'In the Lower Saxony region of northwestern Germany sits the city of Osnabrück. This is where, in 1648, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, bringing the Thirty Years' War and one of the most calamitous periods of European history to an end. But the city was later to witness another calamity. Today, as one walks through Old Synagogue Street in a rich neighborhood of Osnabrück, one might miss noticing a pile of pale stones held together by chicken wire that sits between two fashionable homes. These are the well-kept ruins from behind which stares a gaping space--a place of memory and oblivion. Four polished plaques tell the tale of the horror-filled night of November 9, 1938--today known as Kristallnacht--when the synagogue that had stood on this spot was desecrated, looted, set on fire, and eventually demolished by Hitler's forces. On the same day, ninety parishioners were imprisoned by the Gestapo and eventually sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Osnabrück was also home to Eve Klein, a member of the city's early-twentieth-century Jewish community and the mother of author Hélène Cixous. In Well-Kept Ruins, Cixous returns to the historic city in 2019 and reflects on the remains of the synagogue that "express the life lost, the life kept." Walking the streets of the city, plumbing the depths of the past along with her own family's history, looking deep into the future, and punctuating her poetic prose with haunting photographs, Cixous explores the ruins at the heart of humanity. Part memoir, part philosophical meditation, Well-Kept Ruins is a genre-defying and timely reflection of the contemporary human condition.'--Publisher description.

15 March 1939: German troops enter Prague and for Czechoslovakian Jews the terror begins. This is the story of one of the survivors. Helen Lewis was a young wife studying philosophy and attending a prestigious school of dance in Prague. In 1942 she and her husband Paul were deported to Terezin, the Jewish ghetto, and then to Auschwitz, where they were separated. A Time to Speak is the story of her survival. Told with impeccable integrity, there is wit and candor in her tale as well as sorrow, and a controlled anger, which never diplays itself in rancor. This is a memorable book of love and loss, friendship and betrayal, terror and humor, joy and despair, good and evil, death and survival. Helen Lewis does not speculate, she never invents. This is only truth, witnessed truth.

Text: English, German (translation)

August 1939. On her summer break from her studies at the Royal Academy of Music, the exquisitely talented young South African pianist, Olda Mehr, and her parents, leave London to visit relatives in Eastern Europe.

A celebration of the work of one of America's top aviation artists. Many of the works of American artist and illustrator Gil Cohen can be found at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and the Pentagon, as well as in other important public and private collections. After spending decades as a respected illustrator for magazines and book publishers, Cohen chose to turn his attention to aviation and military themes. His more recent paintings vividly depict the human aspects of America's wars, showing soldiers and aviators in battle and at rest. One of Cohen's recurring observations is that, unfortunately, some of humankind's most remarkable feats of engineering are often created for the purpose of war. Cohen's paintings are collected worldwide, and his clients include the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Coast Guard; Paramount Pictures; Random House; Holt, Rinehart & Winston; Bantam Books; Harlequin Books; and Boeing-Sikorsky.

Don't Tell Sybil is a libidinous memoir by a master raconteur. George Melly (1926-2007) was impossible to ignore in London cultural circles between the 1950s and 90s. He first came to attention as a jazz singer, notable for risqué songs performed with verve rather than with great technical ability. An arresting personality, Melly dressed the part: his outrageous suits became a mark, and his talents as a raconteur soon brought him fame as a TV talkshow guest (usually late-night shows, for reasons of propriety). His cheerful bisexuality, recounted throughout his three volumes of autobiography, scandalized and then delighted a public whose own sexual attitudes changed over the decades they describe. Don't Tell Sybil is a supplementary volume of autobiography which treats in more detail Melly's youthful and long-lasting attraction to Surrealism, and his equally lengthy friendship with the contradictory character who headed up the English Surrealist group, E.L.T. Mesens. Their adventures form the core of this book--adventures of which Mesens did not want his wife, Sybil, to learn, hence the book's title. Mesens was a perfect subject, an artist and prankster who could be as punctilious and stingy as the most respectable bourgeois. Anecdotes of the artists who showed at Mesens' gallery, such as Schwitters and Magritte, pepper the narrative, a hugely affectionate memoir by a character who was truly larger than life. This new edition is augmented with previously unpublished photographs relating to Melly and English Surrealism.

Banat, a concert violinist and teacher, describes the life of this virtuoso violinist, who is thought to be the earliest black European composer, born on his father's plantation on Guadeloupe

159p hardback with yellow dustjacket, gift inscription signed by the artist, obituary of Brilliant's husband Professor Herbert Marshall taped lightly to front pastedown, very good copy of the first edition

Filmmaker Eva Orner takes us on a personal, gripping and compelling journey to show us how she came to make her documentary about Australia's asylum seeker policies. ' My work as a filmmaker has taken me to some wild, dangerous places ... It's been a crazy, nomadic kind of life, taking me to conflict zones and desperately poor, chaotic, unstable countries. I've been sick, injured, scared and had too many close calls to mention. I spend a lot of time alone, in airports, lugging camera gear, gazing up at flickering departure boards.' But I love it. I love the feeling I get when I am heading into the unknown.' Angry and frustrated with Australia's asylum seeker and refugee policies, Eva Orner, Academy Award®-winning filmmaker, returned home after a decade living in the States to make the documentary Chasing Asylum about the issue. Embarking on a tumultuous eighteen months, Eva travelled to Indonesia, Cambodia, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iran, spending time with and filming asylum seekers, as well as interviewing politicians, activists and commentators including David Marr and Malcolm Fraser. She smuggled a pen camera into an Indonesian jail to interview a convicted people smuggler, she talked to whistle blowers in Australia, and in Iran she met with the family of the man killed in the Manus Island riot. Chasing Asylum is a compelling insight into a filmmaker's journey, and a very personal story of the cost, risks and rewards of putting yourself on the line for a film and for a cause. The Guardian writes of the film Chasing Asylum: 'The full, muscular weight of the feature documentary format has finally tackled the subject with Chasing Asylum, a viscerally intense expose given gravitas by Academy and Emmy award-winning film-maker Eva Orner ... not just successful, but awfully and unforgettably effective: vital, evocative and gut-wrenching.' 'Eva Orner is no stranger to bravery ... she manifests this steadfastness in relating story after story where pain, violence and horror frame her narrative, interspersed by accounts of the daily life of a filmmaker ... Orner is brave not just emotionally, but also physically, risking imprisonment, illness and violence to uncover the stories of those who have sought refuge ... It is a story that must be told.' Sydney Morning Herald