The book "Ceremony" argues that our modern way of thinking is not as rational and secular as we believe. Instead, it is influenced by Christian origin myths that emerged during the Middle Ages, when capitalism began to take shape. This publication will constitute a critical reference point for those seeking to construct and envisage a “counter-cosmogony” to the dispossession, slavery, and extractivism of modernity — which together endanges planetary life. Buy

Black German-language fiction has a long tradition that has come alive in many movements. From early works of fiction, such as the first novel by Black author Dualla Misipo at the end of the Weimar Republic, to current titles.⁠ ⁠ With "Resonanzen - Schwarzes Literaturfestival", a three-day festival took place in May 2022 that provided impulses for rethinking, reimagining and further developing perspectives and experiences within the German-language literary scene. The publication accompanying the festival presents the short stories of the six invited authors, traces the discussions of the jury and shows the diverse traditions, influences and references of authors of the African diaspora in Germany.⁠ Buy

How could visiting Seoul be described in a way that allows someone else to feel like they are right there? What to say? What perspectives to choose?⁠ ⁠ What Should I Say—About Seoul takes the reader on a path less traveled: The work and daily-life of Korean designers; but not just as a spectator. The book gives a glimpse into South Korean society that is not so common after all. ⁠ ⁠ But don't mistake this book as a travel guide. It is rather full of experiences, focussing on the work as creatives. From working conditions to social interactions.⁠ Buy

Too Much explores the nature of the sacred in an increasingly profane world.⁠ ⁠ This fantastic publication, subtitled 'Magazine of Romantic Geography', has made us wait quite a long time for a new issue, but now it's here! It investigates the ways in which people and environment, built and natural, shape and reshape each other.⁠ ⁠ The Sacred issue meets the Yuta shaman of the Okinawan islands; ventures to the beguinages of medieval Europe to learn how women have related to the divine in ways that ensure their own earthly survival and independence; visits mosques in contemporary Japan; elaborates festivals for ancestor worship in China; and travels to the slopes of Osore-zan and hear the cries of crows and the bereaved.⁠ ⁠ Beautiful and insightful as always, the magazine from Japan enriches us with different perspectives and stories we haven't read before, catapulting us out of our eternal algorithmic bubble. ⁠ Buy

What does the word “nature” mean to you? It may conjure up images of lush, rolling fields, rushing rivers or impenetrable woods. You’re probably not picturing many people or buildings, and it’s likely that the colour green features prominently.  The third issue of Hinterlands magazine takes as its starting point a similar thought exercise. The introductory note from editors Hanna Döring, Freia Kuper and Maike Suhr invites the reader to visualise a meadow - and immediately bursts this idyllic, imaginary bubble to point out that “nature” as we often think of it is a fiction. More

Drone Vision: Warfare, Surveillance, Protest brings the perfidious character of drones to the fore. Namely, seeing without being seen - and the associated insecurity and vulnerability, but also the usage for resistance and protest. The book presents three projects that move between art and politics - from migrant protests to colonial surveillance and the aesthetics of drone photography. The latter shows the geological scars and war remnants of five abandoned military sites in Israel - army strongholds, shooting ranges and urban warfare training facilities - and juxtaposes them with the personal and political scars engraved and marked on the private human body. Buy

It is here! The Cyberfeminism Index!⁠ ⁠ In in this book, hackers, scholars, artists, and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technology. It takes the name cyberfeminism as an umbrella, complicates it, and pushes it into plain sight.⁠ ⁠ Edited by designer, professor, and researcher Mindy Seu, it includes more than 700 short entries of radical techno-critical activism in a variety of media, including excerpts from academic articles and scholarly texts; descriptions of hackerspaces, digital rights activist groups, and bio-hacktivism; and depictions of feminist net art and new media art. Buy

As humble booksellers who watch the holiday season unfold from behind a cash register, we here at do you read me?! would be among the first to agree that the holidays have become less about celebrating religious or social events and more about the arrival of a certain rotund figure in a pretty far out red suit. Indeed, each passing December seems to reaffirm the free market’s unfettered socio-cultural ascent–which is good news for fans of money, stuff, and the pursuit of money to buy stuff; and bad news for fans of, say, the planet or human rights. After all, society can’t be too social if we are all collectively staring into the void of Black Friday sales on our non-fair trade iPhones. More

We all know that you can’t judge a book by its cover. A book’s design, though, is an entirely different matter. Everything that goes into the physical creation of a book reflects its contents to a certain degree: romance novels are printed on trashy paper with even trashier imagery for good reason; and it is by no means arbitrary that gilded pages are found in Bibles or that lush paper and fine ink are used for the exhibition catalogues one finds at museums like the Louvre. The medium is the message, or at least a key part of it. This is certainly the case with isolarii–our November Surprise Subscription pick. More

Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago reflects on the changing role of colonial natural history collections in the current ecological crisis.⁠ ⁠ From DNA traces tracing teak furniture back to Indonesian plantations, to the extinction of species in the rapidly changing Malay world, an essayistic composition of Dutch paleoanthropologist Eugène Dubious's Javanese osteo-mythology, to the harmful role of monocultures, especially oil palm. In addition, a series of drone footage by Akademi Drone Indonesia, a group of young environmental activists from Nusantara, documents controversial land grabs in the region and shows the ongoing environmental violence perpetrated for profit.⁠ Buy

"In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions."⁠ ⁠ This is a trailblazing collection of writings by rule-breaker Binyavanga Wainaina. Full of sharp satire and piercing wisdom, it contains many of Binyavanga's critically acclaimed works, including the satirical sensation How to Write About Africa, quoted above, which plays with the way Western media have reinforced stereotypes and pre-existing notions about Africa. Buy

On the surface of a red-figure Attica vase, some thousands years ago, an inscription reading “ο Παῖς Καλός” had been engraved. Translating as The Boy Is Beautiful this intricate detail transforms a common vessel into a declaration of homoerotic affection; echoing the sexual liberation of a bygone era.⁠ ⁠ The Boy Is Beautiful took this as an inspiration to investigate into queer Greek chronicles, from myth and history, to contemporary life. A quest with the question what happened between the time of Zeus and Ganymede, Apollo and Hyacinth, Achilles and Patroclus, the Band of Thebes and the Lesbian Sappho, Harmodius and Aristogeiton and the contemporary society full of sexism, homophobie and straightwashed history.⁠ Buy