{"title":"Art, Performance, Self Invention","description":"\u003cp data-start=\"2129\" data-end=\"2335\"\u003eNovels about artists, performers, writers, scenes, and the making of a public or private self. Books of ambition, style, artifice, and the lives built around art.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"si-par-une-nuit-dhiver-un-voyager-by-italo-calvino","title":"'Si Par Une Nuit D'Hiver Un Voyager' by Italo Calvino","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"111\" data-end=\"583\"\u003eItalo Calvino when he's up to mischief.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"111\" data-end=\"583\"\u003eA French-language edition of Italo Calvino’s most playful and intellectually sharp novel. \u003cem data-start=\"201\" data-end=\"238\"\u003eSi par une nuit d’hiver un voyageur\u003c\/em\u003e opens with a reader trying to read a book called \u003cem data-start=\"288\" data-end=\"325\"\u003eSi par une nuit d’hiver un voyageur\u003c\/em\u003e — and immediately collapses the boundary between author, reader, and text. What follows is a sequence of interrupted novels, false starts, and shifting genres that quietly interrogate how stories work, why we read, and what authority a book ever really has.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"585\" data-end=\"910\"\u003ePhilosophical without heaviness, funny without softness, the French translation preserves the novel’s formal elegance and makes a strong case for reading Calvino outside English, where his rhythms and wit sharpen even further. Great if you're learning French.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"912\" data-end=\"1030\"\u003eA cornerstone of postmodern literature, but still a pleasure to read — curious, restless, and deliberately unfinished.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43410831376467,"sku":null,"price":8.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/c466fdaa-bf23-4939-970d-9a2670f82f5d.jpg?v=1768004758"},{"product_id":"a-painter-of-our-time-by-john-berger","title":"'A Painter of Our Time' by John Berger","description":"\u003ch4 data-end=\"556\" data-start=\"158\"\u003e*A Painter of Our Time* was John Berger’s first novel — and for a long time, his most controversial.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFramed as the recovered diary of a Hungarian painter living in postwar London, the book moves between art, exile, love, and political commitment. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn publication in 1958, the book was quietly withdrawn after accusations of communist sympathy, giving it an unusual afterlife in Berger’s career. What remains is a sharp, formally inventive work that already contains the concerns Berger would return to for decades: how artists live, how they see, and how politics enters the private act of making.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Hungarian cover art on the first hardback editions reinforces the novel’s themes of displacement and cultural inheritance, making this a particularly strong copy for readers interested in art, European modernism, and Berger’s early thinking.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43411065405523,"sku":null,"price":55.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/17414037-a339-4318-8fb2-152f128635c0.jpg?v=1768961760"},{"product_id":"the-young-and-the-evil-by-charles-henri-ford-and-parker-tyler","title":"'The Young and the Evil' by Charles Henri-Ford and Parker Tyler","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"93\" data-end=\"502\"\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eStill disruptive. Still funny. Still not interested in your feelings.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"93\" data-end=\"502\"\u003eA cult novel of queer life in 1930s New York, written in collaboration by Charles Henri-Ford and Parker Tyler. \u003cem data-start=\"216\" data-end=\"240\"\u003eThe Young and the Evil\u003c\/em\u003e follows a loose circle of artists, hustlers, writers, and drifters moving through bars, apartments, and late-night conversations. Plot is secondary to atmosphere: desire, ambition, cruelty, boredom, and self-invention collide in short scenes and sharp dialogue.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"504\" data-end=\"799\"\u003eFirst published in Paris after being deemed unpublishable in the United States, the book is frank, caustic, and deliberately unserious about respectability. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"504\" data-end=\"799\"\u003eDennis Cooper writes on it \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/denniscooperblog.com\/spotlight-on-charles-henri-ford-and-parker-tyler-the-young-and-evil-1933\/\"\u003ehere\u003c\/a\u003e. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43412201832531,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-02-11T152414.161.png?v=1770783862"},{"product_id":"biography-of-x-by-catherine-lacey","title":"'Biography of X' by Catherine Lacey","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"97\" data-end=\"478\"\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eA serious experiment on how form shapes truth; Nabokov would be proud.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"97\" data-end=\"478\"\u003eA novel presented as the biography of a reclusive, infamous artist—told by her widow, who is both insider and unreliable witness. \u003cem data-start=\"258\" data-end=\"274\"\u003eBiography of X\u003c\/em\u003e builds a parallel America through archival fragments, interviews, photographs, and speculation, using the apparatus of nonfiction to examine intimacy, power, myth-making, and the violence of public life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"480\" data-end=\"820\"\u003eThe book moves between cultural criticism and emotional reckoning, asking what it means to narrate a life when evidence is partial and unresolved.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43419257733203,"sku":null,"price":14.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/0963bbae-8031-46f0-845c-f13a23e88a02.jpg?v=1768271787"},{"product_id":"almost-a-mirror-by-kirsten-krauth","title":"'Almost A Mirror' by Kirsten Krauth","description":"\u003cp data-start=\"177\" data-end=\"713\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eMixtape logic guides this novel’s shifts in time, voice, and feeling.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"177\" data-end=\"713\"\u003eSet against the post-punk music scene of 1980s Melbourne and the everyday landscapes of the Blue Mountains, Sydney, and Castlemaine, \u003cem data-start=\"322\" data-end=\"339\"\u003eAlmost a Mirror\u003c\/em\u003e tracks the lived intensity of memory, loss, and creative energy. Kirsten Krauth circles a cast of characters — Mona, Jimmy, Beñat — whose lives are shaped as much by the music they love as by the shapes of love and grief they carry forward. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"715\" data-end=\"1277\"\u003eKrauth’s prose is attentive to the texture of youth, the stubborn pull of friendship and family, and the way creative life infuses ordinary experience with both sweetness and ruin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"715\" data-end=\"1277\"\u003eShortlisted for major Australian literary prizes and named among \u003cem data-start=\"1131\" data-end=\"1145\"\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/em\u003e’s top Australian books of 2020. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43427648471123,"sku":null,"price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/02a59767-3183-457b-8192-61bd8d52cbf6.jpg?v=1768447037"},{"product_id":"liquidation-by-ime-kertesz","title":"'Liquidation' by Imre Kertész","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"207\" data-end=\"397\"\u003e\n\u003cem data-start=\"219\" data-end=\"232\"\u003eLiquidation\u003c\/em\u003e is Imre Kertész’s final novel, written after the fall of communism and after his Nobel Prize, and it reads like a reckoning with both history and authorship itself.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"399\" data-end=\"785\"\u003eSet in post-1989 Budapest, the novel follows a circle of editors and intellectuals grappling with the suicide of a writer known only as B., who survived Auschwitz but could not survive freedom. What unfolds is not a mystery diving into moral responsibility after catastrophe, the impossibility of “closure,” and where meaning might live.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"787\" data-end=\"1104\"\u003eThe novel is steeped in the contradictions of post-totalitarian life — archives opening, truths fragmenting, lives exposed to reinterpretation. It is both intimate and philosophical. A true coda to a sensational body of work. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"787\" data-end=\"1104\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eFirst English-language hardback, published by Harvill Secker (Random House), 2006\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43428115021907,"sku":null,"price":30.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/097d84dd-c0a7-4eab-b85d-68ef6060ff78.jpg?v=1770603868"},{"product_id":"beautiful-losers-by-leonard-cohen","title":"'Beautiful Losers' by Leonard Cohen","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"246\" data-end=\"659\"\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eSex, mourning, and faith bleed into one another with one of the most famed lyricists of our time.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"246\" data-end=\"659\"\u003eSet largely in a Montreal apartment that functions as both domestic space and private hell, the book follows a bereaved narrator obsessively reconstructing love, betrayal, and loss through memory, fantasy, and blasphemy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"661\" data-end=\"1006\"\u003eA tangled triangle of two men and a woman spirals toward repetition and ruin, while the figure of Catherine Tekakwitha — a seventeenth-century Iroquois saint — hovers as an impossible source of grace. Redemption here is erotic, violent, and profoundly unstable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1008\" data-end=\"1222\"\u003eIncandescent in its language, \u003cem data-start=\"1072\" data-end=\"1090\"\u003eBeautiful Losers\u003c\/em\u003e remains one of the defining experimental novels of the 1960s. We love.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1008\" data-end=\"1222\"\u003ePriced because it's a beautiful hardback edition from Banned Books in great condition.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43448724750419,"sku":null,"price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/32cac9b0-5412-44bf-b4bd-06db1b2d0b98.jpg?v=1768948213"},{"product_id":"mantissa-by-john-fowles","title":"'Mantissa' by John Fowles","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"99\" data-end=\"584\"\u003eOkay SO this is one of my favourite books I've found because it taught me about the Taiwanese book pirating moment in the 80's \/ 90's and I looooove cult objects like this.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"99\" data-end=\"584\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eThe fascimile pages were all scanned, the Taiwanese printer in the book copyright section, and the classic flip of the surname on the spine. All flags of an unauthorised English-language edition, produced during the late-20th-century “pirate publishing” period. This was when presses in Taiwan reproduced Western literary and academic texts with their first edition or valuable edition look for regional circulation. These editions are not scarce in a traditional rare-book sense, but are increasingly collected as material artefacts of informal literary economies and Cold War-era knowledge circulation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"99\" data-end=\"584\"\u003eThe story \u003cem data-start=\"118\" data-end=\"128\"\u003eMantissa\u003c\/em\u003e is John Fowles being meta. It's a compressed, abrasive novel structured as a series of arguments between an author and his unruly muse. Drawing on classical myth, psychoanalysis, and postmodern theory, the book stages authorship itself as a contested space—gendered, performative, and unstable. It sits late in Fowles’ career, closer in spirit to Borges or Barth than his other books.