Latest news with #AlwaysHome
News24
03-05-2025
- Sport
- News24
PSL: Kaizer Chiefs v Orlando Pirates
3m ago What the Spirit Of Amakhosi means to Given????? #Amakhosi4Life #SowetoDerby #AlwaysHome — Kaizer Chiefs (@KaizerChiefs) May 2, 2025 Here's Kaizer Chiefs' Given Msimango on what the Soweto Derby means to them. 5m ago ?? Assistant Coach | Mandla Ncikazi: "The mood is good. We know where we're coming from, and we know where we could have been better." ?? @KaizerChiefs ??? 03 May 2025 ?15HO0 ??? FNB Stadium ????? #OrlandoPirates #OnceAlways — Orlando Pirates (@orlandopirates) May 2, 2025 Here's Orlando Pirates' assistant coach Mandla Ncikazi on how they feel ahead of their important away game. Go to top
The Guardian
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Hannah Kent: ‘I was kind of having a second adolescence'
The way Hannah Kent tells it, the wood-lined backstreets of the Adelaide Hills are as important to her writing as the hours spent at her desk. 'This is where I walk when I'm talking out my books,' she says as we set out from her gravel driveway. 'This is the closest thing to a daily jaunt – there's a few hills, it's a pretty sweaty affair.' It is usually Kent's wife, Heidi, who walks alongside her, patiently listening as the bestselling novelist 'mutters aloud' about the roadblocks and challenges blighting her latest work-in-progress. 'It's a great gift, you know, to have her put up with me for an hour while I simply talk out everything that's not happening.' Kent is a few days out from her 40th birthday when we meet, and in the middle of rewrites for a screenwriting project. She's excited about the milestone; she has had enough friends pass away too young to be insecure about ageing. The passage of time has also been front of mind thanks to her latest book, Always Home, Always Homesick, a memoir whose knots were also teased out over these rolling hills. The book had its origins during the pandemic restrictions, when she and Heidi would trace this same loop with their young daughter and newborn son – two sleep-deprived parents pushing a giant pram. Kent was supposed to be finishing her third novel, Devotion, but the anxiety of lockdowns, border restrictions and motherhood were seeping into her subconscious. 'I was having these incredible dreams about Iceland, very intense, sensory-heavy, very realistic dreams,' she says. 'I started to have this acute feeling of homesickness for Iceland.' The frosty and remote Nordic nation has played a formative role in Kent's literary career and personal life since she first visited in 2003 as a bookish 17-year-old on a Rotary exchange. It was a big leap; the teenager spoke no Icelandic and arrived at a cold, dark Keflavík airport in the middle of winter. She was still there when the airport closed hours later – the welcoming party had forgotten about her. Eventually, Kent would make friends, learn the language and gain an adoptive second family who started calling her 'Hannah okkar' – 'our Hannah'. In 2020, while Kent was dreaming of Iceland, Kent's mother dropped off a giant cardboard box full of ephemera from her childhood – including journals, letters and folders of printed-out emails from those difficult first months in Iceland. 'I started thinking more and more about what I was experiencing at [this] point in my life. It was this kind of disconnection from self through becoming a parent, not really knowing how to write, and feeling physically alienated from myself because I didn't recognise my own body. 'And then I was reading these emails that my mum had dropped off, where I'm 17 years old and feeling kind of the same way – like feeling on the cusp of something. Feeling kind of frustrated, but also curious, and not really knowing who I am.' 'I was kind of having a second adolescence,' she realised; one that drew her unwaking mind back to Iceland. Kent had always dreamed of being a writer. This walking route isn't far from her childhood home, and when we pass a particularly beautiful paperbark tree, its outer layers peeling off in crisp white sheets, Kent explains how she used to make books out of bark as a kid. That dream took form in Iceland. It was on that first trip to Iceland that Kent encountered the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland. Her life and death – executed in 1830 for her part in the killing of two men – would later inspire Kent's debut novel, Burial Rites, in 2014. Its international success made Kent's name as a writer – while forever linking it with Iceland. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Chasing Magnúsdóttir's story taught Kent the craft of historical fiction – a careful mediation between slivers of revelation in the archive and a creative process that bordered on otherworldly (the final words she ascribes to Agnes came to Kent in a dream). 'It's intoxicating, it's such a heavy process,' Kent reflects. 