Hot News This Week
February 13, 2025
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| “There is no genuine security without the freedom to read, and no freedom to read without booksellers being able to carry out their work safely and freely.”
Saqi Books released a statement condemning the arrest of Palestinian booksellers Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna, who were detained on Sunday after Israeli police raided their East Jerusalem bookstore, Educational Bookshop. The Munas have thankfully been released after a public outcry, though they remain under house arrest this week and have been ordered not to enter their bookstore for fifteen days, per the New York Times.
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| Mohammed El-Kurd on the Legacy of Refaat Alareer
Mohammed El-Kurd, author of Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal, appeared on Democracy Now! this week for an extensive two-part interview. In part one, he discusses his Perfect Victims and the pressures that lead to “curating yourself in a way that is not offensive to the Western gaze,” and in part two, he delves into the dehumanization of Palestinians, media double standards, and the legacy of his friend Refaat Alareer. Alareer, author of If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose, has finally been laid to rest with his family more than a year after being killed by Israeli airstrikes.
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| “You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism”
For a recent piece on why “You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism,” 404 Media interviewed sociologist Katherine Cross, author of Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix. “The reality is you are oxygenating the things these people are saying even as you purport to debunk them,” says Cross. The article also points out that Log Off is “a meticulous catalog of social media sins” in which Cross “documents how tech platforms encourage us, through their design affordances, to post and seethe and doomscroll into the void, always reacting and never acting.”
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| | True Failure
by Alex Higley
Coffee House Press • February 2025 • 9781566897136
“A wickedly funny and sweet novel about marriage, deceit, [and] Law & Order SVU.” — Caitlin Luce Baker, Island Books (Mercer Island, WA)
“A fascinating and funny misadventure, following a handful of deluded everyday domestic types. . . . True Failure relishes the smallness and pettiness of lies and the lying liars who lie them.” — Seth Tucker, Carmichael’s Bookstore (Louisville, KY)
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| | Unsex Me Here
by Aurora Mattia
Nightboat Books • April 2025 • 9781643622705
“One of the most intimate books I have ever read. Psychedelic and glittering with raw, tender emotion . . . Unsex Me Here connects the stories of transfeminine individuals across all of time and space. Reading this book is like experiencing the rapture from every angle. I can’t recommend it enough!” — Catherine Pabalate, Epilogue Books (Chapel Hill, NC)
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| | Embroidery
by Sigrún Pálsdóttir, trans. Lytton Smith
Open Letter • May 2023 • 9781948830768
“Pseudo-mystery in tone, historical fiction at heart, and medium-paced adventure; a delayed romance, tragedy by proxy, and fly-on-the-wall narrative in a spiderwebbed museum’s strictly temperature controlled basement.” — Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop (Athens, GA)
“A fast-paced, clever, and absorbing read.” — Grace Harper, Mac’s Backs (Cleveland Heights, OH)
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★ “A gripping intellectual history of a major societal sea change. . . . [Green] debuts with an enthralling biography of Walter E. Fernald (1859–1924), a controversial doctor who shaped much of 20th-century American government policy toward the disabled.” — Publishers Weekly
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★ “This title will enliven world history shelves and has multiple social studies and STEAM connections. This is also a book to savor, preferably over multiple perusals, and will appeal to curious browsers and budding historians alike.” — Booklist
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“As she moves into the long-delayed work of grieving, Huntman recovers other details, including her mother’s passion for dance.” — Los Angeles Times
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| | Ugliness
by Moshtari Hilal, trans. Elisabeth Lauffer
New Vessel Press • February 2025 • 9781954404281
“Hilal implores us to think about what we have learned about ugliness throughout our lives and the history these ideas are steeped in.” — Dazed
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| | Book of Potions
by Lauren K. Watel
Sarabande Books • February 2025 • 9781956046359
“All the grand ideas meet in these pages: love, death, war, power, aging, anger, self-image and more. . . . Book of Potions makes the seemingly impossible work brilliantly.” — ArtsATL
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| | New Digital Review Copies
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This year’s longlist for the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association’s Reading the West Book Awards includes titles published by City Lights Publishers, Saraband, and Torrey House Press.
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ABA and Bookshop.org Bestseller
I Who Have Never Known Men
by Jacqueline Harpman, trans. Ros Schwartz
Transit Books • May 2022 • 9781945492600
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