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1000\" data-end=\"1135\"\u003e\u003cem data-start=\"1000\" data-end=\"1015\"\u003eEdition note:\u003c\/em\u003e Unauthorised Taiwanese paperback. Offset printed. Noticeable cover wear and spine creasing consistent with age and use.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43899844067411,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/0412e073-1820-4e00-9269-070fe831e749.jpg?v=1769385098"},{"product_id":"clear-cut-as-the-words-by-sam-lieblich","title":"'Clear-cut as the Words' by Sam Lieblich","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"83\" data-end=\"454\"\u003eThis is a sharp, intelligent poetry book that sits comfortably in the lineage of language-aware, post-conceptual writing fully confident in its tics and twists. \u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"83\" data-end=\"454\"\u003eLieblich works with fracturing form, tonal interruption, and deliberate awkwardness, but there’s a human grain underneath the formal play — moments of sincerity that feel earned rather than signposted.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"456\" data-end=\"803\"\u003ePublished by Aesthetic Calculations, \u003cem data-start=\"493\" data-end=\"517\"\u003eClear-cut as the Words\u003c\/em\u003e belongs to a contemporary Australian micro-press ecology that values risk, compression, and editorial intent over scale.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"456\" data-end=\"803\"\u003eIt’s a book for readers interested in how poetry thinks about language itself. Because, words cut, fail, repeat, and misalign, that's the beauty of it, and something poetry does best to enlighten.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44042683449427,"sku":null,"price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/9f8372c2-abbb-42b3-9f08-1290854b9b20.jpg?v=1770432599"},{"product_id":"bird-life-by-anna-smaill","title":"'Bird Life' by Anna Smaill","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"107\" data-end=\"419\"\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eLess about plot than resonance, for readers who like their speculative fiction lyrical, slow-burning, and slightly out of tune with genre expectations.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"107\" data-end=\"419\"\u003eSet in a near-future where written language has vanished and music structures time itself, the novel follows a pianist moving through a city organised by sound, rhythm, and loss.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"421\" data-end=\"809\"\u003eRather than building a hard-edged dystopia, the speculative frame is light but purposeful — a way of asking what survives when systems crumble, and what kinds of knowledge can’t be archived or enforced.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"811\" data-end=\"1017\"\u003eIt’s a novel that rewards attentiveness. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44045113065555,"sku":null,"price":8.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/6b4bbf3d-70b1-43f5-a4b1-3ff6abd8e11f.jpg?v=1770601856"},{"product_id":"seascraper-by-benjamin-wood","title":"'Seascraper' by Benjamin Wood","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"flex flex-col text-sm pb-25\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"text-token-text-primary w-full focus:outline-none [--shadow-height:45px] has-data-writing-block:pointer-events-none has-data-writing-block:-mt-(--shadow-height) has-data-writing-block:pt-(--shadow-height) [\u0026amp;:has([data-writing-block])\u0026gt;*]:pointer-events-auto scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]\" dir=\"auto\" data-turn-id=\"request-698e7b24-d0bc-83a1-a35a-a39c731de3ad-19\" data-testid=\"conversation-turn-60\" data-scroll-anchor=\"true\" data-turn=\"assistant\" tabindex=\"-1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-base my-auto mx-auto pb-10 [--thread-content-margin:--spacing(4)] @w-sm\/main:[--thread-content-margin:--spacing(6)] @w-lg\/main:[--thread-content-margin:--spacing(16)] px-(--thread-content-margin)\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"[--thread-content-max-width:40rem] @w-lg\/main:[--thread-content-max-width:48rem] mx-auto max-w-(--thread-content-max-width) flex-1 group\/turn-messages focus-visible:outline-hidden relative flex w-full min-w-0 flex-col agent-turn\" tabindex=\"-1\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"flex max-w-full flex-col grow\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-message-author-role=\"assistant\" data-message-id=\"91f1f6d2-2119-46e8-9a5b-97c593be4968\" dir=\"auto\" class=\"min-h-8 text-message relative flex w-full flex-col items-end gap-2 text-start break-words whitespace-normal [.text-message+\u0026amp;]:mt-1\" data-message-model-slug=\"gpt-5-2\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"flex w-full flex-col gap-1 empty:hidden first:pt-[1px]\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"markdown prose dark:prose-invert w-full wrap-break-word light markdown-new-styling\"\u003e\n\u003ch4 data-start=\"72\" data-end=\"490\"\u003eA timeless portrait of a young man hemmed in by circumstance, dreaming of something beyond the daily grind.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"72\" data-end=\"490\"\u003eSet in the coastal town of Longferry, Thomas Flett earns a living scraping shrimp from the grey beach with his horse and cart, carrying on his family’s old trade while harbouring private dreams of music and a life less constrained. \u003cspan class=\"\" data-state=\"closed\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"492\" data-end=\"912\"\u003eWhen a striking visitor arrives — an American with the promise of glamour and opportunity — Thomas is shaken from routine and forced to reckon with whether his dreams are delusion, possibility, or both. Poignant and atmospheric, the novel renders ordinary labour and quiet longing with lyric precision, tracking what it means to strive for fulfilment far beyond the world one knows. \u003cspan class=\"\" data-state=\"closed\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"914\" data-end=\"1130\"\u003eIt’s a mesmerising story of class, ambition, and the pull between stasis and change, carried in prose that makes the mundane feel elemental and the sea itself almost a character. \u003cspan class=\"\" data-state=\"closed\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"914\" data-end=\"1130\"\u003eCopy is brand new, signed and comes with a bookmark.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44060513304659,"sku":null,"price":22.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/e7746ed1-96c9-4177-8e7e-bcd79b0c20e4.jpg?v=1771128278"},{"product_id":"loon-lake-by-e-l-doctorow","title":"'Loon Lake' by E. L. Doctorow","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"1133\" data-end=\"1274\"\u003eA formally daring novel from E. L. Doctorow that blurs poetry and prose to examine wealth, myth and reinvention in twentieth-century America.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1276\" data-end=\"1579\"\u003eFollowing a young drifter drawn into the orbit of a reclusive industrial tycoon, \u003cem data-start=\"1357\" data-end=\"1368\"\u003eLoon Lake\u003c\/em\u003e moves between stark realism and fractured lyricism. Doctorow experiments with voice and structure, shifting between narrative and poetic fragments to expose the architecture of power beneath the American dream.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1581\" data-end=\"1756\"\u003eFor readers interested in literary fiction that interrogates class, ambition and the making of national myth — and for those drawn to novels that love a jagged edge to themselves.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44127344787539,"sku":null,"price":12.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-02-26T000642.225.png?v=1772026752"},{"product_id":"under-milk-wood-by-dylan-thomas","title":"'Under Milk Wood' by Dylan Thomas","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"55\" data-end=\"75\"\u003e“A play for voices.”\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"77\" data-end=\"303\"\u003eThe most beautiful thing about Irish and Welsh writing is that it always feels like the prose is spoken first then recorded.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"77\" data-end=\"303\"\u003eSet in a small Welsh fishing village over a single day. It follows dozens of drifting interior monologues stitched into a choral dream. The blind Captain Cat remembering lost loves. Shopkeepers, preachers, lovers, gossips — each caught mid-thought.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"305\" data-end=\"487\"\u003eThomas writes in lush, musical waves, and read aloud, it becomes what it was meant to be: breath and sound and weather. It’s sentimental in places, sure, but it’s also funny, sly, occasionally bawdy. If you love lyric prose, radio drama, or that slightly intoxicated mid-century cadence, this is essential.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44149795258451,"sku":null,"price":14.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-04-14T220020.445.png?v=1776168029"},{"product_id":"flauberts-parrot-by-julian-barnes","title":"'Flaubert's Parrot' by Julian Barnes","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"52\" data-end=\"482\"\u003eBefore Julian Barnes was more commercial, he wrote weird.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"52\" data-end=\"482\"\u003eThe 1984 novel moves between biography, criticism and fiction, circling the life of Gustave Flaubert through the obsessive curiosity of an English doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite. The premise is deceptively slight, it asks: which museum holds the “real” stuffed parrot that inspired \u003cem data-start=\"335\" data-end=\"351\"\u003eUn cœur simple\u003c\/em\u003e? But this allows the deeper questions to emerge naturally, those around authorship, fidelity, jealousy, and the impossibility of fully knowing another life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"484\" data-end=\"845\"\u003eThere's chronologies, dictionary entries, speculations, personal confessions, it entirely resists linear narrative. Barnes treats literary scholarship with both seriousness and irony, exposing the way devotion to a writer can become a mirror for one’s own private grief.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"847\" data-end=\"1077\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003eFor readers who enjoy hybrid fiction, literary history, and novels that think about how stories are made rather than simply telling one.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44157022273619,"sku":null,"price":6.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-02-28T145555.928.png?v=1772250987"},{"product_id":"masks-by-fumiko-enchi","title":"'Masks' by Fumiko Enchi","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"235\" data-end=\"653\"\u003eIn \u003cem data-start=\"238\" data-end=\"245\"\u003eMasks\u003c\/em\u003e, Fumiko Enchi draws on the aesthetics of classical Japanese Noh theatre to tell a modern story about power between men and women.