Footnote

'Brilliantly illustrates how multilingual mothers are disproportionately tasked with preserving linguistic heritage on one hand and preparing children for public society on the other - all while finding a language for their own new maternal identity' Eliane Glaser, author of Motherhood: A Manifesto It is estimated that more than half of the world's population communicates in more than one language and over a third of the population in the United Kingdom is multilingual. And yet life in multiple languages is rarely discussed publicly, myths and misconceptions prevail and the pressure to keep heritage languages alive has become a private conflict for millions. Linguistic diversity is more prevalent than ever, but so is linguistic inequality. Linguist Malwina Gudowska, herself trilingual, sheds light on the ways in which we navigate language, its power to shape and reshape lives, and the ripple effects felt far beyond any one home or any one language. It takes one generation for a family language to be lost. One generation - like mother to child. Mother Tongue Tied explores the emotional weight of raising multilingual children while grappling with your own identity and notions of home. At what cost does a mother save a language? Or does she let it slip away and, with it, a part of herself her children may never know.

'Compelling, heartfelt and inspiring. I found this book so real. so honest. It has taught me about drive, ambition, persistence and love. And what it means to be really Irish! A triumphant story of achievement in a world made for men!' - Katriona O'Sullivan, author of Poor Jackie McCarthy O'Brien has led a truly remarkable life, from being born in 1961 to an Irish mother and Jamaican father (whom she never met) in Birmingham to growing up in Limerick. She was put in an industrial school as a baby by a priest for being an "illegitimate" black child and not recovered by her mother until she was five. As a teen she excelled at sport and played for Ireland in soccer, but when she was sexually harassed by a coach she changed to Irish rugby team. She got married at 21 before accepting her sexual feelings for women, and leaving the marriage with her three young children. Always a hilarious raconteur, this memoir tells her extraordinary story up until becoming a TikTok star and LGBTQ+ icon in her sixties.

'Empathy is the currency of all music and Joe Mulhall does a great job of explaining how that quality has been used to generate solidarity for the struggle and sympathy for those who suffer injustice' Billy Bragg While the global history of the dictatorships, oppression, racism and state violence over the last century is well known - the role that music played in people's lives during these times is less understood. This book is a collection of stories and hidden histories about how music provided light in the darkest of times over the past century. How it steeled souls and inspired resistance to oppression. Rebel Sounds will explore freedom songs in the Republic of Ireland, the Soviet Union's oppression behind the Berlin Wall, authoritarian dictatorships in Brazil and Nigeria, institutionalised racism and police violence in America and South Africa, street violence in Britain, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and musical resistance in war-torn Ukraine. This is a social history of the twentieth century but one that takes in the human impulse to create, share and enjoy the one thing that connects cultures and spans generations: music.

In this ground-breaking book, environmental journalist, Peter Schwartzstein, takes the reader on the first on-the-ground exploration of climate change's contribution to global conflict. From the ravaged villages of Iraq, where ISIS has used drought as a recruiting tool and weapon of terror, to the pirate-ridden waters of Bangladesh - and drawing on more than a decade of reporting from dozens of countries - Schwartzstein writes about the unexpected ways in which climate change is feeding global unrest and conflict. Through the stories of the soldiers, farmers, spies and others affected around the world, he makes sense of a form of conflict that remains poorly understood, even as it devastates the lives of so many millions of people. While researching this book, Schwartzstein was chased by kidnappers, detained by police and told, in no uncertain terms, that he was no longer welcome in certain countries. Yet, as he recounts, these personal brushes with violence are simply a hint of the conflict simmering in our warming world. As Schwartztein's unparalleled reporting shows, there's nothing inevitable about climate violence. In fact, as he sets out, the same stresses that are pitching people against one another can even help bring them back together.

As we find ourselves in a time of democratic decay all over the world, with relentless attempts to undermine truth and facts and unprecedented technological tools to spread disinformation and incite violence, brave journalism is needed more than ever. In The New Censorship esteemed academic, former journalist and activist Ayala Panievsky focuses on the unfortunate and unexpected mechanisms through which today's media has inadvertently amplified the anti-democratic movement that looms over our societies. From the birth of 'the strategic bias' to weaponising liberal norms against liberal democracy, the populist right has found a way to exercise a more effective and socially acceptable type of silencing and manipulation. Instead of banning stories, they spread flows of disinformation, which take hours and days to debunk. Instead of silencing, they shout louder. Instead of blue-pencilling, they employ fake users, bots, and outrageous smear campaigns to dominate the conversation. Heavy-handed censorship is unnecessary when one can manipulate people to censor themselves, or simply stop listening. Based on cutting-edge empirical research, personal experience in newsrooms and parliament corridors and a decade of living under populism in power in Israel, Panievsky will not only explain how we got here but also lay out what we all could (and should) do to restart the conversation and protect our right to know.

