Within a Sky Full of Earth

LINDESAY IRVINE ON THE GUARDIAN
Rushdie Best of the Bookers

For the second time, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie has been judged the best ever winner of the Booker prize. The Best of Booker award, which has been announced at the London literature festival this afternoon, marks the prize's 40th anniversary. A similar contest - the Booker of Bookers - was held in 1993 to coincide with its 25th birthday, and came to the same conclusion.
Rushdie is currently in Chicago, promoting his latest novel The Enchantress of Florence, and appeared at the ceremony via videomessage. "I have to say this is just a marvellous moment for me and for Midnight's Children ... I'm slightly lost for words which usually I'm not," he said. The recently knighted author's sons Zafar and Milan accepted the trophy, which is the award's only immediate reward (although considerable additional sales can be confidently expected to follow). "I think there's something rather wonderful about my real children accepting a prize for my imaginary children," said Rushdie.
Midnight's Children is a teeming fable of postcolonial India, told in magical-realist fashion by a telepathic hero born at the stroke of midnight on the day the country became independent. First published in 1981, it was met with little immediate excitement. It was an unexpected winner, but went on to garner critical and popular acclaim around the world. The novel's popularity, very unusually for a literary award, is what has secured the prize, having been picked from the shortlist by an online public vote that drew just over 7,800 votes. The shortlist itself was selected by a panel of judges - the biographer, novelist and critic Victoria Glendinning; writer and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, and John Mullan, professor of English at University College London.
As well as securing a welcome boost for Rushdie and the other shortlisted authors, John Mullan argued that the honour was a different kind of accolade to the annual award because of its longer view.
"The Booker is usually a marker of 'this year's thing'," he said. "The contenders for the Best of Booker stretched back almost half a century. It means that we were able to look at books that seem likely to endure because of their inherent qualities, as opposed to 'catching the zeitgeist'."
The Booker - which aims to reward the best novel in English by a writer from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth - has established itself as this country's most influential literary honour. But Mullan was more cautious about whether this award amounts to being declared the very best English novel of the last 40 years.
"The annual Booker winners weren't necessarily the best novels published that year," he explained. "One or two novelists have won for novels which weren't their best."
Glendinning, who chaired the panel, said that "the readers have spoken - in their thousands. And we do believe that they have made the right choice." But her comments fell a little short of the enthusiasm for Midnight's Children on the Booker website, where one voter wrote that "maybe only Shakespeare can top this sort of genius".

AUDIO: Salman Rushdie talks to Stuart Jeffries
BLOG: They picked the right winner
IN PICTURES: The life of Salman Rushdie
REVIEW: Read the original Guardian review (PDF)
EXCERPT: Read an extract from Midnight's Children

When we moved to Bloom Yellow at Albergue we came with a purpose. The mission to bring authors and writers close to the public and get them together with the readers. If not in flesh in every ways possible just to create the flux of their words to the fountain where one could drink them. We started at our open day with a session about Salman Rushdie and his last novel, The Enchantress of Florence, we invited one side and the other, the ones who would tell and the ones who would listen, and we believe, as it happened with us, that both sides took something new when they left. That's one piece of our engine that starts running. One step of the ladder we want to climb. And ahead we want to take you with us.
For now we want to tell - and it's nothing really new as it happened two days ago - that our author of the month at Bloom Yellow, Salman Rushdie, won the Best of Booker prizes. The Booker Prize is a literary award given each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of either the Commonwealth of Nations or the Republic of Ireland. The winner is generally assured of international renown and success.
Midnight's Children, by Rushdie, won this prize in 1981. In 1993 was chosen again as the best novel to win the award in the first 25 years of its existence, it was named the Booker of Bookers Prize. On 8 of July, on a poll who brought readers from across the world, the same title was chosen as the Best of Booker. And so, after 27 years of its publication, Midnight's Children, gains another boost of its own genuine life.
That's it. At Bloom July is our crash test month. We have different things prepared and on wheels and we will tell them right away. Be there and stay tuned.

RELATED LINKS:
• BOOKER PRIZE'S OFFICIAL WEBSITE
• LIST OF BOOKER PRIZE WINNERS
• MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN ON WIKI
[PHOTO © BLOOMLAND.CN FEATURING VICENZO OUR NEIGHBOUR AT ALBERGUE]

A revista LER, fundada em 1987, regressou de novo às bancas, totalmente renovada, com uma nova equipa, liderada por Francisco José Viegas, com um nova imagem gráfica, um novo formato, e com novos colaboradores onde se destaca a maior informação possível sobre os livros à venda em Portugal — mas sempre com vivacidade na vontade de chegar a um público mais vasto, afastando a ideia de que é um produto exclusivamente intelectual.
É talvez com esse desígnio de chegar mais longe, diga-se em termos de vendas e de projecção da revista no mercado nacional, e depois de Lobo Antunes e Saramago, que o terceiro número da nova geração da LER traz Margarida Rebelo Pinto na capa. Lá dentro, numa entrevista de nove páginas com a autora que já vendeu um milhão de livros em toda a sua carreira, Carlos Vaz Marques tenta pormenorizar os passos e o valor desta escritora que tanta polémica tem gerado no mundo literário português, encostando-a um pouco à parede mas sem na verdade a pôr em causa. Poder-se-á pensar que esta escolha entra um pouco em dissonância com o resto da revista, mas o mundo vive do debate de ideias por fazer e das suas discussões. Margarida Rebelo Pinto é um fenómeno da edição de livros e um dos maiores exemplos de sucesso. Será esssa razão suficiente para a dimensão que lhe é dada?
A LER de Julho/Agosto traz ainda os destaques de Zadie Smith, Hisham Matar, Mário Cláudio e de todo o panorama da publicação mais recente, com extractos de Roberto Bolaño, com Os Detectives Selvagens e de David Peace, com Tokyo - Ano Zero. Fala-se também dos 25 livros para deglutir este Verão e das 10 cidades literárias para visitar e ler. Esta revista conta com um dsitinto leque no seu corpo 'clínico' de colunistas e colaboradores onde se podem encontrar os nomes de José Mário Silva, Eduardo Pitta, José Eduardo Agualusa, Inês Pedrosa, Pedro Mexia, Abel Barros Baptista, entre muitos outros.
A Bloom tem trazido discretamente a LER para Macau, onde planeia uma apresentação da mesma com mais detalhe, por agora pode encontrá-la no Albergue de São Lázaro, onde se encontra sediada a Bloom Yellow, onde se encontram à venda ainda os números anteriores.
[A LER ESTÁ AQUI]

