Tuesday 29 May 2012

MUP Author to present her book to the President of Ireland

Eva Gore-Booth
MUP author, Sonja Tiernan, will formally present her book Eva Gore-Booth: An Image of Such Politics to the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins at his official residence in Dublin, Áras an Uachtaráin.  

The first dedicated biography of Eva Gore-Booth was released by MUP on 22 May and will be presented to the President on Tuesday 5 June at a special event. This is one the highest honors an Irish author can receive. Photographs of the reception will be posted after the event.

Friday 18 May 2012


Yilin Press to publish Chinese translation of Marxism and History

The Chinese translation of Marxism and History, Second Edition, by Stephen Rigby, is due to be published next month. 

Foreign translation rights have been bought by Yilin Press, Ltd, a Nanjing based publishing house.  Established in 1989, Yilin Press are one of the most renowned publishers of literature and social sciences in China. They've been praised for their high academic standards by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and work closely with UNESCO publishers. They have also recently earned the honour of National Model Publisher.  

We're very pleased that Yilin Press are publishing and distributing Marxism and History in China.

Wednesday 16 May 2012

Mexico's most celebrated novelist dies at 83

The writer and polemicist Carlos Fuentes has died in hospital in Mexico City.  Fuentes published more than 60 works, including novels, short stories, essays and plays, in a career that spanned six decades.  El Gringo Viejo (The Old Gringo), written in 1985, was the first Mexican book to feature in the New York Times bestseller list, and was evetually made into a Hollywood film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda.  His fictionalised account of his love affair with the movie star Jean Seberg inspired Diana, O la Cazadora Solitaria (Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone, 1994).

Aura, one of many novellas by Carlos Fuentes, was first published in 1965, and is well known for using an innovative narrative technique, using second person narration in the present and future tenses.

This edition is edited by Peter Standish, a Professor of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, at East Carolina University.

The Narrative of Carlos Fuentes, by Steven Boldy, examines the full range of Carlos Fuentes’ art, from the critical realism of his early novels to his highly experimental novels of the late sixties, and to his novels from the eighties where national identities are playfully evoked and largely dismantled through intertextual games, migrations of people and ideas.

Monday 14 May 2012

A Clockwork Orange celebrates 50th anniversary

A Clockwork Orange is 50 years old today! To celebrate this significant milestone, we're offering a special 25% discount off our very own A clockwork counterpoint, by Paul Phillips.


A clockwork counterpoint is the first book to examine the musical side of Anthony Burgess, an astonishingly prolific, underrated and talented composer, revealing how his lifelong involvement in music is an essential key toward understanding his life and work.

To take advantage of this celebratory offer, simply contact our distributors on +44 (0)1752 202301, or email your details to orders@nbninternational.com, quoting the discount code OTH284. This offer expires on 30th June 2012.

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Photos from the launch of Timed Out

The launch of Timed Out, by Leon Wainwright took place on the 2nd May. It was hosted by Iniva at Rivington Place in London.

The launch included a panel discussion with Sonia Boyce and Paul Wood and chaired by Paul Goodwin.  An audio visual of the panel discussion will follow shortly.




Photo's courtesy of Iniva

Friday 4 May 2012

4th May marks the anniversary of the 1926 British General Strike and the release of our ground-breaking new book on this fascinating subject

In recognition of today's anniversary, this week Manchester University Press releases the first book on the 1926 British General Strike volunteers.


A lark for the sake of their country by Rachelle Hope Saltzman is the first full-length work dedicated to the role of the upper and middle-class volunteers in the General Strike

A path-breaking title it tells the stories of the upper and middle-class ‘volunteers’ in the strike. With behaviour derived from their play traditions - the larks, rags, fancy dress parties, and treasure hunts that prevailed at universities and country houses - the volunteers transformed a potential workers’ revolution into a festive public display of Englishness. 

Saltzman recreates the cultural context for the volunteers’ actions to explore how volunteers, strikers, and the Government used the strike to define national identity; it also considers how and why scholars, novelists, playwrights, diarists, museum curators, local examine historians, and even a theme restaurant have continued to recycle the event.

Using the methodology and theory of folklore, social anthropology, literary criticism, and social history, this study presents a cultural ethnography of one of modern British history’s most significant events. From 1985-87, the author conducted correspondence and interviews with nearly 300 volunteers, strikers, and contemporary observers, research that is now impossible to replicate. Those materials, combined with archival documents and a survey of contemporary media along with novels, diaries, plays, memoirs, histories, and exhibitions, provided the basis for exploring the traditional expressive culture of the British upper classes.

This book will appeal to aficionados of British social and cultural history, folklore, and popular culture as well as to undergraduate and graduate classes in British studies, modern labour history, and social anthropology as well as those on collective memory, history making and identity. 

Author Rachelle Hope (Riki) Saltzman says,

‘This book tells the story of the volunteers of 1926. It pays particular attention to the ways in which the traditional play behavior of middle, upper-middle, and upper-class men and women influenced their actions—and how others interpreted those actions. While dismissed at the time and since as a joke, the volunteers’ efforts represented serious attempts to assert their right to define Englishness’.