These are the stories of the female kings: women who risked everything, sometimes unwillingly, to find their place in a man's world. Female kings have always been a rarity, an oddity, or an undesirable outcome. In almost all places throughout the world a male ruler was preferred to a woman, with female inheritance vanishingly rare and frequently disputed. In spite of this, women have secured crowns - or fought for them - over several millennia. From the lush oases of Ancient Egypt to the cherry blossomed lands of Japan, the machinations of the Tudor court to the far reaches of Pacific Island kingdoms, Women Who Ruled the World is an expansive and comprehensive history of female royal power. Covering five millennia of global history, renowned historian Elizabeth Norton weaves together the stories of women rulers throughout the ages. Establishing beloved and already celebrated figures amongst those who have been left in the margins of history, Norton peels away the layers of time, geography and culture to reveal what it was to be a woman who ruled.

Nur and Abid relearn to love after they escape from war. Marie, who keeps the women of the village from giving birth to children borne of war, finds herself in a situation she hasn't faced before. In a London park, an ageing MI-6 official discovers that the woman he meets every day may not be what she seems. Lyndsey's bouquets of twenty-seven tulips hold the secret of her dark past and a soldier adorns herself in jewels as she prepares for a final mission. Spanning both decades and continents, Refuge turns its lens on those who are often overlooked in stories about war: women and children, civilians forced out of their homes in terror, those who wait for their brave soldiers to come home, and soldiers who commit unspeakable violence. this powerful collection simultaneously delves into the darkest parts of the human psyche whilst being an ode to humanity's ability to endure, love and retain dignity and compassion.

Shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards 2024: History Book of the Year 'Hotel Lux is an unforgettable book, bringing to life not only its protagonists but an entire world, and offering a new glimpse of a vanished past' Sally Rooney 'If affection is the first ground of memory, the archive is its late flowering and Hotel Lux its conservatory, Casey's history a tender nurture of pasts we overlook, but which whisper to us all the same' Irish Times Hotel Lux follows Irish radical May O'Callaghan and her friends, three revolutionary families brought together by their vision for a communist future and their time spent in the Comintern's Moscow living quarters, the Hotel Lux. Historian Maurice Casey reveals the connections and disconnections of a group of forgotten communist activists whose lives collided in 1920s Moscow: a brilliant Irish translator, a maverick author, the rebel daughters of an East London Jewish family, and a family of determined German anti-fascists. The dramatic and interlocking histories of the O'Flahertys, Cohens and Leonhards offer an intimate insight into the legacies of the Russian Revolution from its earliest idealism through to the brutal Stalinist purges and beyond. Hotel Lux uncovers a world of forgotten radicals who saw their hopes and dreams crash against reality yet retained their faith in a beautiful future for all. Culminating in a queer love story that saw the daughters of the Cohens and Leonhards create an enduring partnership even as their parents' political visions crumbled, this is a multi-generational rebel odyssey and a history of international communism, one which looks as much to the future as it does to the past.

An Israeli woman relocates to America on assignment from her tech company. In an attempt to leave her past behind and adapt entirely to the new culture in which she finds herself, she joins her colleagues on a deer hunt, discovering a surprising acumen for the sport. She fires again and again, refining her skills with every shot. As she embarks on an affair with her hunting guide and colleague, David, she sinks deeper into hunting season, vacillating between predator and prey as the boundaries between man, woman, work, and nature begin to collapse. Hunting with David becomes the one stable aspect of her life until one day everything changes. With a poet's eye and a hunter's aim, Tehila Hakimi's beguiling debut novelis a taut, twisty story about the everyday violence that haunts countries, and one woman's tenuous grasp on reality.