Where would I go, if I could go, who would I be, if I could be, what would I say, if I had a voice, who says this, saying it's me?
SAMUEL BECKETT

If you're coming to Macau next weekend or you just live here don't miss this one. In the dread nightlife of Macau Showtime has been on the top range of the wave, boosting with energy and events. And they don't stop. This Saturday Ricky Stone is the one to get.
Ricky Stone ability to connect with clubbers and bring dancefloors alive is truly outstanding. Originally from Sheffield, Ricky rocked clubs and raves across the UK before continuing his rise in the east. Moving to Asia in 2002, he set up base in Hong Kong and swiftly forged a bright future as one of the region's most sought-after DJs. He became the very first Hong Kong/China-based artist to break into the prestigious Top 100 of DJ Mag. Voted #48 in the world by masses of loyal supporters in 2005, he proceeded to climb eight places to #40 in 2006 – and is currently on a roll as the poll's highest ranked DJ based in Asia!
He's also all set to establish his own record label, 852 Recordings, as we speed into 2007 (852 being the phone code for Hong Kong). So secure your seatbelts and brace yourselves for a brand new wave of deep, ballistic beats and endless grooves. Supported by the local DJ's D'mond and Dhoo.

Where: SHOWTIME - Rua de Cantão. Edf. Yee On Kok 38-C 2ºA (opposite to Fortuna Hotel)
Start Time: Saturday, July 12, 2008 at 11:00pm
End Time: Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 6:00am

FOR MORE INFO DIAL: +853 66132267 OR EMAIL: djdmond@gmail.com

- I asked you two times, I will not ask you again. Will you do it?
Before we go any further I have to explain that there are two guys in the middle of a road. A red car with the doors opened wide. Sunshine and a breeze. Still the scent of a distant sea. They are almost the same size. Even if one seems stronger, the other, the one that is about to answer, he doesn't care.
- No! - He tells without looking straightways.
- As you wish. Then don't ask me why!
- I will not! I'm not asking anything.
- I will do it then. And you will see. I will steal it myself!
The first man enters the car. He forgets to close the other door and rides away. At the curve afar the door closes by itself. The other man walks in the opposite direction. Hands on his pockets. Jiggling about his happiness. He's on the loose. He will see nothing at all and he's carefree upon it.

Intelligent Life is an engaging lifestyle magazine from The Economist. With spirited writing and bold design, now available each season, this elegant publication brings its unique perspective to an eclectic range of issues from travel and the arts to fashion and philanthropy. In features and shorter pieces, Intelligent Life delivers insights into the pleasures and potential of modern living. With distinguished writers from around the world and evocative photography commissioned for each issue, Intelligent Life is a dynamic new environment for readers and advertisers alike.
The issue 4, Summer-2008, is dedicated and has a cover story with the architect Zaha Hahid. After being dismissed as a paper architect because her buildings never seemed to be built, Zaha Hadid is now firmly established as a star in her field.
Intelligent Life is now published quarterly: September, December, March and June. The magazine will be available on newsstands all around the world, or by subscription, in the UK, continental Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In Macau, it has just arrived to Bloom. We have just a few. Run while you can!

Eu ouvi-te bem, mas não quis ligar. "Leva a 200", disseste tu. Eu só levei a 50. Era só o que tinha. Não lhe disse que não tinha nenhuma 200, que não tinha dinheiro para a comprar. Ainda.
Eu penso sempre que uma 50 é boa para tudo. Para o bom e para o mal. Não se inventa, vive-se a cru. É como se não tivessemos máquina nenhuma. Como se o nosso olhar bastasse e os nossos bolsos, em contínuo, guardassem as imagens que vamos retendo na necessidade de piscar os olhos.
Isto é tudo teoria, porque a prática é bem diferente. E quando se tem de fotografar uma corrida em que os homens usam os animais, em que o que a rodeia é um charco de lama, já se sabe onde vamos parar. Mas isso não importa, faz parte dos prazeres desta vida e eu agradeço. Furar. Entrar pelo buraco da agulha e estar lá ao pé do relógio e das coisas que acontecem. Olhamos pelo rectângulo da máquina e vivemos momentos únicos em que a beleza da vida se veste por pequenas linhas e formas, encavalitada na velocidade da nossa mente. Essa é a vertigem do real. É um desafio, podermos ter isto para contar mais tarde. Contá-lo como uma recordação que guardamos para nós. É um contacto intímo com o mais profundo do nosso ser. Não há mais ninguém ali e no entanto estamos em plena convivência com tudo o que existe no mundo.
Eu estava na lama a fotografar. Enfiado até aos joelhos, com o galope a entrar-me no obturador, a ocupá-lo de ponta a ponta, e sem nenhum esforço a levá-lo comigo para o tempo eterno, emprestando-o a todos aqueles que não podiam estar no meu lugar, naquele preciso instante. Sorridente porque a 50 me permitia ter aquele sabor. Estar ali perto, com o segurança lá atrás aos gritos a proibir-me e a chamar um milhar de outras pessoas que queriam zelar pela segurança dos acontecimentos, mas que se punham de olhos bem abertos para ver aquilo que eu estava a fazer. Não ali, não àquela hora, mas mais tarde, num impresso inter-planetário que iria escovar as costas do mundo.
Quando voltei e passei as imagens para o teu ecrã ficaste a imaginar como era possível aquilo tudo com uma 200. Não te expliquei. Deixei a dúvida a pairar. Ainda tinha as calças sujas, duas manchas que marcavam a fronteira da minha audácia e o chão do teu escritório cheio de terra. E porque sei que percebes o que é a verdade, sorriste comigo e reviveste aquele pequeno passado que a partir dali deixava de ser só meu.