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"235\" data-end=\"653\"\u003eAt the centre of the novel is Mieko Togano, an elderly poet whose calm exterior conceals a patient, unsettling intelligence. Through subtle emotional manoeuvres, she begins orchestrating the relationships between her daughter-in-law and two male academics drawn into her orbit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"655\" data-end=\"953\"\u003eEach character performs a role, concealing private motives behind social gestures — much like the masks of Noh drama that give the novel its title. Love, grief, jealousy, and vengeance move beneath the surface of polite conversation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1298\" data-end=\"1394\"\u003eElegant, unsettling, and psychologically sharp, \u003cem data-start=\"1346\" data-end=\"1353\"\u003eMasks\u003c\/em\u003e is one of Enchi’s most celebrated works.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44166918111315,"sku":null,"price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-03-04T101341.098.png?v=1772579637"},{"product_id":"breakfast-at-tiffanys-by-truman-capote","title":"'Breakfast at Tiffany's' by Truman Capote","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"93\" data-end=\"171\"\u003eA slender novella that quietly dismantles the glamour it appears to celebrate.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"173\" data-end=\"534\"\u003eSet in postwar New York, \u003cem data-start=\"198\" data-end=\"222\"\u003eBreakfast at Tiffany’s\u003c\/em\u003e follows the narrator’s fascination with Holly Golightly — a young woman drifting through Manhattan’s social circles with a mix of charm, invention, and distance. Holly is magnetic, elusive, and constantly reinventing herself, living on the edge of parties, wealthy admirers, and precarious independence.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"536\" data-end=\"831\"\u003eAs their friendship develops, the mythology surrounding Holly begins to fracture, revealing the loneliness and uncertainty beneath the performance. Capote writes with lightness and precision, capturing a city built on reinvention and the fragile identities people construct to survive inside it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"833\" data-end=\"1002\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003eStylish and melancholic, \u003cem data-start=\"879\" data-end=\"903\"\u003eBreakfast at Tiffany’s\u003c\/em\u003e remains one of Capote’s most enduring works. To be read immediately before or after watching the film. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44167023165523,"sku":null,"price":9.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitled_design_-_2026-03-04T135446.639.png?v=1772592909"},{"product_id":"all-fours-by-miranda-july","title":"'All Fours' by Miranda July","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"93\" data-end=\"231\"\u003eA sharp, strange, and unexpectedly tender novel about desire, reinvention, and the strange elasticity of a life that no longer quite fits.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"233\" data-end=\"681\"\u003eIn \u003cem data-start=\"236\" data-end=\"247\"\u003eAll Fours\u003c\/em\u003e, Miranda July follows a semi-famous artist who impulsively leaves her family to drive across the country. The journey lasts barely half an hour before she abandons the plan, checks into a roadside motel, and begins an entirely different kind of detour. What follows is a spiralling exploration of midlife, sexuality, money, marriage, and the quiet panic of realising that the structures you built your life around may no longer hold.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"683\" data-end=\"984\"\u003eJuly writes with her signature blend of awkward humour and emotional precision, turning everyday moments into scenes of surreal clarity. The novel moves between absurdity and intimacy, asking uncomfortable questions about autonomy, aging, and the small rebellions that make a life feel newly possible.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44167119601747,"sku":null,"price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-03-04T153006.538.png?v=1772598672"},{"product_id":"the-destinies-of-darcy-dancer-gentleman-by-j-p-donleavy","title":"'The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman' by J. P. 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Beneath the comic spectacle sits a familiar Donleavy theme that traces the fading of old social orders and how we have to improvise in order to survive them afterwards. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1317\" data-end=\"1485\"\u003eFor readers of Irish literary satire, the novel sits comfortably alongside the unruly tradition running from Joyce through Flann O’Brien to Donleavy’s own earlier work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44174220820563,"sku":null,"price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/ScholarsCreatingDigitalMapsofSpinoza_sEthics-2026-03-08T124612.940.png?v=1772934733"},{"product_id":"directors-cut-by-arthur-japin","title":"'Director's Cut' by Arthur Japin","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"297\" data-end=\"700\"\u003e\n\u003cem data-start=\"297\" data-end=\"313\"\u003eDirector’s Cut\u003c\/em\u003e by \u003cspan class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"whitespace-normal\"\u003eArthur Japin\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e is a historical novel drawn from the life of early silent-film star Alla Nazimova, one of the most fascinating and enigmatic figures of Hollywood’s first few decades. \u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"297\" data-end=\"700\"\u003eJapin approaches the material obliquely, using the unstable machinery of cinema itself—editing, framing, performance—as a way of exploring how identity is constructed and remembered.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"702\" data-end=\"1128\"\u003eThe novel moves between Nazimova’s rise from Russian theatre to American stardom and the aftermath of fame. The work is full of reinvention, exile, sexuality, and the uneasy line between private life and public myth. The narrative unfolds with a cool, almost cinematic precision, building a portrait of a woman who constantly rewrites herself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1130\" data-end=\"1319\"\u003eBiography, meditation, illusion, the novel sits comfortably alongside other literary fictions about cinema and performance, where the camera becomes both witness and accomplice.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44181950595155,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/ScholarsCreatingDigitalMapsofSpinoza_sEthics-2026-03-11T183723.122.png?v=1773214653"},{"product_id":"the-stories-of-eva-luna-by-isabel-allende","title":"'The Stories of Eva Luna' by Isabel Allende","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"177\" data-end=\"576\"\u003eIn \u003cem data-start=\"180\" data-end=\"205\"\u003eThe Stories of Eva Luna\u003c\/em\u003e, Isabel Allende returns to the storyteller introduced in her earlier novel \u003cem data-start=\"281\" data-end=\"291\"\u003eEva Luna\u003c\/em\u003e and lets the character’s voice unfold through a series of luminous, interconnected tales.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"177\" data-end=\"576\"\u003eSet across Latin America’s shifting landscapes—urban backstreets, jungle villages, political strongholds—the stories explore love, survival, betrayal, and the quiet stubbornness of human desire.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"578\" data-end=\"987\"\u003eAllende works here in the tradition of oral storytelling. Each piece feels like something passed across a table late at night: intimate, occasionally surreal, threaded with political memory and sensual detail. While the book carries the atmospheric qualities often associated with Latin American magical realism, its real power lies in the way ordinary lives accumulate mythic weight through narrative itself.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44181968257107,"sku":null,"price":9.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/ScholarsCreatingDigitalMapsofSpinoza_sEthics-2026-03-11T192017.949.png?v=1773217230"},{"product_id":"uncle-petros-and-goldbach-s-conjecture-by-apostolos-doxiadis","title":"'Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture' by Apostolos Doxiadis","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"209\" data-end=\"593\"\u003eA book betwixt a curious borderland made by literary fiction and mathematical obsession. \u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"209\" data-end=\"593\"\u003eThe novel follows a young narrator attempting to understand the strange life of his reclusive uncle, a once-promising mathematician who devoted decades to solving one of the great unsolved problems of number theory: Goldbach’s conjecture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"595\" data-end=\"940\"\u003eMathematics becomes a stage on which ambition, failure, pride, and solitude play out. Historical figures from twentieth-century mathematics drift through the narrative—Hardy, Ramanujan, Gödel—lending the story a quiet documentary texture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"942\" data-end=\"1157\"\u003eThe book is often recommended to mathematicians, but its real subject is the cost of a life organised around a single idea. It is about brilliance, but more precisely about the long shadow cast by the pursuit of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"942\" data-end=\"1157\"\u003eThis is an uncorrected proof of the first edition of this novel. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44183650336851,"sku":null,"price":13.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/ScholarsCreatingDigitalMapsofSpinoza_sEthics-2026-03-12T144706.832.png?v=1773287401"},{"product_id":"white-stag-of-exile-by-thomas-shapcott","title":"'White Stag of Exile' by Thomas Shapcott","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"94\" data-end=\"425\"\u003eWithin the mythic and historical come together to explore exile, displacement, and cultural memory.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"21\" data-end=\"491\"\u003eIn \u003cem data-start=\"24\" data-end=\"49\"\u003eThe White Stag of Exile\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cspan class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"whitespace-normal\"\u003eThomas Shapcott\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e turns to late nineteenth-century Budapest, weaving historical fiction around the controversial figure of \u003cspan class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"whitespace-normal\"\u003eKároly Pulszky\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e and the founding ambitions behind the \u003cspan class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"whitespace-normal\"\u003eSzépművészeti Múzeum\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e. The novel moves through the political intrigues and cultural aspirations surrounding Hungary’s emerging national institutions, where art, reputation, and power are tightly entangled.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"493\" data-end=\"887\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003eShapcott approaches the story with the sensibility of a poet as much as a novelist, blending historical detail with a more atmospheric, symbolic mode of storytelling. The white stag—drawn from Central European folklore—emerges as a recurring motif of pursuit and exile, echoing the personal and cultural dislocations experienced by those caught between ambition, scandal, and national identity.