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£10.99
Staff Pick!
Allanah says…
I am in awe at how stories like this can exist and slip through the cracks of time. So grateful that Virago decided to republish this one!
It’s a feminist fairytale where the maiden doesn’t need rescuing from the dragon, where heroes are in fact a nuisance, and freedom to live a life unchained is valued above all else.
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Halla is the daughter of a king, cast out as a baby into a world of danger and enchantment. She is raised by bears, lives amongst dragons, converses with Valkyries and avoids warmongering heroes. But an encounter with Odin All-Father sets her on a new path as a wanderer through the world, and to a final choice. Is her role in the story already written – as a king’s child, an adopted dragon, or a fearless heroine – or can she travel light?
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£9.99
Staff Pick!
Allanah says…
Memory seems to be a recurring theme in Ogawa’s work. This is a world of extreme censorship, where whole beings and concepts are deemed irrelevant and forcibly forgotten across the town. The residents begin to wonder, what will happen when they forget the breeze? What happens when water disappears? It’s a surrealist story that balances the grief of memory loss and the importance of remembering as a society.
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Hat, ribbon, bird, rose. To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed. When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn’t forget, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next? ‘The Memory Police’ is a beautiful, haunting and provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss from one of Japan’s greatest writers. For readers of The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451 and Nineteen Eighty-Four.
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£9.99
Staff Pick!
Allanah Says…
Harpman has crafted a short but poignant tale that hauntingly blends a bleak atmosphere with hope. Women imprisoned underground escape only to find an abandoned world, but they chase life and love despite it all. This is a story that lingers with you.
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Deep underground, 39 women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there and only vague notions of their lives before. As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl – the fortieth prisoner – sits alone and outcast in the corner. But soon she will show herself to be the key to the others’ escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above.
Artem's Broken Wrist 