Fun, educational and sort of quick. This magazine blurs the lines between a great education and great entertainment. Packed full with pages of tidbits, quirky facts and history, a delightfully eclectic new publication who teaches what you should have learned in school - but didn't.
For the record: mental_floss magazine is an intelligent read, but not too intelligent. They're the sort of intelligent that you hang out with for a while, enjoy our company, laugh a little, smile a lot and then you part ways. Great times. And you only realize how much you learned from them after a little while. Like a couple days later when you're impressing your friends with all these intriguing facts and things you picked up from them, and they ask you how you know so much, and you think back on that great afternoon you spent with mental_floss and you smile. Then you lie and say you read a lot.
And here it is now at Bloom Yellow, the July-August issue. If you think you're loosing something on your right or left side of the brain this is the right way to catch it and "feel smart again."
This issue: In the search for Olympic heroes, mental_floss found more than the fastest and the strongest. They also found the craziest, the dirtiest, the meanest, the boldest, the bravest, the saddest, and the funniest. From the swimmer who dog paddled his way to last place to the gymnast who won three gold medals with one leg, they've got all your shocking Olympic stories right there.
Plus: The Quest To Solve The Hardest Math Problem In History. The discovery how Igor Stravinsky introduced the world to music so good that it hurt.
Beijing: Despite the city's 14-inch height limit on dogs, Beijing is living large. Explore its plans to feed the dead, stop the rain, and survive a nuclear holocaust. And much more!

Now we're one of those guys who never stops barking! Do guys bark? Well, now they do! ;-)

A parte inicial deste livro versa sobre um tema que só poderei resumir como o divino e o humano, dado que tenta pensar o vínculo entre as duas coisas. A segunda centra-se em aspectos do Estado contemporâneo. Os dois primeiros capítulos deverão ser entendidos como prólogo e introdução, uma vez que apresentam o ponto de vista e os assuntos, respectivamente. Por último, a título de apêndice, figuram dois textos que originalmente estavam na primeira secção, mas que têm mais densidade conceptual e parecem recomendados para filósofos no sentido rigoroso do termo.
Assim exposto, o propósito pressagia uma seriedade de tratamento que - infelizmente - não encontro ao relê-lo. Como também não encontro incoerências muitos ostensivas, entrego-o ao destino genérico das reflexões escritas, que é semelhante ao das garrafas lançadas ao mar com uma mensagem. Alguém poderá encontrá-la nalguma margem, e ao tirar a rolha dar-se conta de que a mensagem é outra vez um mapa, com indicações relativas a paisagens imprecisamente traçadas à força de quotidianidade ou de estranheza.
Após decénios a cultivar a focagem sistemática para os temas, parto aqui de um princípio que está mais próximo da simples amostra. As experiências são incomparavelmente mais valiosas que as advertências, e embora estejam ordenadas por capítulos, cada uma é a forma ou a totalidade em si mesma, entendendo-se por isso algo que ultrapasse a soma das suas partes.
Em traços largos, acrescentarei que estas páginas têm a intenção de reflectir acerca da banalidade, uma questão pouco banal se decidirmos encará-la de frente. No fragor do mundo mecânico também se manifesta o que assenta através da alteração.

Este é uma espécie de aviso que inicia o livro de Antonio Escohotado, O Espírito da Comédia. É um pedaço de escrita plurifacetado que podia ensaiar uma série de outros temas dentro dele. Mas é de comédia de que fala o livro. Não em teatros, cinemas ou écrans de televisão, mas na vida pública e quotidiana, desde o discurso do primeiro-ministro aos melodramas policiais que dominam as notícias. De facto, com o declínio do género cómico proprimente dito, atingiu-se o auge da farsa moderna: o lucro transformou o ridículo em respeitável modo de vida, pois a possibilidade de ser foi substituída pela necessidade de ter.
O Espírito da Comédia é, em traços largos, uma reflexão acerca da banalidade, usando o autor como referências Aristóteles, Jünger, Castaneda e Cristo. Centrando-se em aspectos do Estado contemporâneo, a obra analisa ainda a ideia do Controlo sob a perspectiva dos respectivos princípios, ritos, colaboradores e valores supremos. O negócio do medo, os equívocos entre autodeterminação e terrorismo, contam-se entre os temas principais.
Este livro recebeu o XIX Prémio Anagrama de Ensaio em 1991.

Antonio Escohotado é um autor heterodoxo, inclassificável. Professor de Direito, Filosofia e Sociologia em Madrid, que lecciona alternadamente. É um especialista em drogas e substâncias proibidas, com inúmeras obras sobre o tema. É anti-proibicionista, mas as suas posições políticas situam-no ambiguamente no centro-direita, com um discurso algo perturbador sobre a política de emigração da Europa e do Ocidente em geral. É no entanto autor de uma obra ampla e diversificada com especial incidência em questões filosóficas, destacando-se igualmente enquanto pensador político cuja conhecida irreverência, ou atitude contestatária, ocupa uma posição ímpar no panorama espanhol.

O Espírito da Comédia, de Antonio Escohotado • ANTÍGONA

Agarrei bem as rédeas com uma das mãos. A outra tinha de estar solta. Para o equilíbrio, foi o que me disseram. As pernas a empurrarem-se uma contra a outra, com todo o lombo do animal pelo meio. Muita força, era preciso demasiada força. Muito mais do que aquela que tinha. Isto durou talvez uns dez segundos. A preparar-me. Quando abriram o portão lembro-me apenas de um raio de sol que me entrou pela retina e que fez parar todo o tempo. Voei de imediato pelo ar e fui cair na terra fofa cheia de estrume dos animais, o cheiro doce acompanhou-me pelos sonhos. Acordei há meia hora atrás, parece-me que um ano ou uma vida depois. Escrever ajuda-me a perceber o que aconteceu.

Normalmente associar sexo a uma mulher famosa significa escândalo. Mas... e se for muito mais do que isso? [ABC]

A busca do prazer é o eixo em torno do qual se rege a história do ser humano. Se estamos a falar de um homem essa procura nada tem de estranho, mas o mesmo não acontece quando uma mulher procura viver para o prazer. Será correcto chamarmos sexodependente a uma mulher que dá rédea solta à sua libido?
A sexualidade foi uma faceta fundamental na vida das 21 mulheres que figuram neste livro. Mulheres com uma forte personalidade, que se impuseram à moral e aos costumes da sua época. Mulheres desinibidas, ousadas, audazes, que viveram em distintos períodos da História e que apenas procuravam o seu lugar no mundo. Sem pudor ou complexos, contra tudo e contra todos, conseguiram ser elas mesmas, o que muito contribuiu para aumentar a fama e o mito que deixaram.