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44183680876627,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/ScholarsCreatingDigitalMapsofSpinoza_sEthics-2026-03-12T160209.332.png?v=1773291761"},{"product_id":"canone-inverso-by-paolo-maurensig","title":"'Canone Inverso' by Paolo Maurensig","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"11\" data-end=\"499\"\u003eMusic, obsession, and memory.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"11\" data-end=\"499\"\u003eThe story unfolds through the recollections of a violinist attempting to piece together the life of a mysterious virtuoso whose talent—and disappearance—left a deep mark on those who heard him play. Like the musical form referenced in the title, the narrative moves in mirrored passages and reversals, gradually revealing the emotional architecture behind a life shaped by art.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"501\" data-end=\"796\"\u003eSet against the cultural upheavals of twentieth-century Europe, the novel blends historical atmosphere with psychological inquiry. Maurensig treats music not simply as a language of inheritance and rivalry, where devotion to craft can become indistinguishable from possession.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"798\" data-end=\"1054\"\u003eOriginally published in Italian in 1996, \u003cem data-start=\"839\" data-end=\"855\"\u003eCanone Inverso\u003c\/em\u003e became Maurensig’s best-known work and was later adapted into a film. It sits comfortably alongside other European literary novels concerned with the darker interior worlds of musicians and artists.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"798\" data-end=\"1054\"\u003eFirst English translation, first edition hardback.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44183728062547,"sku":null,"price":16.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/ScholarsCreatingDigitalMapsofSpinoza_sEthics-2026-03-12T170033.483.png?v=1773295254"},{"product_id":"the-service-of-clouds-by-delia-falconer","title":"'The Service of Clouds' by Delia Falconer","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"147\" data-end=\"728\"\u003eSet in the Blue Mountains in the early twentieth century, this is a historical novel that shows the area in a profound way, all through atmosphere, longing, and place.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"147\" data-end=\"728\"\u003eEureka Jones, a young pharmacist’s assistant, becomes absorbed by Harry Kitchings, an outsider obsessed with photographing clouds, and the book follows that attachment through illness, desire, local myth, and the slow changes of a mountain town. Falconer is interested in how landscapes hold feeling, fantasy, and projection; the Blue Mountains here are not backdrop so much as weather changes. \u003cspan class=\"\" data-state=\"closed\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"730\" data-end=\"1105\"\u003eThis is the sort of Australian literary novel that sits comfortably beside late-90s historical fiction but feels stranger and more inward than the usual prestige fare. It was shortlisted for several major Australian prizes, which helps its standing, but it is still primarily a reader’s copy rather than a collectible one in this format.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44259399073875,"sku":null,"price":12.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-29T134657.885.png?v=1780026436"},{"product_id":"doin-wildcat-a-novel-koori-script-by-mudrooroo","title":"'Doin Wildcat: A Novel Koori Script' by Mudrooroo","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"111\" data-end=\"717\"\u003eA strange hybrid object: part novel, part screenplay, part meta-fictional performance about image, authorship, adaptation, and Aboriginal representation.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"111\" data-end=\"717\"\u003eFramed around the making — or unmaking — of a film called \u003cem data-start=\"323\" data-end=\"340\"\u003eWildcat Falling\u003c\/em\u003e, it moves through industry politics, identity, self-mythology, and the cultural machine that wants to package it. Even before the later controversies around Mudrooroo’s identity, the book already reads as unstable in an interesting way: theatrical, self-conscious, and wary of every authority that tries to fix meaning in place.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"719\" data-end=\"1173\"\u003eIt sits at an odd intersection of Indigenous literature, film culture, textual experiment, and late twentieth-century arguments about authenticity and mediation. As an object it also has real period presence: small-press Australian hardback, distinctive jacket, and a title that feels rooted in a very specific local cultural moment without becoming inert.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"109\"\u003eHyland House hardback, \u003cstrong data-start=\"85\" data-end=\"108\"\u003efirst edition, 1988\u003c\/strong\u003e. Near fine condition.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44268700106835,"sku":null,"price":28.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-03-23T121108.038.png?v=1774228280"},{"product_id":"le-seuil-le-sable-poesies-completes-1943-1988-by-edmond-jabes-french","title":"'Le Seuil Le Sable: Poésies complètes 1943–1988' by Edmond Jabès (French)","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"1905\" data-end=\"2342\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"\" data-state=\"closed\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"\" data-state=\"closed\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003eEdmond Jabès writes as though language has already been broken by exile and must now be rebuilt from ash, silence, interruption, and doubt. \u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1905\" data-end=\"2342\"\u003e\u003cem data-start=\"3100\" data-end=\"3119\"\u003eLe Seuil Le Sable\u003c\/em\u003e gathers the poems across four decades, showing the full arc of a body of work that moves between lyric utterance and philosophical fracture, always preoccupied with absence, naming, Judaism, wandering, and the impossible task of writing after loss.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"3370\" data-end=\"3763\"\u003eThese are not poems that offer themselves up easily. 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Pools become existential crises, social etiquette becomes impossible choreography, and basic functioning is treated as a sort of cursed instructional manual. Still very funny, still painfully accurate, and still perfect for anyone with an affection for old internet sensibility before everything got flattened into content.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44283035517011,"sku":null,"price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-03-29T104818.197_5f2995f0-2c61-420d-b244-cdad6b48f4cd.png?v=1774742309"},{"product_id":"slowness-by-milan-kundera-1","title":"'Slowness' by Milan Kundera","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"218\" data-end=\"575\"\u003eKundera’s first novel written in French is a small, sly book about haste, memory, vanity, desire, set over the course of a single night.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"218\" data-end=\"575\"\u003e\u003cem data-start=\"412\" data-end=\"422\"\u003eSlowness\u003c\/em\u003e moves between contemporary characters at a château-hotel and an eighteenth-century tale of seduction, letting the two worlds mirror and mock each other. It’s one of his lightest books in scale and one of his sharpest in tone: elegant, amused, faintly cruel, and completely preoccupied with what speed does to intimacy, thought, and selfhood.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"218\" data-end=\"575\"\u003eA very good Kundera for people who like their philosophy dressed as flirtation, farce, and social observation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFaber \u0026amp; Faber hardback, first UK edition, 1996. Translated by Linda Asher from the French. Originally published in France as \u003cem data-start=\"175\" data-end=\"187\"\u003eLa Lenteur\u003c\/em\u003e. In great condition, little dust jacket wear but otherwise great. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44283071529043,"sku":null,"price":25.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-03-29T113428.979.png?v=1774744481"},{"product_id":"almost-at-the-end-by-yevgeny-yevtushenko","title":"'Almost at the End' by Yevgeny Yevtushenko","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"407\" data-end=\"790\"\u003eA late collection by one of the Soviet Union’s most internationally visible poets, these poems and prose-poems take in tyranny, censorship, poverty, anti-Semitism, war memory, love, and modern disillusion without ever quite surrendering their appetite for life. \u003cspan class=\"\" data-state=\"closed\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"792\" data-end=\"1479\"\u003eYevtushenko’s can sound intimate and theatrical at once, a poet of conscience who also knew exactly what it meant to be famous, compromised, watched, and still trying to speak. It has that late-Cold War, end-of-empire electricity — restless, self-aware, political, sometimes messy in the interesting way rather than the bad way. Less marble monument than live wire.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"792\" data-end=\"1479\"\u003eYevtushenko’s reputation in the West was shaped by poems like “Babi Yar” and by his broader role as a dissenting Soviet literary celebrity, and this collection lands in that afterglow, when the public voice has aged but not gone quiet.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, first printing. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1987. Hardback with dust jacket in near fine condition. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis, Albert C. Todd, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Foreword by Harrison E. Salisbury. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44283082145875,"sku":null,"price":33.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-03-29T114418.859.png?v=1774745070"},{"product_id":"monkeys-mask-by-dorothy-porter","title":"'Monkey's Mask' by Dorothy Porter","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"876\" data-end=\"1327\"\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eStill one of the strangest and most successful crossover books in contemporary Australian writing.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"876\" data-end=\"1327\"\u003ePart detective novel, part lesbian noir, part poetry sequence, it follows private investigator Jill Fitzpatrick as she takes on the case of a missing young woman and gets pulled into a world of obsession, sex, performance, and violence. Porter writes the whole thing in verse, but it moves with the momentum of a thriller — sharp, dirty, funny, and unnervingly elegant.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1329\" data-end=\"1693\"\u003eThe poetry is not decorative; it is the engine. Porter takes noir’s usual machinery — desire, risk, glamour, corruption — and rewires it through a specifically Australian, specifically queer sensibility. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1329\" data-end=\"1693\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHyland House, South Melbourne, first edition, 1994; this copy is the 1994 reprint. Paperback original. An early signed Australian copy of Porter’s breakthrough verse novel. The book won the Age Book of the Year for Poetry in 1994, along with the National Book Council Award for Poetry and Braille Book of the Year. In great condition.