'You have these moments of discovery which can completely shift your perspective. It's almost euphoric when you can discover something, or when your own speculations have proven to be correct, [because] there's so much doubt involved in any research process.' The story of her 2003 exchange was frequently retold when Kent was a debut novelist on the promotional trail, but she had taken care to keep some things for herself. She had always brushed off the idea of writing a memoir, but after finishing Devotion she was drawn back to those dreams. 'I've never really thought of my life as being interesting enough,' she says. 'That was why I write fiction – I'm drawn to other people's lives.' But after the challenges of her third novel, Kent realised the best way to reconcile this second adolescence was to make sense of the first. 'Spending all this time with my 17-year-old self, even just reading journals and diaries, there's a real anxiety there. Like, 'I've got to work out who I am, and what's authentic.' 'It's this idea of 'becoming', so that then you can get on with things. And then, of course, you keep getting older and the 'becoming' is endless. You're just always becoming, it's a constant state. 'All this yearning and questioning and curiosity converged at this particular point in time. And I thought, I'm getting that feeling I get when I know I've got to write about it to be rid of it.' She thought it would be easy, but her own past still required untangling. That box of her teenage writings was itself an imperfect archive, where the chipper accounts she emailed back to her parents didn't always align with her own memories, or the person she remembered being. 'I hadn't anticipated that at all. So as much as it's a reckoning with something that happened, it's [also] a reckoning with the person right now, and maybe the stories you have told about yourself. That was interesting.' Once border restrictions lifted, she eventually returned to Iceland in 2023 after being invited to open a literary festival. The homecoming allowed her to reflect on a place that had not only transformed her life and writing, but had also been subtly influenced in return. Today, the site of Magnúsdóttir's execution bears a new memorial that quotes from Burial Rites – and the words that came to Kent in a dream. Since she wrote Burial Rites, the public's understanding of the case has also evolved. In 2017 Iceland mounted a mock retrial using original transcripts that weren't available when she wrote the book. This time, Magnúsdóttir's life was spared in favour of a reduced 14-year prison sentence. Kent says she would probably write the book differently if embarking on it today, and wonders if she gave enough weight to the likelihood of sexual abuse in the story. Writing the memoir, Always Home, Always Homesick, gave Kent a chance to reconsider Magnúsdóttir in print. But it also invites readers to commune with another figure from the past: that restless teenage girl who dreamed of being a writer and stepped off a plane into a cold and dark unknown. 'You know that almost physical feeling of just bursting with creativity?' Kent says. 'It was a real pleasure to be able to spend time with a younger Hannah who had that every day, you know? Because I do feel like you have to stay awake to it. 'I do think that you can lose that euphoria, you can lose that sense of wonder, and it's nice to still look at your contemporary creative practice, and be like, 'No, it's still there.' You know, I'm still being led by the same things.' After about an hour the loop has led us back to Kent's home – one of them at least. She waves goodbye at the driveway and heads back inside. After all, she has writing to do. Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent is out now through Picador
The Age
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘Inconvenient women', mortality and a controversial work by Joan Didion: 13 new books to delve into
So here we are, going into the last month of autumn and if you're one of those people getting ready to hunker down in the impending cooler weather then there are plenty of new books for you to stock up on. Memoirs, fiction, science, even a controversial posthumous publication − so much to feast on. No wonder May is named after Maia, the Roman goddess for fertility and growth. Always Home, Always Homesick Hannah Kent Picador, $36.99 April 29 Burial Rites, about the last woman executed in Iceland, was one of those books that captured the imagination of readers when it was published in 2013. Now Hannah Kent has written a lovely memoir about the curious path she took to becoming a writer − an exchange program took her as a 17-year-old to Iceland, a country she chose because she had never seen snow. She had the luck, she writes, to be born into a story-loving family and with that legacy has written three novels and now this tender account of how Iceland captivated her and forged her literary career. Desire Paths Megan Clement Ultimo, $36.99 April 29 In her introduction, Megan Clement, who has lived in Australia, France, England and Zimbabwe, writes that 2020 was