SOBRE A AUTORA
Nascida em Madrid em 1962, Paula Izquierdo é formada em Psicologia e é colaboradora do ABCD Cultural. Publicou vários livros, entre os quais: «El hueco del tu cuerpo»; «La vida sin secreto»; «Picasso y las mujeres»; «La falta» (Cavallo di Ferro, edição italiana). É considerada uma das vozes mais importantes da nova narrativa espanhola. A sua obra encontra-se traduzida em várias línguas.

Sexodependentes: 21 Histórias de Mulheres Radicais, de Paula Izquierdo
PARALELO 40º • 2008

Serpent’s Tail is a renowned British independent book publisher of international fiction and non-fiction, owned by Profile Books Ltd.
Now twenty years old, Serpent's Tail was founded with a commitment to publishing voices neglected by the mainstream. They have a reputation for successfully publishing contemporary fiction (including debut novelists), crime fiction, high quality literature in translation, and informed non-fiction works focussing on popular culture: music, film, biography.
Amongst Serpent’s Tail’s diverse and eclectic range of international authors are: Lionel Shriver, Catherine Millet, Walter Mosley, George Pelecanos, Elfriede Jelinek, Nicholas Blincoe, Stella Duffy, Patricia Duncker, David Toop, Juan Goytisolo, Melissa P, Neil Bartlett, Juan Rulfo, William Burroughs, Michel Houellebecq, Christopher Fowler, Colm Toibin, Manuel Vazquez Montalban and gladly for our side, on the portuguese language authors, there's Fernando Pessoa, Jorge Amado and Mia Couto.
Serpent’s Tail’s logo is an ouroboros and represents the two fundamental attributes of time – imminent annihilation and rising hope, which follow each other over and over again in an infinite cycle: time represented as a serpent swallowing its tail.
The past years have seen a period of unprecedented growth and success for Serpent’s Tail: In October 2004 Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for Literature; in June 2005 Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin won the Orange Prize for Fiction; in December 2005 Jonathan Trigell won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for his debut novel Boy A.
Bloom opened a wide door to Serpent's Tail, they will soon banging around Macau with their set of magnificient characters and stories. Wait for it!

There was a red-haired man who had no eyes or ears. Neither did he have any hair, so he was called red-haired theoretically.
He couldn't speak, since he didn't have a mouth. Neither did he have a nose.
He didn't even have any arms or legs. He had no stomach and he had no back and he had no spine and he had no innards whatsoever. He had nothing at all! Therefore there's no knowing whom we are even talking about.
In fact it's better that we don't say any more about him.
[Blue Notebook No. 10 or The Red-Haired Man by Daniil Kharms]

The bulk of the fiction of Daniil Kharms (the pen name of Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachov) was destined for his desk drawer. Though his work for children was widely published in the Soviet Union, his other efforts were unprintable, thanks to Stalin's iron rule. These tales have now been collected in Incidences, an admirable work, edited and cleanly translated by Neil Cornwell, that highlights Kharms's eerie obsessions: a fear of old women and children, a love of falling bodies and a sensual pleasure in the scents and sounds of daily life. With remarkable precision and fluid language, the stories capture everyday tension in a land where an innocent knock on the door might mean entrapment in a bureaucratic maze or even death at the hands of the military. By yoking official policy with personal ire, Kharms reveals how deeply his contemporaries absorbed and understood their domination. And by casting his tales within the realm of the absurd he lifts anxiety into art. The pity is that his life was as brief as his stories: he was only in his late 30's when he died in 1942, probably in a Leningrad prison.
[ERIK BURNS in The New York Times]

This wonderfully inventive collection of stories presents the writing of Kharms' absurdism at its vibrant, perplexing best. The book is composed of short miniatures: strange, funny, dream-like fragments – many of which the author called ‘incidents’ – that tend to feature accidents, falling, chance violence and sudden death.
An outlaw classic banned by Soviet censors until the 1980s, Incidences vividly conveys the precarious nature of life in Stalin’s Russia. Writing in the 1920s as one of a group called the Society for Real Art, Kharms was first arrested in 1931, and told that he could only publish writing for children. Irrepressible, he was sent to the Gulag in 1941 and died of starvation in a prison hospital a year later. With this new edition of Incidences we can rediscover a Russian writer whose bold writing and tragic death are an urgent reminder of the deranged spirit of his times.
[SOON AT BLOOM]

Incidences, by Daniil Kharms • SERPENT'S TAIL

Bloom wants people to win and create their own wheel of fortune and start drawing another picture. They’re provided by Bloom with a simple apparatus – “pen and paper with effusive colors and shapes”.

This is said at Checkout's website where we were profiled almost at the begining of our life. More than ever this application, who can manage your store like no one, is the right decision. With a Mac platform you can do everything you need and design you life better.
[CHECK OUR PROFILE HERE]

São essas as palavras
que vejo
celebrando na tua boca
todo o curso de uma língua
que no silêncio
soletram a ínfima forma dos teus lábios
Um pequeno vento
uma curva suave
talvez o olhar distante
Tentado a ouvir o que sentes
que sem necessidade de falas
é tudo o que fica por dizer.
[TROCAR BOCA POR LÁBIOS POR LÍNGUA]

Mountains of cash, beautiful women, and a nonstop round-the-world party. This is the life of Calvin Ayre, founder of the online gambling powerhouse Bodog, a company headquartered in Antigua. Shortly after university, Ayre sold everything he owned and with $10,000 to his name he created a brand that could cross over into any industry: The Bodog Entertainment Group. This year, in April, Ayre announced his retirement from Bodog. He now intends to devote his time to The Calvin Ayre Foundation, a private and independent foundation with a charter to do charitable work worldwide. Josh Dean from Fast Company magazine wanted to know why and he met him in Macau earlier this year in February where Ayre was digging for new connections and expansion opportunities for his company. You can read the whole article online or go directly to St. Lazarus district and step into Bloom Yellow (check our map here on the right side) to take the paper version and take it wherever you want. FC is a full-color monthly business magazine that reports on innovation, digital media, technology, change management, leadership, design and social responsibility. It was launched in November 1995 by Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, two former Harvard Business Review editors, and it's now owned by the Forbes 400 billionaire, John Mansueto. FC is the sister of Inc. magazine, a publication dedicated to covering growing businesses and entrepreneurs.