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44325192564819,"sku":null,"price":95.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-03-30T165216.906.png?v=1774849957"},{"product_id":"bad-art-mother-by-edwina-preston","title":"'Bad Art Mother' by Edwina Preston","description":"\u003ch4\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cem data-start=\"40\" data-end=\"56\"\u003eBad Art Mother\u003c\/em\u003e centres on a young writer, Isa, trying to assemble a life—creative, maternal, sexual—without collapsing under the weight of expectation that each role be templated at all times.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'San Francisco', 'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eThe novel moves between past and present, tracing her early artistic ambitions, her relationship with her partner, and the disorienting arrival of motherhood. What gives the book its tension is the refusal to resolve those fractures into something redemptive; Preston lets Isa remain contradictory—ambitious and resentful, attentive and absent, loving and estranged—while interrogating the idea that women, particularly artists, are expected to metabolise these contradictions quietly. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'San Francisco', 'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eIt’s as much about the politics of attention and labour as it is about one life, asking what gets sacrificed, what gets deferred, and who gets to remain intact. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'San Francisco', 'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eThis is the 2023 Wakefield Press paperback reprint (first published 2022), in very good condition with only minor shelf wear and a clean interior.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44368228745299,"sku":null,"price":16.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-04-04T133751.887.png?v=1775270297"},{"product_id":"cleanness-by-garth-greenwell","title":"'Cleanness' by Garth Greenwell","description":"\u003ch4\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cem data-start=\"40\" data-end=\"51\"\u003eCleanness\u003c\/em\u003e is structured as a series of interlinked stories following an unnamed American teacher living in Sofia, Bulgaria, moving through encounters that are at once erotic, transactional, yet tender.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe novel is one made up of many moments of intimacy, power imbalance, misunderstanding—where language, class, and desire continually misalign. The title gestures toward a kind of moral or emotional clarity that never quite arrives; instead, the book sits in the ambiguity of connection, especially queer connection shaped by economics, geography, and the residue of post-socialist life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat’s striking is the precision of attention—sex is neither sensationalised nor abstracted, but rendered as a site where vulnerability and negotiation coexist in real time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis is the 2021 Picador paperback (first UK edition 2020), in good condition with light shelf wear and some minor surface marking to the cover, otherwise clean throughout.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44368270753875,"sku":null,"price":16.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-04-04T134918.940.png?v=1775270983"},{"product_id":"a-decadent-woman-by-georges-de-peyrebrune","title":"'A Decadent Woman' by Georges de Peyrebrune","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"419\"\u003eA late-19th-century French novel of decadence and social drift, centred on a woman whose refusal—or inability—to align with conventional expectations becomes both her defining trait and her undoing.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"419\"\u003ePeyrebrune traces her movements through a series of encounters that expose the constraints placed on female autonomy, desire, and reputation, without ever fully stabilising her as either victim or transgressor.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"421\" data-end=\"966\"\u003eGeorges de Peyrebrune—the pen name of Mathilde-Marie Georgina Élisabeth de Peyrebrune—was a prolific French writer associated with naturalist and realist circles, though her work often sits slightly outside them. Writing at a time when women’s authorship was both visible and constrained, she frequently returned to questions of female independence, social judgment, and the limits imposed on women’s lives. Much of her work fell out of circulation in the 20th century and has only recently been recovered through small press reissues like Snuggly.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"421\" data-end=\"966\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eSnuggly Books paperback edition, 2021, translated and introduced by Brian Stableford. Clean copy with minor cover wear. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44409400426579,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-04-06T120251.524.png?v=1775441335"},{"product_id":"second-place-by-rachel-cusk","title":"'Second Place' by Rachel Cusk","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"595\" data-end=\"1012\"\u003eA woman arrives at a coastal house owned by a famous artist, invited—or perhaps drawn—into a situation that quickly reveals itself as unstable.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"595\" data-end=\"1012\"\u003eAround her: the artist, his volatile partner, and the uneasy triangulation of attention, control, and interpretation. What unfolds isn’t quite plot so much as a series of shifting positions—who is observing, who is being shaped, and who gets to decide what any of it means.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1014\" data-end=\"1392\"\u003ePublished in 2021, \u003cem data-start=\"1033\" data-end=\"1047\"\u003eSecond Place\u003c\/em\u003e continues \u003cspan class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"whitespace-normal\"\u003eRachel Cusk\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e’s move away from conventional narrative into something cooler and more interrogative. Loosely inspired by Mabel Dodge Luhan’s memoir \u003cem data-start=\"1229\" data-end=\"1246\"\u003eLorenzo in Taos\u003c\/em\u003e, the novel reworks that dynamic—artist and patron, host and intruder—into a study of authority, authorship, and the subtle violence of being seen.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1907\" data-end=\"1937\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFaber \u0026amp; Faber paperback, 2021. Very good condition: light shelf wear only; clean covers with minimal signs of handling; binding firm; pages clean and unmarked.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44493221724243,"sku":null,"price":19.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-04-14T163130.592.png?v=1776148301"},{"product_id":"what-i-loved-by-siri-hustvedt","title":"'What I Loved' by Siri Hustvedt","description":"\u003ch4\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'San Francisco', 'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eA novel about friendship, art, and grief. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'San Francisco', 'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif; font-size: 0.875rem;\"\u003eWhen Leo, a writer, forms an intense bond with the painter Bill, their lives begin to orbit each other—families, work, and ways of seeing gradually entangled. What begins as admiration and intimacy shifts into something more fragile, then something harder to name.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"676\" data-end=\"992\"\u003eHustvedt writes like she’s thinking through the body. Perception, memory, desire—they don’t sit still long enough to be explained, only traced as they move. The result is a novel that feels precise but unsettled, where looking at art becomes indistinguishable from looking at people, and neither can be done cleanly.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1209\" data-end=\"1334\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSceptre paperback edition. First published 2003 by Hodder and Stoughton; this is a later printing (full number line present). Good condition. Noticeable creasing to covers and spine, with general shelf wear; binding remains solid; interior clean and unmarked. A well-read but intact copy.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44501554724947,"sku":null,"price":14.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-04-17T163739.786.png?v=1776407884"},{"product_id":"the-court-dancer-by-kyong-sook-shin","title":"'The Court Dancer' by Kyong-Sook Shin","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"194\" data-end=\"569\"\u003eA French diplomat arrives in late Joseon Korea and sees something he can’t quite recover from: Yi Jin performing the Dance of the Spring Oriole.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"194\" data-end=\"569\"\u003eWith the Emperor’s permission, he takes her with him to Paris—out of the court, out of the system that shaped her, into another that doesn’t quite know what to do with her either.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"571\" data-end=\"901\"\u003eIn Belle Époque Paris, Yi Jin gains a kind of freedom. Translating Korean literature, moving through salons, building a life that looks, from the outside, like autonomy. But the terms of that freedom are unstable, she remains caught between languages, between roles, between what has been taken from her and what she may not return to.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"903\" data-end=\"1216\"\u003eThe novel tracks that tension alongside the slow unravelling of the Joseon court, ending in the assassination of the last empress—a historical rupture that echoes through Yi Jin’s life at a distance. Shin writes this almost like ballet, light stepped but dramatic, making for a story about love that is also about displacement, and about the cost of being moved from one world into another.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1436\" data-end=\"1454\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePicador paperback. Very good condition. A little creasing to covers and light edge wear. Internally clean and firm.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44507088257107,"sku":null,"price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-04-19T125142.704.png?v=1776567115"},{"product_id":"gyroscope-life-by-zhou-yudong-chinese","title":"'Gyroscope Life' by Zhou Yudong (Chinese)","description":"\u003ch4\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eChinese-language edition of \u003cem data-start=\"1881\" data-end=\"1897\"\u003eGyroscope Life\u003c\/em\u003e (《陀螺人生》), likely a mid-20th-century or later reprint of earlier work, attributed to Zhou Yudong.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book appears to be a collection of stories or vignettes, structured around different stages of life and social experience, and is illustrated throughout with stark, woodcut-style images depicting labour, movement, and everyday scenes. It is a beautiful copy, has something about it that is very magnetic, hence why I picked it up.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor I'm writing this without having it translated, for me it reads as an object first: a piece of print culture built on texture, rhythm, and visual narrative as much as text. A quiet, self-contained world you have to enter sideways.