What to buy in the Fitzcarraldo Editions sale

When an indie publisher as good as Fitzcarraldo has a sale, you run, not walk. Fitzcarraldo Editions are known for their iconic blue and white covers. Difficult to keep in perfect condition but as far as -books as objects - goes, their chicness is unmatched.

From now until Sunday 28th August, they are offering 40% off all titles to celebrate 8 years of publishing brilliant books. These are our bookish picks to add to your baskets:

Ill Feelings , Alice Hattrick

A memoir essay blend, Hattrick details their experiences living with M.E, a chronic illness that impacts both them and their mother. They trace the fraught history of the illness; notes from famed creatives who suffered with exhaustion or periods of bed bound existence, to the infamous psychologists responsible for categorising the condition as ‘in a person's head', a damaging legacy that hurts those living with it still today. A stark and painful read for members of the disabled community, and a necessary insight for those who are on the outside.

A book to read at a slow pace, to take in the details, to feel the fatigue that Hattrick feels too. It is a radical text of physical exhaustion, creative ingenuity and the passage of time. It cannot be read without acknowledgement of the failure towards ill bodies everywhere; left to fend for themselves, when medicine itself ceases to provide answers. 

Cold Enough for Snow / Jessica Au

This slim novella follows a mother and daughter as they embark on a much awaited trip abroad. Despite each of their impending excitement, they appear as passing ships during their visits to the shrines and cities of Japan. Unable to express their wants and needs, each is left guessing how to make each other’s trip better. A sense of feigned female closeness prevails. Au writes Japan as a character of itself, humid walks and bustling cities, a cloying heat makes the chapters almost stick together. It is a story of familial bond, anticipatory anxiety and the pressure we place on ourselves to enjoy the big parts of life, forgetting the mundane as a place that can hold as much or more sentimentality.

Fifty Sounds / Polly Barton

Remaining in Japan but switching to a personal memoir perspective. Fifty Sounds details Barton’s early adulthood first as a teacher and then as a literary translator. Each essay is titled with a Japanese onomatopoeic phrase and its translation. The word appears throughout the essay, scattered as a reminder of the most salient point. These essays deal very much with the semantics of language, the philosophy of words and the textural nature of oracy. 

But outside of syntaxes and structures, there is much about culture (from a well-acknowledged, outsider's perspective). The phenomenon of western men attaching themselves to Japanese culture, the barometer of attractiveness for white women in Japan and the navigation of taboos. This all makes for an intellectually challenging and unique combination.

Minor Detail / Adania Shibli, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette

In Shibli’s short novella, not a word is wasted. Impactful for its ability to express decades of tragedy and violence to an everyday reader. Minor detail is a story of the occupation of Palestine, beginning in 1949, it follows en masse the expulsion of Palestinian people and thereafter the inhumane treatment they suffer until present day. 

Shibli hones in one a single experience of gendered violence to illustrate the ravages of war on bodies; both physically and psychologically. It can be read as an untold history, a search for truth, but more accurately it is a near flawless attempt to break free from disempowerment, to sear onto its readers’ minds that art is protest, words have political power. 

Immanuel / Matthew Mcnaught

Religious upbringings collide with cultish tendencies in Mcnaught’s debut nonfiction text. Written over a number of years, we see him reflecting on his own upbringing in a British evangelical church which quickly develops into a one-man mission to trace the families that defected to an institution much more elusive. Mcnaught both the landscape of religiosity he knew as a child; Christian revivalism, evangelical communion as well as the Pentecostal churches and alternative religious groups of Nigeria. Perhaps on first glance that feels a tenuous connection, however Lagos, Nigeria is home to SCOAN church, where a self-proclaimed prophet was welcoming many English families from Mcnaught’s old church, to join him.

Sexual assault, abuse and exhaustion all surface during Mcnaught's research and interviews with ex-members of SCOAN. A feat of flawless integration, he manages to do the micro and the macro at once, readers are forced to care both about bible verses and his teenage religious rock band. Less hard-hitting journalistic exposé and more a reckoning with people’s desire for belonging, and the lengths they’ll go to find it, a riveting read. 

Hurricane season Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes

Melchor’s novels are not for the faint of heart, they are horror. Not in the sense of theatrics or ghoulish renderings, moreover, they are real life. Fictionalised retellings of the violence etched into Mexico’s history, Hurricane season deals with machismo and misogyny, state-endorsed violence and volatile poverty.

Lacking in full stops, page breaks or any blank space on the page at all, her words read as one long monologue; a poem to paint a picture of one village, in one state, in one corner of this country, that is drowning in demons, but impossible to look away from. A punishing experience to consume, but no doubt you will immediately order the follow-up on finishing. 

The Naked Don’t Fear the Water / Matthieu Aikins

An exceptional piece of personal political writing, Aikins spends a year travelling alongside his friend and thousands of other migrants, people fleeing conflict in Afghanistan. Presented in the media as only bodies, money seekers, and threats to British life; Aikins writes with radical empathy to prove otherwise. It shouldn’t take texts like these to force us living in relative stability, to care, but for many it does and Aikins’ journalistic rigour ensures there is no argument left unattended in this story of journeying towards safety.