This summer, LUXE CITYGUIDES are proud to introduce the fabulous new LUXE European Grand Tour Box which includes LUXE London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona, Madrid, Istanbul and Florence. Colourful and festive, this fantastic collection offers the best of Europe in a box. At the same time, we have re-vamped the LUXE World Grand Tour Box. She comes back demure, subdued and sexy as can be with 12 revised titles: London, Paris, Rome, LA, New York, Barcelona, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo, Berlin and Shanghai.
Always looking for ways to improve, LUXE would appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Place your orders at Bloom. We have all of them with us just for your pleasure.

[22 DAYS TO GO]

I first read Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita on a balcony of the Hotel Metropole in Saigon on three summer evenings in 1971. The tropical air was heavy and full of the smells of cordite and motorcycle exhaust and rotting fish and wood-fire stoves, and the horizon flared ambiguously, perhaps from heat lightning, perhaps from bombs. Later each night, as was my custom, I would wander out into the steamy back alleys of the city, where no one ever seemed to sleep, and crouch in doorways with the people and listen to the stories of their culture and their ancestors and their ongoing lives. Bulgakov taught me to hear something in those stories that I had not yet clearly heard. One could call it, in terms that would soon thereafter gain wide currency, "magical realism." The deadpan mix of the fantastic and the realistic was at the heart of the Vietnamese mythos. It is at the heart of the present zeitgeist. And it was not invented by Gabriel García Márquez, as wonderful as his One Hundred Years of Solitude is. García Márquez's landmark work of magical realism was predated by nearly three decades by Bulgakov's brilliant masterpiece of a novel. That summer in Saigon a vodka-swilling, talking black cat, a coven of beautiful naked witches, Pontius Pilate, and a whole cast of benighted writers of Stalinist Moscow and Satan himself all took up permanent residence in my creative unconscious. Their presence, perhaps more than anything else from the realm of literature, has helped shape the work I am most proud of. I'm often asked for a list of favorite authors. Here is my advice. Read Bulgakov. Look around you at the new century. He will show you things you need to see.
Robert Olen Butler on Mikhail Bulgakov • MORE TO COME • STAY TUNED
[COVER: GROVE PRESS VERSION]

On the last issue of The New Yorker Macau gets a big highlight on a ten page feature about the mogul of casinos and the Venetian, Sheldon Adelson, the third-richest man in the United States. There you can find a deep investigation on the man and his world quest to power and to leadership.
Come by to Bloom and get this unique magazine. As we have limited stock you can send us an email for reservations, so we can order one more for you. You can also follow the online version.

«Last October, Sheldon Adelson, the gaming multibillionaire, accompanied a group of Republican donors to the White House to meet with George W. Bush. They wanted to talk to the President about Israel. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was organizing a major conference in the United States, in an effort to re-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and her initiative had provoked consternation among many rightward-leaning American Jews and their Christian evangelical allies. Most had seen Bush as a reliable friend of Israel, and one who had not pressured Israel to pursue the peace process. Adelson, who is seventy-four, owns two of Las Vegas’s giant casino resorts, the Venetian and the Palazzo, and is the third-richest person in the United States, according to Forbes. He is fiercely opposed to a two-state solution; and he had contributed so generously to Bush’s reëlection campaign that he qualified as a Bush Pioneer. A short, rotund man, with sparse reddish hair and a pale countenance that colors when he is angered, Adelson protested to Bush that Rice was thinking of her legacy, not the President’s, and that she would ruin him if she continued to pursue this disastrous course. Then, as Adelson later told an acquaintance, Bush put one arm around his shoulder and another around that of his wife, Miriam, who was born in Israel, and said to her, “You tell your Prime Minister that I need to know what’s right for your people—because at the end of the day it’s going to be my policy, not Condi’s. But I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope.” (The White House denies this account.)
Perhaps this exchange contributed to a growing resolve on Adelson’s part to try to force the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, out of office. Adelson and Olmert had been friendly since the nineteen-nineties, when Olmert was a member of the hard-line Likud Party. Olmert became Prime Minister in January, 2006, following Ariel Sharon’s stroke. He, like Sharon, came to recognize the inexorability of Jewish-Arab demographic trends. Olmert declared that a two-state solution was the only way of preserving Israel as a democratic state with a Jewish majority, and he said that he was ready to negotiate with the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Adelson saw Olmert’s actions as a betrayal of principle. He had long wanted to see the Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu returned as Prime Minister, but a revived peace process gave that goal new urgency.»
THE BRASS RING • BY CONNIE BRUCK IN THE NEW YORKER / PHOTO BY BLOOMLAND.CN
[READ IT ALL HERE]

KAREN THERESE + LIZZIE THOMSON PERFORMANCE • AUSTRALIAAn artistic exchange of ideas and research of Australian artists Karen Therese and Lizzie Thomson is happening tonight at the Art and Culture Outreach (ACO) in Hong Kong. They have been in residence at aco_air for 1 month and would like to share their research in an open forum with Hong Kong based artists. OUR HONG KONG is a work-in-progress series of video and conceptual performance works,
which are currently being developed in collaboration with Hong Kong based artist Carrie So.

Karen Therese is a collaborative artist, activist and producer making work grounded in performance, community and media. Her current work includes the multi art ensemble performance work titled, The Riot Act which investigates the relationship between social unrest and news media. Karen is also director and producer of the ground-breaking community arts initiative Gathering Ground - history, ceremony, protest. Gathering Ground brings together over 30 interdisciplinary artists, to create a large scale, site specific performance work developed in Sidney.