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you have notes on this, please let me know so I can update the description! \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44507201994835,"sku":null,"price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Untitleddesign-2026-04-19T134113.830.png?v=1776570126"},{"product_id":"the-hours-by-michael-cunningham","title":"'The Hours' by Michael Cunningham","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"36\" data-end=\"604\"\u003eAcross three separate timelines, Cunningham follows the lives of women connected—directly and indirectly—to \u003cem data-start=\"144\" data-end=\"158\"\u003eMrs Dalloway\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"36\" data-end=\"604\"\u003eIn 1920s England, Virginia Woolf begins writing the novel while navigating the constraints of illness and domestic life. Decades later in Los Angeles, a housewife reads it and finds her own life quietly destabilised. In 1990s New York, Clarissa Vaughan moves through a single day preparing for a party, her routines echoing and refracting Woolf’s original structure. The stories unfold in parallel, touching without melting into one another.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"606\" data-end=\"1141\"\u003eThe novel moves with a measured, interior rhythm, attentive to small gestures and shifts in perception. Cunningham borrows Woolf’s temporal compression—events contained within the span of a day—but opens it outward, allowing each narrative to hold its own weight. There’s a careful balance between homage and reworking: the text acknowledges its source without becoming subordinate to it. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1143\" data-end=\"1578\"\u003ePublished in 1998, \u003cem data-start=\"1162\" data-end=\"1173\"\u003eThe Hours\u003c\/em\u003e sits within a late-20th-century return to modernist form, re-engaging Woolf’s techniques through a contemporary lens. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN\/Faulkner Award, and later reached a wider audience through its film adaptation. What remains most intact across versions is the novel’s attention to interiority—it's mesmerising really.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1143\" data-end=\"1578\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePaperback, Fourth Estate (1999). Good condition—some creasing and light wear to covers, pages clean and binding sound.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44524559925331,"sku":null,"price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext_6.png?v=1776992986"},{"product_id":"the-deer-park-by-norman-mailer","title":"'The Deer Park' by Norman Mailer","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"39\" data-end=\"547\"\u003eNorman Mailer’s Hollywood novel.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"39\" data-end=\"547\"\u003ePower, ambition, sex, vanity, and performance. Set in a desert resort town populated by washed-up actors, producers, publicists, ex-military men, aspiring actresses, and professional charm merchants, Mailer gives us his fevered autopsy of postwar American masculinity. Everybody is selling themselves. Everybody is performing certainty. Everybody is tired.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"549\" data-end=\"1259\"\u003eMailer was noticing the 50's fame and it's stain of contamination, intimacy as transaction, politics as social theatre, personality as labour. The dialogue has that hyper-alert Mailer quality where every conversation feels half seduction, half dominance ritual. A lot of casual cruelty, particularly in the way women are discussed as symbolic terrain rather than people — becomes part of the book’s pathology rather than simply incidental period detail. Mailer is both implicated in and dissecting the world he’s writing about, which is why the book remains fascinating even when it becomes ugly, self-mythologising, or swollen with masculine performance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1261\" data-end=\"1717\"\u003ePre-New Journalism Mailer here was already circling the themes he’d later weaponise more directly: spectacle, ego, American decay, sexuality, power, celebrity, political paranoia. There’s a reason Joan Didion, Bret Easton Ellis, Eve Babitz, DeLillo, and the whole ecosystem of LA cultural fiction feel downstream from books like this, even when reacting against them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1984\" data-end=\"2155\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1991 Paladin paperback edition of Mailer’s 1957 novel, with Norman Mailer’s later preface included. Clean copy with light shelf wear and age toning typical of the edition.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44599972724819,"sku":null,"price":14.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-12T143940.364.png?v=1778560793"},{"product_id":"sweatshop-women-volume-1-edited-by-winnie-dunn","title":"'Sweatshop Women: Volume 1\" edited by Winnie Dunn","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"qMYqUG_convSearchResultHighlightRoot\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\" data-turn-id-container=\"request-69eabb59-4cc8-839c-8c97-e04927ef0509-5\" data-is-intersecting=\"true\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relative w-full overflow-visible\"\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"text-token-text-primary w-full focus:outline-none has-data-writing-block:pointer-events-none [\u0026amp;:has([data-writing-block])\u0026gt;*]:pointer-events-auto R6Vx5W_threadScrollVars scroll-mb-[calc(var(--scroll-root-safe-area-inset-bottom,0px)+var(--thread-response-height))] scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]\" dir=\"auto\" data-turn-id=\"request-69eabb59-4cc8-839c-8c97-e04927ef0509-5\" data-turn-id-container=\"request-69eabb59-4cc8-839c-8c97-e04927ef0509-5\" data-testid=\"conversation-turn-302\" data-scroll-anchor=\"false\" data-turn=\"assistant\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-base my-auto mx-auto pb-10 [--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-xs,calc(var(--spacing)*4))] @w-sm\/main:[--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-sm,calc(var(--spacing)*6))] @w-lg\/main:[--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-lg,calc(var(--spacing)*16))] px-(--thread-content-margin)\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"[--thread-content-max-width:40rem] @w-lg\/main:[--thread-content-max-width:48rem] mx-auto max-w-(--thread-content-max-width) flex-1 group\/turn-messages focus-visible:outline-hidden relative flex w-full min-w-0 flex-col agent-turn\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"flex max-w-full flex-col gap-4 grow\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-message-author-role=\"assistant\" data-message-id=\"f049461c-6a34-4ac5-8fbb-f31717834ad7\" dir=\"auto\" data-message-model-slug=\"gpt-5-5\" class=\"min-h-8 text-message relative flex w-full flex-col items-end gap-2 text-start break-words whitespace-normal outline-none keyboard-focused:focus-ring [.text-message+\u0026amp;]:mt-1\" data-turn-start-message=\"true\" tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"flex w-full flex-col gap-1 empty:hidden\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"markdown prose dark:prose-invert wrap-break-word w-full light markdown-new-styling\"\u003e\n\u003ch4 data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"492\"\u003e\n\u003cem data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"29\"\u003eSweatshop Women: Volume One\u003c\/em\u003e gathers prose and poetry from twenty-five women writers from Indigenous, migrant and refugee backgrounds, building a collective portrait of Western Sydney.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"492\"\u003eAcross stories of family, faith, sexuality, class, migration, language and suburban survival, the anthology moves between tenderness, vulgarity, humour, shame and memory without forcing its contributors into a single literary register or political posture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"494\" data-end=\"902\"\u003eEdited by Winnie Dunn with a foreword by Michelle Law, the collection captures the density of contemporary Australian life often flattened by mainstream publishing into either “multiculturalism” or pathology. What emerges instead is a textured chorus of voices: sharp, funny, restrained, angry, intimate and socially precise, documenting the emotional architecture of outer-suburban Australia in real time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"915\" data-end=\"1134\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2019 paperback edition published by Sweatshop Western Sydney. Very good condition with light shelf wear; a clean, contemporary small-press title from one of Australia’s most important independent literary organisations.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"mt-3 w-full empty:hidden\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44633144721491,"sku":null,"price":14.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-18T141153.916.png?v=1779077528"},{"product_id":"the-rivers-of-china-by-alma-de-groen","title":"'The Rivers of China' by Alma De Groen","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"592\"\u003eAn Australian play that feels perpetually under-discussed despite helping to shape the intellectual and feminist theatre landscape around it. \u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"592\"\u003eFirst staged in the late 1980s, the play folds together psychiatric realism, literary haunting and metafiction through a conversation between contemporary women and the spectral presence of Katherine Mansfield. Gurdjieff drifts through it too — mysticism, manipulation and artistic authority becoming tangled together in questions of autonomy, genius and psychological control.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"594\" data-end=\"1163\"\u003eIt is theatrical, but deeply essayistic beneath the surface: concerned with who gets to narrate suffering, what happens when intellectual women are institutionalised as “mad,” and how artistic identity can become both liberation and trap. Reading it now, it feels strangely adjacent to later autofiction and feminist experimental writing, especially in its collapsing of biography, performance and interior fracture. The dialogue moves with the compressed intensity of poetry rather than realism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1176\" data-end=\"1439\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCurrency Press edition reprinted 2005 of Alma De Groen’s 1988 play. Very good second-hand condition with clean interior and light shelf wear only; binding tight and uncreased. A strong reading copy of an increasingly hard-to-find Australian feminist theatre text.