the year when 'grief' and 'trauma' were dropped into the cultural mainstream. In the course of this touching and carefully constructed memoir of dealing with the stringencies of the Melbourne lockdowns and the impending death of her terminally ill father, she also considers the nature of home, belonging and the meaning and realities of borders. Little World Josephine Rowe Black Inc., $27.99 April 29 Orrin Bird has been left an unusual bequest − the incorruptible body of a saint in a box made of canoe wood. (Remember the saint in Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional?) The saint was young when thought to have died brutally, but her mind is still active, 'time breaking contract with her body' and 'death has brought very little in the way of answers'. In clear prose, this short, idiosyncratic novel brings us the people with whom the little saint 'travels' through time and landscape, her response to their predicaments and her reflections on her own existence. A remarkable concoction. Everything Lost, Everything Found Matthew Hooton HarperCollins, $34.99 April 30 What was it Faulkner said? 'The past is never dead. It's not even past.' The revisiting of earlier events occurs in many novels, and does so again in Matthew Hooton's much-admired third. Jack is 12 years old when his mother is mauled by a croc in the Tapajos River in Brazil. Many years later, Jack, by now a grandfather, recognises he doesn't 'have infinite time to curate my own past' as his wife Gracie 'slips into ever longer states of forgetting'. But how can he come to terms with the past and his present? Lonely Mouth Jacqueline Maley Fourth Estate, $34.99 April 30 The first novel by Jacqueline Maley, columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, became a bestseller. Her second opens with a paragraph that leaps off the page and plunges you into the story of Matilda, a fry chef at posh Sydney restaurant Bocca, her younger half-sister Lara, a model who lives in Paris, and their flighty mum, Barbara. When Lara's father, the decidedly dodgy actor Angus, reappears in their lives, any sort of equilibrium goes up in smoke. It's hard to put down. Notes to John Joan Didion Fourth Estate, $34.99 April 30 This book is slightly problematic. You wonder whether its author − were she still alive − would have approved of its publication. Joan Didion wrote the adored Year of Magical Thinking, about the 2003 death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. This posthumous book consists of notes addressed to him reporting on sessions with her psychiatrist, and reveals frank comments about their adopted daughter Quintana, alcoholism, depression and much more. If you love Didion, you'll probably want to read this. I Want Everything Dominic Amerena Summit Books, $34.99 April 30 'I acted immorally, but what did literature have to do with morality?' asks the would-be literary star − 'a style machine with no substance' − early in this absorbing novel about truth and ambition. The unnamed narrator stumbles on a controversial, reclusive author − 'sharply chiselled cheekbones, like the bust of a deposed dictator' − and proceeds to try to find out why she disappeared from the public eye. But to woo Brenda's trust, he tells a porky or three, and she might just be leading him on for her own purposes. All will be revealed in Dominic Amerena's delicious debut. The Opposite of Lonely Hilde Hinton Hachette, $32.99 April 30 The world takes its toll and Rose is well aware of that. Somehow, she seems to have shaken off friends, her father has died, her husband is no longer her husband and even her young son Max is trying her patience more than usual. After a near disaster while out shopping, a knight in shining armour comes to the rescue; Ellie, who becomes her new bestie. Loneliness is a curse at the best of times, so a friend indeed for a friend in need is a good thing … usually. Hilde Hinton has written another gentle and perceptive look at the travails of life. Vaccine Nation Raina MacIntyre NewSouth, $34.99 May 1 Biosecurity expert Raina MacIntyre's latest book is a lament at the rise since 2020 of health disinformation and a plea to understand the value of vaccinations given the sad inevitability of a new pandemic. She points out that flu vaccinations in Australia in the over 65s are at 60 per cent, whereas only a few years ago, 70 per cent was the norm. To improve public perception of vaccines and public health, according to MacIntyre, we need 'political will, global cooperation and an integrated approach'. Inconvenient Women Jacqueline Kent NewSouth, $34.99 May 1 Jacqueline Kent's titular women are the 'daughters of the suffragists, the mothers of … 1970s feminists'. These are the writers, ranging from Jean Devanny, author of the controversial The Butcher Shop, to Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal), Katharine Susannah Prichard and Nettie Palmer, who 'used their power with words in support of their beliefs, and to question and change elements of