Lizzie Thomson collaborated extensively with choreographer Rosalind Crisp for 9 years, performing in her works throughout Europe and Australia. She has recently worked in projects directed by artists including Karen Therese, Dean Walsh, Samuel James, Hans van den Broeck, Fiona Malone, Opera Australia and Nikki Heywood, in addition to her own Performance Space Residency with Brian Fuata and Jane McKernan. Lizzie teaches regularly for professional companies, as well as lecturing at educational institutions.

Carrie So is one of the founders of The Studio - a multi-discipline art-based space where the core intention is to transcend the boundaries of various art mediums, such as visuals and fashion. Carrie has returned to Hong Kong after completing her Honours degree in Theatre and Performance at the University of New South Wales. Her main area of interest is in the effects of spatial manipulation for performance. Her self devised solo works include Begins, exploring memory and her recorded self which focuses on the moving work using visual installation and light. Her experiments sample drama, live music, song, dance, video projection and poetry.

Spearheaded by independent arts and cultural worker Ms May Fung, and generously supported by Dawei Charitable Foundation, Art and Culture Outreach (ACO) is a non-profit making organization founded in 2005, aiming to facilitate both local and overseas art and cultural practitioners to have cross boundary / discipline development encouraging cross-over collaboration in different aspects.

LOCATION: 1/F, FooTak Bldg, 365 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
SCHEDULE: 7.00 PM to 8.30 PM
RELATED LINK: http://www.pact.net.au

Our great challenge at our new store, Bloom Yellow, is the wide selection of magazines we are bringing to Macau. You can check them at St. Lazarus or simply ask for a tittle throwing us an email, we can get access to hundreds of different titles in English, French, Italian, Spanish and German, you can get them either from special order or by subscription through out our counters. Of course Portuguese titles will come sooner or later.
Right now we bring you Cook's Illustrated. Published by Boston Common Press this magazine provides readers with recipes, cooking techniques, and product and food recommendations exhaustively developed in our extensive Test Kitchen facility - the same kitchen featured on our cooking show, America's Test Kitchen. Included are best ways to prepare favorite American dishes - from pot roast and chocolate chip cookies to grilled salmon and fruit cobbler. Best (and worst) cooking equipment - from chef's knives to cookie sheets. Best brands - from canned tomatoes to baking chocolate. Best cooking techniques - from brining shrimp to baking ham. And all of this is provided without a single page of advertising - just 100% cooking information.
On this issue learn the best way to preserve your natural ingredients in the fridge, keeping all its nutrients and flavours safe and in full shape.
[NOW AT BLOOM YELLOW]

This coming Tuesday there will be a special and unique event at both Blooms and in Macau. With Hong Kong stores we are going to launch at the same day the new Moleskine City Notebooks of Hong Kong and Beijing. With them we're bringing a mini-exhibition which explains the usage of this useful guides.
Moleskine has always been a favourite notebook for travelers. The Moleskine City Notebooks - the first guidebooks you write yourself - was launched in 2007, and we are very excited to announce the launch of the first two Asian City Notebooks: Beijing and Hong Kong!
At the occasion of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the first Olympic Games hosted in China, an Olympic insert was specially designed for the Beijing City Notebook, with maps of Olympic Games Area, a bilingual Street Index and Venue Index.
Moleskine Asia gave away 40 advance copies to create 40 unique Beijing and Hong Kong City Notebooks. Two of them are available one at Bloom Red and another at Bloom Yellow for a unique preview.
Apart from Bloom in Macau, all creations will be exhibited showing the unlimited usages of the City Notebooks in other stores in Hong Kong, starting June 24th, 2008 and all summer long. Moleskine Fans and media partners are invited to join and experience these personalized Beijing and Hong Kong City Notebooks.
Come to see them!

Naomi Klein is a Canadian journalist and regular contributor to The Nation, Harpers Magazine and the London Guardian. Beginning with No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (1999), Klein’s work has explored the two major forces that have shaped the post–Cold War world: the extension of radical free-market capitalism and, after 9/11, the resurgence of imperial militarism. More than just investigating the excesses, abuses, and popular resistances to neoliberalism and war, Klein’s journalism consistently links them, exploring how the corporate globalism of the Clinton years flowed seamlessly into the neoconservatives’ preemptive warfare doctrine. Latin America, the first region where neoliberalism was imposed and the first to produce a sustained resistance movement to it, has long been a central focus of Klein’s work, which includes, in addition to her writings, The Take, a 2004 documentary she produced with her husband, Avi Lewis, documenting the takeover of La Forja, a Buenos Aires auto plant, by its workers following Argentina’s 2002 economic meltdown.
In her last book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.
Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.
The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas though our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
[NOW AVAILABLE AT BLOOM STORES]

• READ AN EXCERPT
• WATCH THE SHOCK DOCTRINE SHORT FILM

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein
Penguin • Paperback • May 2008

New just-released editions have just arrived, more additions for your cool, stylish, elegant, sophisticated, dressy, smart; fashionable, high-fashion, in vogue, up-to-date, up-to-the-minute, contemporary, à la mode, chi-chi, au courant; dapper, dashing, trim, trendy, with it, happening, snappy, snazzy, modish, du jour, in, funky, natty, swish, fly, spiffy and kicky holidays.

Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Istanbul, Phuket, New York, Paris, Rome and Tokyo!

LUXE City Guides - the consummately stylish pocket travel guides, packed with astute, opinionated information for the busy and sophisticated visitor.

Each hip, smart and stylish pocket-sized guidebook is packed with a highly selective and opinionated list of only the best shops, restaurants and hotels, unique services and lifestyle options each city has to offer. And what's more, LUXE guides come with handy online updates.

LUXE chooses only the very best, so you choose only the very best.

For four years LUXE has quietly changed the face of travel guides, starting from scratch they re-thought the whole concept of why and how we all travel, of what we need when get there and most importantly what we don't. LUXE is now famous for its take no prisoners attitude, avoiding all the padding, photos, graphics and blah of other guides and getting straight to the meat. The result – ultra smart travel companions stacked with priceless information for the discerning and busy traveller.