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44633260982355,"sku":null,"price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-18T143245.640.png?v=1779078785"},{"product_id":"selected-poems-1957-1981-by-ted-hughes","title":"'Selected Poems: 1957 - 1981' by Ted Hughes","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"qMYqUG_convSearchResultHighlightRoot\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\" data-turn-id-container=\"request-69eabb59-4cc8-839c-8c97-e04927ef0509-12\" data-is-intersecting=\"true\"\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"text-token-text-primary w-full focus:outline-none has-data-writing-block:pointer-events-none [\u0026amp;:has([data-writing-block])\u0026gt;*]:pointer-events-auto R6Vx5W_threadScrollVars scroll-mb-[calc(var(--scroll-root-safe-area-inset-bottom,0px)+var(--thread-response-height))] scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]\" dir=\"auto\" data-turn-id=\"request-69eabb59-4cc8-839c-8c97-e04927ef0509-12\" data-turn-id-container=\"request-69eabb59-4cc8-839c-8c97-e04927ef0509-12\" data-testid=\"conversation-turn-340\" data-scroll-anchor=\"false\" data-turn=\"assistant\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-base my-auto mx-auto pb-10 [--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-xs,calc(var(--spacing)*4))] @w-sm\/main:[--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-sm,calc(var(--spacing)*6))] @w-lg\/main:[--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-lg,calc(var(--spacing)*16))] px-(--thread-content-margin)\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"[--thread-content-max-width:40rem] @w-lg\/main:[--thread-content-max-width:48rem] mx-auto max-w-(--thread-content-max-width) flex-1 group\/turn-messages focus-visible:outline-hidden relative flex w-full min-w-0 flex-col agent-turn\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"flex max-w-full flex-col gap-4 grow\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-message-author-role=\"assistant\" data-message-id=\"ef3cdd7b-9385-4d1d-b934-d1af7feec41f\" dir=\"auto\" data-message-model-slug=\"gpt-5-5\" class=\"min-h-8 text-message relative flex w-full flex-col items-end gap-2 text-start break-words whitespace-normal outline-none keyboard-focused:focus-ring [.text-message+\u0026amp;]:mt-1\" data-turn-start-message=\"true\" tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"flex w-full flex-col gap-1 empty:hidden\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"markdown prose dark:prose-invert wrap-break-word w-full light markdown-new-styling\"\u003e\n\u003ch4 data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"486\"\u003eLanguage dragged out of weather, mud, fur, blood.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"486\"\u003eAcross these poems, animals snarl with human intelligence, landscapes pulse with memory, and moments of stillness feel charged with threat or revelation. In Hughes’ world; the hawk is not merely a hawk, nor the fox merely a fox. Everything arrives with a physical and mythic force that seems older than civilisation itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"488\" data-end=\"951\"\u003eThis selection spans some of Hughes’ most celebrated early and middle-period work, including \u003cem data-start=\"581\" data-end=\"598\"\u003eThe Thought-Fox\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem data-start=\"600\" data-end=\"615\"\u003eHawk Roosting\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem data-start=\"617\" data-end=\"628\"\u003eCrow Hill\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem data-start=\"630\" data-end=\"645\"\u003eView of a Pig\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem data-start=\"650\" data-end=\"662\"\u003eThe Horses\u003c\/em\u003e. Read together, they form a kind of psychic ecology. There are poems of brutality, silence, eroticism, survival and strange transcendence. Hughes remains one of the few poets capable of making nature feel utterly alive and indifferent to human moral comfort.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"953\" data-end=\"1155\"\u003eLean, muscular and often terrifyingly precise, they occupy that rare space where lyric beauty and elemental violence become inseparable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1166\" data-end=\"1447\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst Faber hardback edition, 1982, with original dust jacket. Jacket remains bright and well-preserved with only minor shelf wear and light edge rubbing. Internally clean throughout with strong binding. A handsome early collected Hughes edition spanning twenty-four years of work.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44646717849683,"sku":null,"price":70.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-22T083837.164.png?v=1779403141"},{"product_id":"life-after-god-by-douglas-coupland","title":"'Life After God' by Douglas Coupland","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"305\"\u003eVery 1990s in the best and most spiritually anaemic way: suburban childhood, fluorescent adulthood, pop-cultural debris, emotional numbness and soft apocalypse.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"305\"\u003eIt's about growing up after religion has left the building but not taken its shadows with it. It is structured as a series of short, drifting pieces rather than a conventional novel — part confession, part cultural diagnosis, part sad little weather system. Coupland is writing about people who have every surface available to them and no convincing metaphysical floor underneath. Pool water, malls, cars, childhood animals, office life, sex, grief, God-shaped absence. The whole thing has that thin Gen X ache: irony trying very hard not to become prayer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"780\" data-end=\"921\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePocket Books paperback edition. Cover clean with light handling wear; pencil marginalia throughout. Solid reading copy.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44656185835603,"sku":null,"price":14.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-25T164900.710.png?v=1779691774"},{"product_id":"mad-honey-by-bc-oost","title":"'mad honey' by BC Oost","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"477\"\u003eA small-press poetry object with a pleasingly feral internal logic.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"477\"\u003eIt explores insects, sex, factories, queer violence, body parts, saints, circuitry, product lines, temple walls, nerve signals, and the ugly little economies that sit inside pleasure. The poems move across the page as much as along it, using spacing, fracture, drift, curved text and visual arrangement to make reading feel less like receiving a message than walking through a damaged sensorium.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"479\" data-end=\"916\"\u003eThink erotic language under a microscope: desire broken into anatomy, voltage, slang, commodity, residue. Strange, local, tactile, formally restless, with enough venom in the honey to keep the whole thing from becoming decorative.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1071\" data-end=\"1268\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e2018 paperback published by Hit \u0026amp; Miss Productions, University of Melbourne. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Light handling wear to cover; pages clean and bright. Solid small-press copy.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44656244621395,"sku":null,"price":16.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-25T171931.706.png?v=1779693587"},{"product_id":"the-last-weynfeldt-by-martin-suter","title":"'The Last Weynfeldt' by Martin Suter","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"384\"\u003eMartin Suter’s \u003cem data-start=\"15\" data-end=\"35\"\u003eThe Last Weynfeldt\u003c\/em\u003e is a Swiss novel of money, taste, loneliness and beautifully arranged deception.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"384\"\u003eAdrian Weynfeldt is an ageing art expert, precise and insulated, living among objects whose value is easier to assess than people. Then a younger woman appears at the edge of his carefully curated life, and the whole polished structure begins to acquire fingerprints.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"386\" data-end=\"835\"\u003eSuter is good at the elegant social trap: galleries, collectors, inherited wealth, desire, professional discretion. The book moves like a literary thriller, but its real interest is atmosphere — the erotic charge of surfaces, the loneliness of connoisseurship, and the soft violence of charm when money is nearby.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"837\" data-end=\"1017\"\u003eA clean, wry novel for readers who like art-world fiction, European restraint, quiet manipulation, and protagonists whose emotional lives have been stored under museum-grade glass.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1028\" data-end=\"1215\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNew Vessel Press paperback, 2016; first published in German in 2008 as \u003cem data-start=\"1099\" data-end=\"1121\"\u003eDer letzte Weynfeldt\u003c\/em\u003e. Translated by Steph Morris. Light cover and edge wear; pages clean and readable. Solid copy.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44656269000787,"sku":null,"price":16.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-25T174430.451.png?v=1779695086"},{"product_id":"collected-poems-by-margaret-scott","title":"'Collected Poems' by Margaret Scott","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"486\"\u003eMargaret Scott’s \u003cem data-start=\"17\" data-end=\"34\"\u003eCollected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e gathers work from a poet of migration, weather, illness, memory and Tasmanian landscape.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"486\"\u003eScott was British-born and became a major Tasmanian literary figure; the poems carry that double sense of arrival and estrangement, attentive to place without turning landscape into postcard scenery. Houses, gardens, snow, hospitals, children, ghosts, mothers, migration, language and aging recur as charged surfaces. They are keepers of lucid restraint, grief is held in the hand rather than waved around, beauty allowed to stay slightly cold, image doing the thinking before explanation wakes up and peers in.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"877\" data-end=\"1012\"\u003eA strong local poetry object. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1023\" data-end=\"1306\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMontpelier Press paperback, 2000. Collected poems by Margaret Scott; published in Tasmania with support from Arts Tasmania and the Australia Council. Light cover and edge wear visible; pages appear clean and readable. Solid copy of a relatively uncommon Australian poetry collection.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44657793040467,"sku":null,"price":16.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-26T101438.398.png?v=1779754492"},{"product_id":"nobody-belongs-here-more-than-you-by-miranda-july","title":"'Nobody Belongs Here More Than You' by Miranda July","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"qMYqUG_convSearchResultHighlightRoot\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\" data-turn-id-container=\"request-6a13ebf1-e3bc-83ec-8e04-eb5854921a4e-15\" data-is-intersecting=\"true\"\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"text-token-text-primary w-full focus:outline-none has-data-writing-block:pointer-events-none [\u0026amp;:has([data-writing-block])\u0026gt;*]:pointer-events-auto R6Vx5W_threadScrollVars scroll-mb-[calc(var(--scroll-root-safe-area-inset-bottom,0px)+var(--thread-response-height))] scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]\" dir=\"auto\" data-turn-id=\"request-6a13ebf1-e3bc-83ec-8e04-eb5854921a4e-15\" data-turn-id-container=\"request-6a13ebf1-e3bc-83ec-8e04-eb5854921a4e-15\" data-testid=\"conversation-turn-68\" data-scroll-anchor=\"false\" data-turn=\"assistant\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-base my-auto mx-auto pb-10 [--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-xs,calc(var(--spacing)*4))] @w-sm\/main:[--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-sm,calc(var(--spacing)*6))] @w-lg\/main:[--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-lg,calc(var(--spacing)*16))] px-(--thread-content-margin)\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"[--thread-content-max-width:40rem] @w-lg\/main:[--thread-content-max-width:48rem] mx-auto max-w-(--thread-content-max-width) flex-1 group\/turn-messages focus-visible:outline-hidden relative flex w-full min-w-0 flex-col agent-turn\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"flex max-w-full flex-col gap-4 grow\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-message-author-role=\"assistant\" data-message-id=\"f85a1973-6aa9-48c9-9534-5d9fc2f6aec0\" data-turn-start-message=\"true\" dir=\"auto\" data-message-model-slug=\"gpt-5-5-thinking\" class=\"min-h-8 text-message relative flex w-full flex-col items-end gap-2 text-start break-words whitespace-normal outline-none keyboard-focused:focus-ring [.text-message+\u0026amp;]:mt-1\" tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"flex w-full flex-col gap-1 empty:hidden\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"markdown prose dark:prose-invert wrap-break-word w-full light markdown-new-styling\"\u003e\n\u003ch4 data-start=\"487\" data-end=\"988\"\u003eStories full of people reaching for one another with the wrong hands.