the world'. There are plenty of familiar names, but many not so well known, and Kent brings her cast of writers effortlessly to life. The Power of Choice Julian Kingma NewSouth, $49.99 May 1 Julian Kingma is a wonderful photographer. In this book, he has chosen to photograph terminally ill people who have decided to make use of Voluntary Assisted Dying legislation to ease their anxiety about death and regain dignity through their control of it. His stark black and white images are confronting, tender, beautiful, and terribly revealing. As 82-year-old former yoga teacher Liberty Pack says, 'I have no anxiety. I have a very peaceful feeling about the way my end will be.' The Power of Choice also has short introductions by Andrew Denton and Richard Flanagan. The Emperor of Gladness Ocean Vuong Jonathan Cape, $34.99 May 13 The American poet and novelist won acclaim for his first novel, the brilliantly titled On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and follows it up with a story that begins with 19-year-old Haia about to jump from a bridge. He is stopped by an old Latvian woman, Grazina, suffering from dementia, who invites the troubled youth to stay with her. Both are struggling, but the connection they form through their friendship − their love − from their particular edges of American society brings meaning to them both. Loading The Names Florence Knapp Phoenix, $32.99 May 13 Does it matter what name you have? In Florence Knapp's first novel, Cora gives birth to a boy and wants to call him Julian. Her domineering husband reckons he should be named Gordon, as he is, while her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, reckons the moniker should be Bear. And so Knapp gives us three versions of the boy's life when the family circumstances are at times grim, and his life takes differing paths depending on his name. There's big word of mouth in the publishing world about this sliding doors novel.
IOL News
01-05-2025
- Sport
- IOL News
Nasreddine Nabi: ‘Little bit ill' Kaizer Chiefs can stand up against Orlando Pirates
Nasreddine Nabi Kaizer Chiefs coach Nasreddine Nabi wants fans to trust the process. Photo: ITUMELENG ENGLISH Independent Media Image: ITUMELENG ENGLISH Independent Media Kaizer Chiefs will be under immense pressure to deliver what may be their most pivotal result of an up-and-down season when they host arch-rivals Orlando Pirates at FNB Stadium on Saturday (3pm kick-off). Amakhosi are in danger of finishing outside the top eight for a second consecutive season, currently sitting ninth with 30 points – level with Chippa United, who still have a game in hand over the Soweto side. This will be the first of two Soweto Derbies between the sides, with a high-stakes Nedbank Cup final set for exactly a week after their league clash at Moses Mabhida Stadium – where more than just pride will be on the line, as both clubs are in desperate need of victories in both encounters. Next Kaizer Chiefs Match! 🏆#BetwayPrem ⚽️Kaizer Chiefs vs. Orlando Pirates 👕First Team 🗓️Saturday 03 May 2025 🏟FNB Stadium 🕞 15h00 📺SuperSport 202, SABC 1 🎟SOLD OUT🚫 🚗Toyota Zone 🚌 Park and Ride 🚍Rea Vaya 📢Please come early!#Amakhosi4Life #AlwaysHome #SowetoDerby — Kaizer Chiefs (@KaizerChiefs) April 29, 2025 Nasreddine Nabi and his charges suffered a 1-0 loss against the Buccaneers in the reverse fixture through a classy panenka by Patrick Maswanganyi, and heading into this contest, the Chiefs coach expects another tough encounter. 'The first derby was a good, entertaining game, which was decided on a small detail in the last minute,' the Tunisian said during a pre-match press conference in Johannesburg on Thursday. 'But we believe that we deserved better from that game through our performance. 'Saturday's game will be just like any other derby. It's going to be a very tough game, but the possibilities will be open for both teams. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ 'The Soweto derby is more than football; it has a lot that is beyond football and it's a way of life in South Africa. 'We need to protect it and protect its legacy, as it's as big as any other derby all over the continent and internationally.' Heading into what will be a crucial match in their league season, Amakhosi have struggled to maintain any sort of consistency throughout their season. Their 2-1 win against Mamelodi Sundowns in the Nedbank Cup semi-finals was impressive. But a couple of matches after that, they were humbled by a well-oiled Marumo Gallants side at the FNB Stadium, leaving their place in the top eight in jeopardy. The Chiefs mentor believes his side are still capable of getting a result against a wounded, but dangerous Pirates side coached by Jose Riveiro. 'If we win the derby, it will not be a surprise. If Pirates win it, it will also not be any surprises,' Nabi said. 'Despite our current log standing, we believe that two big clubs are going to play on Saturday. 'Even though we are not in a good position, we feel that whoever wins deserves it.
