A Shining by Jon Fosse; Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy Pocket Guide; A Beautiful Pint by Ian Ryan; Finding Hildasay by Christian Lewis. Photos / Supplied
A Shining by Jon Fosse; Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy Pocket Guide; A Beautiful Pint by Ian Ryan; Finding Hildasay by Christian Lewis. Photos / Supplied
If you’re keen to try Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian author and playwright Jon Fosse, but are a bit daunted by his lengthy, challenging Septology novel series, there’s A Shining (Fitzcarraldo Editions). It’s just 48 pages, an intriguing long story, really, out on April 9, and concerns a man driving in thesnow. In a dark forest, he encounters a glowing being, then others. Who are they? And who is he?
A Shining by Jon Fosse. Photo / Supplied
Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy Pocket Guide (Penguin) does exactly what it says on the kēna, or tin. A bit wider than a cellphone, it’s an updated and reworked “careful selection of some of the best and most useful content from my previous books”. This includes pronunciation and communication basics, as well as history, tikanga and essential phrases such as “Auē, kei te tino rongo au i te whiu a te waipiro”: “Gosh, I am terribly hungover.”
Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy Pocket Guide. Photo / Supplied
Speaking of which, that little ball in a can of Guinness is called a widget. It’s filled with nitrogen and helps create the stout’s creamy texture. Its invention in 1988 was voted in one survey as better than the internet, which shows how fanatical Guinness fans are about their tipple. That, and why the two-part pour is still important, is the kind of obsessive detail that Cork man Ian Ryan packs into his thoroughly enjoyable and utterly superfluous A Beautiful Pint (Bloomsbury).
A Beautiful Pint by Ian Ryan. Photo / Supplied
Ex-paratrooper Christian Lewis tells of his journey from anxiety and depression. A single father about to be evicted from his Swansea flat, and with his 16-year-old daughter leaving home, Lewis decided to walk the UK coast with his dog for a veterans’ charity. In the process, he spent three months on uninhabited Hildasay island in the Shetlands. Finding Hildasay (Pan) took several years to write, but he ended up with a fiancée, a baby and a new outlook on life.
Finding Hildasay by Christian Lewis. Photo / Supplied