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"487\" data-end=\"988\"\u003eJuly's world here is full of neighbours, lovers, children, strangers, performers, employees, women half-inventing themselves in real time. A shared patio, a swimming lesson, a job, a crush, a small confession — July takes minor social moments and lets them swell until they become almost mythic in their awkwardness. July’s characters are often needy, theatrical, horny, frightened, sincere, and slightly unbearable, which is to say: recognisable. Her sentences move with a peculiar flat brightness, making emotional exposure feel both comic and dangerous.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1319\" data-end=\"1596\"\u003eWinner of the 2007 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, this is the book that established July’s fiction: intimate, odd, sexually uneasy, and very good at the kind of loneliness in a way that makes you feel less alone. \u003cspan class=\"\" data-state=\"closed\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1611\" data-end=\"1957\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePaperback edition published by Text Publishing in 2007; this copy is a 2008 reprint. First published in the US by Scribner in 2007. Light general shelfwear and handling to covers, with some corner\/edge wear visible; pages clean and binding sound. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44657851236435,"sku":null,"price":14.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-26T115031.814.png?v=1779760243"},{"product_id":"the-boatbuilder-by-daniel-gumbiner","title":"'The Boatbuilder' by Daniel Gumbiner","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"qMYqUG_convSearchResultHighlightRoot\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\" data-turn-id-container=\"request-6a13ebf1-e3bc-83ec-8e04-eb5854921a4e-18\" data-is-intersecting=\"true\"\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"text-token-text-primary w-full focus:outline-none has-data-writing-block:pointer-events-none [\u0026amp;:has([data-writing-block])\u0026gt;*]:pointer-events-auto R6Vx5W_threadScrollVars scroll-mb-[calc(var(--scroll-root-safe-area-inset-bottom,0px)+var(--thread-response-height))] scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]\" dir=\"auto\" data-turn-id=\"request-6a13ebf1-e3bc-83ec-8e04-eb5854921a4e-18\" data-turn-id-container=\"request-6a13ebf1-e3bc-83ec-8e04-eb5854921a4e-18\" data-testid=\"conversation-turn-74\" data-scroll-anchor=\"false\" data-turn=\"assistant\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-base my-auto mx-auto pb-10 [--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-xs,calc(var(--spacing)*4))] @w-sm\/main:[--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-sm,calc(var(--spacing)*6))] @w-lg\/main:[--thread-content-margin:var(--thread-content-margin-lg,calc(var(--spacing)*16))] px-(--thread-content-margin)\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"[--thread-content-max-width:40rem] @w-lg\/main:[--thread-content-max-width:48rem] mx-auto max-w-(--thread-content-max-width) flex-1 group\/turn-messages focus-visible:outline-hidden relative flex w-full min-w-0 flex-col agent-turn\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"flex max-w-full flex-col gap-4 grow\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-message-author-role=\"assistant\" data-message-id=\"ed1fb277-5826-4be9-9d56-759e60477595\" data-turn-start-message=\"true\" dir=\"auto\" data-message-model-slug=\"gpt-5-5-thinking\" class=\"min-h-8 text-message relative flex w-full flex-col items-end gap-2 text-start break-words whitespace-normal outline-none keyboard-focused:focus-ring [.text-message+\u0026amp;]:mt-1\" tabindex=\"0\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"flex w-full flex-col gap-1 empty:hidden\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"markdown prose dark:prose-invert wrap-break-word w-full light markdown-new-styling\"\u003e\n\u003ch4 data-start=\"495\" data-end=\"1028\"\u003eEli “Berg” Koenigsberg arrives in a small Northern California town after a concussion, an opioid addiction, rehab, relapse, and still dragging the old self behind him.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"495\" data-end=\"1028\"\u003eBroke, uncertain and not especially equipped for ordinary adulthood, he finds work with an ageing boatbuilder and begins an apprenticeship. Together through sanding, shaping, watching, listening, he learns the patience by way of making something that cannot be rushed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1030\" data-end=\"1494\"\u003eDaniel Gumbiner’s debut novel is interested in recovery without turning it into a clean redemption arc. Berg is not dramatically saved by craft, community or love; he is slowly reassembled by them, which is much less cinematic and much more convincing. The novel moves through addiction, work, friendship, desire, shame and small-town intimacy with a steady, humane attention to how people build lives from available materials, even when half the timber is warped.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1496\" data-end=\"1815\"\u003eA gentle, intelligent novel for readers drawn to contemporary American literary fiction, recovery narratives, apprenticeship stories, and books where making something with your hands becomes a way of thinking without having to announce itself as therapy. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1830\" data-end=\"2129\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst edition, first printing, published by McSweeney’s in 2018. Paperback. Light shelfwear to cover and edges, with some rubbing\/marking visible to the wraps; corners lightly bumped. Pages appear clean and binding sound. National Book Award Longlist sticker to front cover.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44657865293907,"sku":null,"price":14.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-26T120414.711.png?v=1779761140"},{"product_id":"everything-was-fine-until-whatever-by-chelsea-martin","title":"'Everything Was Fine Until Whatever' by Chelsea Martin","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"506\" data-end=\"1055\"\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eFunny, flat, wounded, distracted, self-conscious and still somehow exact.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"506\" data-end=\"1055\"\u003e\u003cem data-start=\"759\" data-end=\"795\"\u003eEverything Was Fine Until Whatever\u003c\/em\u003e collects short prose pieces, poems, lists, fragments and drawings that move through embarrassment, depression, money, loneliness, bad jobs, domestic mess, and failed seriousness. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1057\" data-end=\"1549\"\u003eMartin’s writing has the lightness of doodling, the pieces are brief but not slight; they use plainness, repetition and anticlimax to make ordinary discomfort feel newly visible. There is a kind of anti-grandiosity here, a refusal to make pain noble, even while circling all the serious little disasters: wanting to write, needing money, feeling stupid, feeling watched, having boobs, having thoughts, having to continue.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1551\" data-end=\"1783\"\u003eA small-press, zine-adjacent work for readers drawn to fragmented memoir, alt-lit, confessional poetry, deadpan feminism and the like.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1798\" data-end=\"2109\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst printing, April 2009, published by Future Tense Books. Paperback with illustrations\/artwork by the author. Light general shelfwear; cover clean and bright with minor edge\/corner wear. Interior sound.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44657982603347,"sku":null,"price":14.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Screenshot2026-05-26at1.40.27pm.png?v=1779766835"},{"product_id":"the-illuminated-manuscripts-boccaccios-decameron-edited-by-miller-graphics","title":"'The Illuminated Manuscripts: Boccaccio's Decameron' edited by Miller Graphics","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"274\" data-end=\"685\"\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eA handsome and unusual Boccaccio-adjacent object rather than a standard reading edition.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"274\" data-end=\"685\"\u003eThis illustrated edition gathers manuscript images from Boccaccio’s \u003cem data-start=\"342\" data-end=\"353\"\u003eDecameron\u003c\/em\u003e, pairing scenes from the fourteenth-century tale cycle with explanatory text and reproductions of medieval illumination. Rather than presenting the work simply as literature, the book approaches \u003cem data-start=\"549\" data-end=\"564\"\u003eThe Decameron\u003c\/em\u003e as a visual and material object: a story-world copied, decorated, transmitted and reimagined through manuscript culture.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"687\" data-end=\"1202\"\u003eBoccaccio’s original frame is famously bleak and alive: ten young Florentines flee the plague-struck city and retreat to the countryside, where they pass the time by telling one hundred stories over ten days. The tales move between desire, deception, fortune, clerical hypocrisy, erotic misrule, wit, cruelty, social mobility and survival. It is one of the great comic architectures of European literature: a plague book that keeps producing jokes, plots and bodies as if narrative itself were a form of quarantine.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1204\" data-end=\"1697\"\u003eThis volume is especially appealing as a visual companion to the text. The manuscript images turn the stories into beds, banquets, gardens, lovers, priests, pilgrims, rooms, borders, marginalia, staged scenes of private chaos made public through painted order. A good pick for readers interested in medieval literature, manuscript art, book history, plague narratives, erotic storytelling, and the long human tradition of being appalling but decorative.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1712\" data-end=\"2141\" data-is-last-node=\"\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1978 illustrated edition produced by Productions Liber SA \/ Éditions Minerva SA, Fribourg–Geneva, printed in Spain; text by J. Peter Tallon. Hardback with illustrated wraps; visible age-toning, light shelfwear, small marks and edge\/corner wear, but internally bright with colour reproductions throughout. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44658038538323,"sku":null,"price":30.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-26T135132.741.png?v=1779767504"}],"url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/collections\/art-performance-self-invention.oembed","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}