In the notoriously fickle worlds of fashion, food and entertainment other guides are hopelessly out of date even by the time they reach the bookstore shelf. LUXE guides are not only updated each year, but come with online updates throughout the year. They’re always ahead so you’re always ahead. Saucy, sleek and slinky in an unique concertina format easy to use, small and discreet enough to fit in your shirt pocket and packed with only the very latest and greatest that each destination has to offer. With LUXE you’re not a tourist, you’re a visitor. It’s a big difference. By the time you get to your destination, all you need to do is relax, because if it’s not in LUXE, you’re not missing anything. Whether you have a few hours or a few days, LUXE really is all you need.

And in case you were wondering, unlike other guides, LUXE accepts absolutely zero paid advertising, free services or products, backhanders or gratuities. And you can't shake a stick at that.

ALL TITLES NOW AT BLOOM RED + BLOOM YELLOW.
[LUXE CITY GUIDES WEBSITE]

This is where Bloom Yellow is. In the new hub of culture in St. Lazarus district. This is Macau. This is not a copy of something else. This is all over the world here.
We close on mondays. Tuesday we're in Love. Wednesday it's art attack. Thursday we don't care, we're still open! Friday, oh Friday we're in love again and we never hesitate. Saturday wait, Saturday's forever and Sunday always comes too late. We should start on sundays. Would be much better if we not leave them.
Just a step away from St. Paul ruins and half step from Rua do Campo and Tap Seac square. It's easy to find. We're here and you are very welcome!

A Casa de Portugal em Macau inaugura amanhã, pelas 18.30, “A Viagem”, uma exposição multimédia descrita como a evocação da descoberta por Vasco da Gama do caminho marítimo para a Índia, através de estrofes de “Os Lusíadas”.
A concepção multimédia do projecto é da autorida da KinoMind Produções, produtora local, e o guião e texto é do jornalista Fernando Sales Lopes, que ao longo da viagem pelos sete momentos descritos vai apresetando a “A Viagem” dos portugueses até ao Oriente, em mais uma iniciativa destinada a assinalar o Dia de Portugal, de Camões e das Comunidades Portuguesas.
“A Viagem é uma instalação multimédia sobre as viagens dos portugueses pelo mundo, e a nossa permanente Viagem interior”, começa por descrever Sales Lopes ao salientar também que “pelo poder das imagens, dos sons, das palavras escritas e ditas, do seu apelo aos sentidos, a viagem de Vasco da Gama até à Índia, descrita pelo nosso maior poeta nos Lusíadas, desenvolve-se em cinco momentos” na mostra.
Aberta todos os dias até 29 de Junho, “A Viagem” começa com a evocação das forças contrárias à sua realização com a imagem do Velho do Restelo, segue pela descida da costa ocidental de África até à passagem do Cabo da Boa Esperança - “que das Tormentas se chamara”- e continua pela subida da costa oriental africana com a recepção em Melinde, “onde se toma piloto para se chegar à Índia, a Calecut, precisamente há 510 anos”.
Aberta todos os dias até 29 de Junho, “A Viagem” começa com a evocação das forças contrárias à sua realização com a imagem do Velho do Restelo, segue pela descida da costa ocidental de África até à passagem do Cabo da Boa Esperança - “que das Tormentas se chamara”- e continua pela subida da costa oriental africana com a recepção em Melinde, “onde se toma piloto para se chegar à Índia, a Calecut, precisamente há 510 anos”.
O sexto momento leva os visitantes da exposição à sala da "Máquina do Mundo" e ao que Sales Lopes descreve como uma viagem "às visões fantásticas do futuro - as terras e as gentes que os portugueses viriam a conhecer - que foram mostradas a Vasco da Gama pela deusa Tethys" e seguindo sempre Luís de Camões.
Depois do sonho das novas terras e gentes mostrados por Tethys, entra-se na última étapa de "A Viagem" e o momento de "E ... o Mar se cumpriu!", onde dois poemas da "Mensagem" de Fernando Pessoa - O Infante e o Horizonte - e o som de fundo da música de Dulce Pontes fecham a "A Viagem" dos visitantes do antigo Albergue da Santa Casa da Misericórdia.
"É o corolário de uma Viagem nossa, interior, estruturante, que se guia, sempre se guiou, muito mais pela agulha do coração do que pelos ventos da razão", explica Fernando Sales Lopes.
Construída numa estrutura de bambú, “A Viagem” é uma exposição que estará traduzida para chinês e que a Casa de Portugal pretende, como explica o arquitecto Carlos Couto, “levar às escolas para celebrar os Lusíadas e a viagem de Vasco da Gama aos estudantes”.
Além da exposição, as celebrações do Dia de Portugal em Macau continuam no Sábado com um espectáculo da fadista catalã Névoa, cujas receitas de bilheteira irão reverter a favor das vítimas do sismo da província chinesa de Sichuan.
[NA SALA DE EXPOSIÇÕES DO ALBERGUE ]

Bloom * Creative Network is proud to announce the opening of Bloom Yellow, the new Bloom at St. Lazarus District.
To celebrate the opening, Bloom Encounters 2008 invites you for the presentation of Salman Rushdie's latest book, "The Enchantress of Florence", for which two distinguished teachers of UMAC and IIUM accepted Bloom's invitation to brighten the talks. Glenn Timmermans will be introducing the author and Tudor Vlădescu will be leading the presentation of the novel.
As it is Bloom Yellow's opening day, there will be a lucky draw of 3 books, to be attributed to 3 lucky attendees. Bring along your name card and drop it in the bowl as you arrive or simply fill in a card with your name and contact.
Bloom Yellow is located in the lovely Albergue, previous known as 'Old Ladies House', and will be a hub of beauty fool books and magazines that you may enjoy with a cup of coffee. Albergue hosts a lot of surprises, and it's a hidden paradise within the city as you can't get any other place. Come and see what's happening there.
Meanwhile, Bloom Red, the Bloom you all know, will continue blooming in the Hung Kung Temple Square.
See you there!
[DOWNLOAD THE POSTER HERE]

Round the hairpin / We go speeding / In a rented car
A few days abroad / Is only we could afford
We go speeding / Don't let me die
[THIS IS OUR FAVORITE, PUT IT LOUD AND LISTEN TO IT HERE]

