology’ developed by writer, curator and administrator Naomi Pearce. Informed by research conducted in various personal archives of women administrators of artist studio spaces in London from the 1970s until now, the components of Pearce’s writing span mortuary field notes, interview transcripts, intimate first-person accounts and an auto-fictive mystery novella. These various evidentiary approaches blend to form an unconventional casebook that puts forward the complicating factors underpinning the process of writing history in the first place. In this particular title, the biographical lens focuses on Shirley Read—a photographer, writer, teacher, administrator and oral historian, whose work has been largely overlooked, until now.

#2022 #fiction #isabellesully #naomipearce #unbiddentongues
Pisti 80, Rue De Belleville
Estelle Hoy
Published by After 8 Books, Paris, 2020, 120 pages (b/w ill.), 11 × 18 cm, English
Price: €13 (Out of stock)

Estelle Hoy offers a wry exploration of the seductive allure of tropes and cliché in the art world and politics in this novella, which documents the story of Pisti, a leftist Hungarian activist and her anarchist collective based in Paris. In the course of one night in a Belleville apartment, old friends and new lovers converse about contemporary politics, activism and art, violence, and queer issues. The book is also an experiment in writing, teasing the reader with namedropping and appropriation. Whole phrases are lifted from other texts and woven seamlessly into the narrative. Based in Berlin and Paris, Hoy is a feminist writer, socially engaged artist, political activist, and academic.

#2020 #after8books #estellehoy #fiction
The Tower of Babel
Jack Spicer
Published by Talisman House,Jersey City, 1994, 170 pages, 14 × 21.3 cm, English
Price: €14

An established writer from an Eastern college returning to his former San Francisco haunts becomes entangled in a labyrinthine series of events that culminate in the sudden violent death of a respected poet. Described by Lewis Ellingham and Kevin Killian as “a satiric look at the private world of poetry gone public in the wake of the Six Gallery HOWL reading of October, 1955,” The Tower of Babel includes finely detailed sketches of the San Francisco poetry world and gay life as they existed then.

Jack Spicer (30 January, 1925–17 August, 1965) was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry. He spent most of his writing-life in San Francisco

#1994 #crime #fiction #jackspicer #kevinkillian
Sitt Marie Rose
Etel Adnan
Published by The Post-Apollo Press, Sausalito, 1982, 106 pages, 14 × 17.7 cm, English
Price: €13 (Temporarily out of stock)

Sitt Marie Rose is the story of a woman abducted by militiamen during the civil war in Lebanon. A classic of war literature, it won the France-Pays Arabes award in Paris and has been translated into six languages. Translated from the French by Georgina Kleege.

#1982 #eteladnan #fiction #postapollopress
The Boiled in Between (Special Edition)
Helen Marten
Published by Prototype Publishing, London, 2020, hand-painted bookplate, gold foil printed bookmark, 200 pages, 11.4 × 17.8 cm, English
Price: €40 (Out of stock)

The Boiled in Between is the debut novel by Turner Prize-winning artist Helen Marten, an ambitious literary work full of beauty and sorrow. It is a novel told in the action of persistence and questioning: how the rhythms of a world built upon metaphor and symbolism can collide with relationships personal and domestic.

To celebrate the publication of The Boiled in Between, 50 special edition copies have been produced which include a handmade, hand-painted bookplate, signed and numbered by the author and a gold foil-printed bookmark.

Helen Marten is an artist based in London. She was included in the 55th and 56th International Venice Biennales and in 2016 won both the Turner Prize and the inaugural Hepworth Prize for Sculpture.

#2020 #fiction #helenmarten