Sydney Morning Herald
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Family secrets laid bare, ‘inconvenient women' and a croc attack: 13 new books to delve into
So here we are, going into the last month of autumn and if you're one of those people getting ready to hunker down in the impending cooler weather then there are plenty of new books for you to stock up on. Memoirs, fiction, science, even a controversial posthumous publication − so much to feast on. No wonder May is named after Maia, the Roman goddess for fertility and growth. Always Home, Always Homesick Hannah Kent Picador, $36.99 April 29 Burial Rites, about the last woman executed in Iceland, was one of those books that captured the imagination of readers when it was published in 2013. Now Hannah Kent has written a lovely memoir about the curious path she took to becoming a writer − an exchange program took her as a 17-year-old to Iceland, a country she chose because she had never seen snow. She had the luck, she writes, to be born into a story-loving family and with that legacy has written three novels and now this tender account of how Iceland captivated her and forged her literary career. Desire Paths Megan Clement Ultimo, $36.99 April 29 In her introduction, Megan Clement, who has lived in Australia, France, England and Zimbabwe, writes that 2020 was the year when 'grief' and 'trauma' were dropped into the cultural mainstream. In the course of this touching and carefully constructed memoir of dealing with the stringencies of the Melbourne lockdowns and the impending death of her terminally ill father, she also considers the nature of home, belonging and the meaning and realities of borders. Little World Josephine Rowe Black Inc., $27.99 April 29 Orrin Bird has been left an unusual bequest − the incorruptible body of a saint in a box made of canoe wood. (Remember the saint in Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional?) The saint was young when thought to have died brutally, but her mind is still active, 'time breaking contract with her body' and 'death has brought very little in the way of answers'. In clear prose, this short, idiosyncratic novel brings us the people with whom the little saint 'travels' through time and landscape, her response to their predicaments and her reflections on her own existence. A remarkable concoction. Everything Lost, Everything Found Matthew Hooton HarperCollins, $34.99 April 30 What was it Faulkner said? 'The past is never dead. It's not even past.' The revisiting of earlier events occurs in many novels, and does so again in Matthew Hooton's much-admired third. Jack is 12 years old when his mother is mauled by a croc in the Tapajos River in Brazil. Many years later, Jack, by now a grandfather, recognises he doesn't 'have infinite time to curate my own past' as his wife Gracie 'slips into ever longer states of forgetting'. But how can he come to terms with the past and his present? Lonely Mouth Jacqueline Maley Fourth Estate, $34.99 April 30 The first novel by Jacqueline Maley, columnist with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, became a bestseller. Her second opens with a paragraph that leaps off the page and plunges you into the story of Matilda, a fry chef at posh Sydney restaurant Bocca, her younger half-sister Lara, a model who lives in Paris, and their flighty mum, Barbara. When Lara's father, the decidedly dodgy actor Angus, reappears in their lives, any sort of equilibrium goes up in smoke. It's hard to put down. Notes to John Joan Didion Fourth Estate, $34.99 April 30 This book is slightly problematic. You wonder whether its author − were she still alive − would have approved of its publication. Joan Didion wrote the adored Year of Magical Thinking, about the 2003 death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. This posthumous book consists of notes addressed to him reporting on sessions with her psychiatrist, and reveals frank comments about their adopted daughter Quintana, alcoholism, depression and much more. If you love Didion, you'll probably want to read this. I Want Everything Dominic Amerena Summit Books, $34.99 April 