At Bloom we like more food books than food itself. These type of books come in various forms and flavors. They spread their virulent fragrance around the walls infecting the other volumes and conquering the small world we live in.
In a triumphant return to the short story, the form in which she made her extraordinary debut with There Are Jews in My House, Lara Vapnyar gives us a delightful new collection in which food and love intersect, along with their overlapping pleasures, frustrations, and deep associations in the lives of her unforgettable characters.
From “Broccoli” to “Borscht” to “Puffed Rice and Meatballs,” each of these new stories invites us into the uniquely captivating private worlds of Vapnyar’s Eastern European émigrés. There’s Nina, a recent arrival from Russia, for whom the colorful abundance of the vegetable markets in New York represents her own fresh hopes and dreams... Luda and Milena, who battle over a widower in their English class with competing recipes for cheese puffs, spinach pies, and meatballs... Sergey, who finds more comfort in the borscht made by a paid female companion than in her sexual ministrations. Each of the women and men who inhabit these witty, tender, and beautifully observed stories needs and longs for the taste and smell of home, wherever – and with whomever – hat may turn out to be.
Russian in its wit and in many of its rich details, but American in its insistence on the quest for personal happiness, however provisional and however high the cost, Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love masterfully illuminates a very particular facet of desire with entirely charming results.
Published by Pantheon, an imprint of Random House US, with whom we are in honey moon since we opened, this is the perfect book to start with when you want to complete your most deep desire towards your favorite ingredient. Well, whatever. Soon, that's what we hope, we'll push Random House books better into Bloom. We'll keep you informed.

Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love, by Lara Vapnyar
Pantheon • Short Stories • Hardcover • June 2008

...since Diego Velázquez was born.

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (June 6, 1599 – August 6, 1660), commonly referred to as Diego Velázquez, was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary baroque period, important as a portrait artist. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family, other notable European figures, and commoners, culminating in the production of his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).

The importance of Velázquez's art even today is evident in considering the respect with which twentieth century painters regard his work.

Pablo Picasso presented the most durable homagesto Velázquez in 1957 when he recreated Las Meninas in 58 variations, in his characteristically cubist form. Although Picasso was concerned that his reinterpretations of Velázquez's painting would be seen merely as copies rather than unique representations, the enormous works—including the largest he had produced since Guernica in 1937—earned a position of relevance in the Spanish canon of art. Picasso retained the general form and positioning of the original in the framework of his avant-garde cubist style.

The Long Blondes are a 5-piece English indie rock band from Sheffield. The band is known not just for their music, but also their "glamorous punk" image. Front-woman Kate Jackson was featured in The Guardian's style section and the NME cool list, moving from 39 in 2005 to 7 in 2006. When questioned about her place in the first NME list by The Guardian, Jackson remarked "Probably because they didn't have enough girls. It was so overrun with boring boys, they needed someone to bring a touch of glamour."
The Long Blondes' songs reflect a number of influences, including 60s pop, Buzzcocks, The Ramones, post-punk and new wave. Traces of work by another Sheffield band, Pulp can also be seen in their recordings, their debut album was indeed produced by Steve Mackey, bassist of Pulp. The prominence of these various influences varies from song to song. Jackson's vocals have been compared to Ari Up of The Slits, Deborah Harry of Blondie and those of Au Pairs. Dorian Cox's backing vocals are also very similar to those of former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker. The music features angular guitars and prominent bass guitar lines. However, the band themselves claim somewhat more eclectic influences than their sound suggests, citing Burt Bacharach, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Chinn and Chapman, and Stock, Aitken and Waterman as influences. The band gained notoriety early on in their career for their bold proclamation "We do not listen to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors or Bob Dylan. We chose an instrument each and learnt to play it." This quote was first published on their website, and is a comment on the derivative nature of the contemporary music scene rather than a criticism of the aforementioned artists.
[Listen to them HERE and HERE]

Charles Frieth, preeminent composer, conductor and prodigious womanizer, is preparing for a performance of one of his early works, and the world premiere of "Demonic Aubade". Obstinate and myopic, he is oblivious to the growing turmoil around him; his wife's poor health and dissatisfaction; the exhausted efforts of his secretary; and, the disquieting diligence of his housekeeper, Maria.

As the first performance draws near, the maestro is suddenly awoken to the chaos, and as Charles struggles to regain control of his life, a terrible tragedy begins to unfold. "For You" is a beautifully wrought and compelling libretto - It is Ian McEwan at his very best.

Come to Bloom to see the latest news!

A Room Full of Toys

What exactly do toys do when there’s nobody there to watch them?
Here is an amazing journey through the world of toys and the children’s rooms that were their homes, from the late 19th century to the present day. More than seven hundred toys from the superb collection at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, are brought to life in a series of fabulous and fantastical scenes, strikingly staged to produce a toy’s-eye view of more than a century of fun and games.
Dolls and teddies, trains and planes, robots and animals, favourite characters ranging from Donald Duck and Barbie to Luke Skywalker and the Ninja Turtles – all of these and more run riot through a land that seems both strange and familiar, comforting and unsettling, and absolutely evocative of the pleasures and pains of the playroom.
The book is led by the gaze of Alberto Manguel, whose text explores what toys mean to both children and adults – how toys can tell us who we are and allow us to imagine what we may become. Manguel’s words and the extraordinary images come together to form a dazzling recreation of the dreamlike world of childhood, the serious business of pretending – and the magic of make-believe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Internationally acclaimed as an essayist and novelist, Alberto Manguel is also a prize-winning translator and has edited ten anthologies. Author of the award-winning A History of Reading and News from a Foreign Country Came, his most recent novel is Stevenson Under the Palm Trees. Born in Buenos Aires, he has lived in Italy, England, Tahiti and Canada, and now lives in France, where he was named an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Béatrice Salmon is Director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Dorothée Charles is a Curator in the Department of Toys at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Michel Pintado is a photographer, illustrator, special effects designer and modelmaker. Jean Haas is an award-winning set designer who has worked on many theatre productions, exhibitions and concerts. Simon Saulnier designs exhibitions and creates special effects for films and advertising.

A Room Full of Toys, by Alberto Menguel • THAMES & HUDSON

This book awaits you at Bloom!