Publications

Adolfo Caminha

Adolfo Caminha’s novel Bom-Crioulo: The Good Black Man, first published in Brazil in 1895, is a ground-breaking account of an affair between a cabin-boy and an escaped slave conscripted into the Brazilian navy.

‘Grim and profoundly subversive… the world’s first modern gay novel.’ — Edward Lacey

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Macar Cithiec / Salim Wilson

First published in 1933, Macar Cithiec’s account of his enslavement in Sudan and subsequent life as a preacher in the north of England is republished for the first time in a critical edition.

‘The ground was scarred by fire. My father came to us with his leopard-skin torn and his ostrich plumes bent and broken, snatching up my brother and gripping me by the hand, taking cover in the glare of the flames. Our land was devastated, warriors slain, women and children carried into captivity, yoked like cattle…’

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Paul Gauguin

Gauguin’s extraordinary chronicle of his life in the South Seas, in a new translation by Paul Keegan, illustrated with images by Gauguin.

‘I breathed in the splendid, pure air. From now on I was another man.’ — Paul Gauguin, Noa-Noa

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A.P. Wavell

This landmark wartime anthology of verse in English, selected by Lord Wavell and published in 1944, is republished with a new foreword by Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor of Channel 4 News.

‘I know from personal acquaintance that [Wavell] was a great man. This is not a term I use easily.’ — T.S. Eliot

‘Other Men’s Flowers opened my eyes to the power of verse.’ — Judi Dench, The New York Times

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John Ryle

Before City of Words became a publishing house it was a newspaper column in the Guardian, combining global reportage with analysis and reflection.

‘These are exceptionally interesting pieces, as fresh and illuminating as when they first appeared. Factual, rooted in event and experience, yet they read like beautiful short stories.’ — Ian Buruma

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Hamid Dirar

An eminent Sudanese biologist’s memoir of growing up in a remote pastoralist community, a world that has been swept away by history.

‘A memoir of rare beauty’ — Nuruddin Farah

‘The book held me spellbound’ — Magdi el Gizouli

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Willie Jones

Out of Our Hands is a lyrical account of the lives of craftspeople and makers in Hokkaido, Japan’s wildest island, those who work, writes Willie Jones, with ‘arrested fire and awakened stone’.

‘An intimate portrait of the thriving world of potters, wood-carvers, weavers, dyers, sword-smiths and glass-blowers in the northernmost island of Japan.’

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Elizabeth Hodgkin

In 2011, following the independence of South Sudan, Elizabeth Hodgkin – a historian and human rights researcher – taught in the remote Dongotono Mountains, joining South Sudanese colleagues in their struggle to keep the school open as the country pulled back from war.

‘If you read no other book this year, read this one. Liz Hodgkin goes to one of the riskiest parts of Africa to teach. In her magical letters home, she shows how the world can be made a better place – for all of us.’ — Miriam Margolyes

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