30 'I acted immorally, but what did literature have to do with morality?' asks the would-be literary star − 'a style machine with no substance' − early in this absorbing novel about truth and ambition. The unnamed narrator stumbles on a controversial, reclusive author − 'sharply chiselled cheekbones, like the bust of a deposed dictator' − and proceeds to try to find out why she disappeared from the public eye. But to woo Brenda's trust, he tells a porky or three, and she might just be leading him on for her own purposes. All will be revealed in Dominic Amerena's delicious debut. The Opposite of Lonely Hilde Hinton Hachette, $32.99 April 30 The world takes its toll and Rose is well aware of that. Somehow, she seems to have shaken off friends, her father has died, her husband is no longer her husband and even her young son Max is trying her patience more than usual. After a near disaster while out shopping, a knight in shining armour comes to the rescue; Ellie, who becomes her new bestie. Loneliness is a curse at the best of times, so a friend indeed for a friend in need is a good thing … usually. Hilde Hinton has written another gentle and perceptive look at the travails of life. Vaccine Nation Raina MacIntyre NewSouth, $34.99 May 1 Biosecurity expert Raina MacIntyre's latest book is a lament at the rise since 2020 of health disinformation and a plea to understand the value of vaccinations given the sad inevitability of a new pandemic. She points out that flu vaccinations in Australia in the over 65s are at 60 per cent, whereas only a few years ago, 70 per cent was the norm. To improve public perception of vaccines and public health, according to MacIntyre, we need 'political will, global cooperation and an integrated approach'. Inconvenient Women Jacqueline Kent NewSouth, $34.99 May 1 Jacqueline Kent's titular women are the 'daughters of the suffragists, the mothers of … 1970s feminists'. These are the writers, ranging from Jean Devanny, author of the controversial The Butcher Shop, to Kath Walker (Oodgeroo Noonuccal), Katharine Susannah Prichard and Nettie Palmer, who 'used their power with words in support of their beliefs, and to question and change elements of the world'. There are plenty of familiar names, but many not so well known, and Kent brings her cast of writers effortlessly to life. The Power of Choice Julian Kingma NewSouth, $49.99 May 1 Julian Kingma is a wonderful photographer. In this book, he has chosen to photograph terminally ill people who have decided to make use of Voluntary Assisted Dying legislation to ease their anxiety about death and regain dignity through their control of it. His stark black and white images are confronting, tender, beautiful, and terribly revealing. As 82-year-old former yoga teacher Liberty Pack says, 'I have no anxiety. I have a very peaceful feeling about the way my end will be.' The Power of Choice also has short introductions by Andrew Denton and Richard Flanagan. The Emperor of Gladness Ocean Vuong Jonathan Cape, $34.99 May 13 The American poet and novelist won acclaim for his first novel, the brilliantly titled On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and follows it up with a story that begins with 19-year-old Haia about to jump from a bridge. He is stopped by an old Latvian woman, Grazina, suffering from dementia, who invites the troubled youth to stay with her. Both are struggling, but the connection they form through their friendship − their love − from their particular edges of American society brings meaning to them both. Loading The Names Florence Knapp Phoenix, $32.99 May 13 Does it matter what name you have? In Florence Knapp's first novel, Cora gives birth to a boy and wants to call him Julian. Her domineering husband reckons he should be named Gordon, as he is, while her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, reckons the moniker should be Bear. And so Knapp gives us three versions of the boy's life when the family circumstances are at times grim, and his life takes differing paths depending on his name. There's big word of mouth in the publishing world about this sliding doors novel.