From the author of There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, this piercing, genre-bending debut follows two families in alternative timelines of the Salvadoran civil war in a stunning exploration of displacement, the mechanisms of fate, the gravity of the past, and the endurance of love. Cambridge, USA 2018. Ana and Luis's relationship is on the rocks, despite their many similarities, including mothers that both fled El Salvador during the war. In her search for answers, Ana uses The Defractor, an experimental device that allows users to peek into alternate versions of their lives. What she sees leads her and Luis on a quest through Havana and San Salvador to uncover the family histories they are desperate to know, eager to learn if what might have been can fix what is. Havana, Cuba 1978. The Salvadoran war is brewing, and Neto, a young revolutionary with a knack for forging government papers, meets Rafael at a meeting for the People's Revolutionary Army. The two form an intense and forbidden love, shedding their fake names and revealing themselves to each other inside the covert world of their activism. When their work separates them, they begin to exchange weekly letters, but soon, as the devastating war rages on, forces beyond their control threaten to pull them apart forever.

Meet Relebogile Naledi Mpho Moruakgomo. Or, for short, Eddie: an aspiring playwright who dreams of making it big in London's theatre world. But after repeated rejections from white talent agents, Eddie suspects her non-white sounding name might be the problem. Enter Hugo Lawrence Smith: good looking, well-connected, charismatic and . . . very white. Stifled by his law degree and looking for a way out of the corporate world, he finds a kindred spirit in Eddie after a chance encounter at a cafe. Together they devise a plan which will see Eddie's play on stage and Hugo's name in lights and expose the theatre world for its racism and hollow clout-chasing. But as their plan spins wildly out of control, Eddie and Hugo find themselves wondering if their reputations, and their friendship, can survive.

In Acts of Resistance, Amber Massie-Blomfield writes about the artists who have treated the protest site as their canvas and contributed to movements that have transformed history - from the musicians in Auschwitz to the four-year Siege of Sarajevo, from the to ACT UP's 1989 invasion of the New York Stock Exchange, to the Niger Delta and indigenous communities in Bolivia. Including stories and artists from across the globe, alongside collectives, communities, amateurs and anonymous creators who have used their art as an expression of resistance - this fascinating book asks what is the purpose of art in a world on fire? Why are artists compelled to paint, write, dance and make music, even when the odds are stacked against them? And how can artistic creation be a genuine form of political resistance?

At a banquet hall, at the onset of war, Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah party turns into a glorious disaster. On the cusp of manhood - and the verge of a nervous breakdown - Adam has been bracing for his special day, mired in family neuroses and national dysfunction. In a chorus of voices, a fractious cast of well-wishers narrates Adam's coming-of-age in Israel: his newly devout father and the mystic rituals he practiced on his young son; his best friend, Abbie, who points the way to joyful transgression; Khalil, a Palestinian poet, who offers a glimpse of a different way to be; and Adam himself, filled with shame and desire as he faces the brokenness of his world. At once tender and lustful, a work of scathing satire and piercing insight, MAZELTOV is a truly original vision of a young man's quest to know his own heart.

A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mind. The Coin's narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self, the ideal life, remains just out of reach: her inheritance is inaccessible, her homeland exists only in her memory and her attempt to thrive in America seems doomed from the start. In New York, she strives to put down roots. She teaches at a school for underprivileged boys, where her eccentric methods cross boundaries. She befriends a homeless swindler, and the two participate in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags. But America is stifling her - her wilfulness, her sexuality, her principles. In an attempt to regain control, she becomes preoccupied with purity, cleanliness and self-image, all while drawing her students into her obsessions. In an unforgettable denouement, her childhood memories converge with her material and existential statelessness and the narrator unravels spectacularly. In enthralling, sensory prose, The Coin explores nature and civilisation, beauty and justice, class and belonging - all while resisting easy moralising. Provocative, wry and inviting, The Coin marks the arrival of a major new literary voice.

In the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a page-turning 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the United States' last segregated asylums. On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state's Hospital for the Negro Insane. In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, it became a microcosm of America's evolving battles over slavery, racial integration and civil rights. During its peak years, the hospital's wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th-century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America's new focus.

Mei loses her Japanese mother at age six. Growing up in suburban Surrey, she yearns to fit in, suppressing not only her heritage but her growing desire for her best friend Fran. Yuki leaves the Japanese countryside to pursue her dream of becoming a concert violinist in London. Far from home and in an unfamiliar city, she finds herself caught up in the charms of her older teacher. Haruka attempts to navigate Tokyo's nightlife and all of its many vices, working as a hostess in the city's sex district. She grieves a mother who hid so many secrets from her, until finally one of those secrets comes to light . . . Shifting between three intertwining narratives, Mongrel reveals a tangled web of desire, isolation, belonging and ultimately, hope.