Books published by Balestier Press

How do you brand a revolution?In his engaging new book, Taking a Bite out of the Apple: A Graphic Designer's Tale, Rob Janoff - designer of the world-famous Apple logo - shares what it was like to live through the heady days of the home computer revolution. From his fateful meeting with Steve Jobs in Silicon Valley as a young art director in 1977, to his current position heading up an international branding company with his Australian business partner, Rob's career continues with its focus on distilling a client's business personality into a memorable icon.Taking a Bite out of the Apple is an intimate view into how Rob's design for a young, start-up company became a defining moment in a long career. After working on national brands like Apple, IBM, Intel, Kraft and Kleenex at top US agencies, Rob now enjoys working with a diversity of companies from Japan, Italy, Australia, China and the UK.Telling the true tale of how the globally loved icon came to be, Rob offers insight and inspiration to young people considering the field of graphic design - and to the young at heart who share his love of memorable graphics. Reviewed By Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite:Taking a Bite Out of the Apple: A Graphic Designer's Tale (Hearing Others' Voices) is a nonfiction memoir for young adults written by Rob Janoff. While he had gone to college to study industrial design, Janoff was more intrigued by the creative possibilities that graphic design seemed to offer. Indeed, his whole outlook on the world seemed to point him in that direction. He had had some success in designing logos for new tech companies when he went to work for the Regis McKenna Agency in Silicon Valley. That tech experience led his boss, Regis McKenna, to offer him a somewhat off-the-wall assignment. Janoff's mind was far away as his boss discussed the assignment, but eventually the words "apple" and "computers" broke through his distraction. Janoff even knew of Steve Jobs, the iconic inventor who, with his partner, had turned a garage into the birthplace of the personal computer. But how to render Steve's concepts into a logo? Janoff's mind kept toying with the idea, his hand quickly sketching and erasing ideas as they paraded through his imagination. Then he hit on it.Rob Janoff's nonfiction memoir for young adults, Taking a Bite Out of the Apple: A Graphic Designer's Tale, is a beautifully written and fascinating account by the designer of the world-famous Apple logo. Anyone who loves computers and has an interest in how the personal computer came to be will have as much fun reading this book as I did. But there's more to this memoir than tech history. Janoff's description of how he tackled the project, working feverishly with a bowl of apples as inspiration is a joy to read. Any creative person should find Janoff's story inspiring, and his smooth conversational style makes following along as he works towards that one perfect image a grand and entertaining experience. Taking a Bite Out of the Apple: A Graphic Designer's Tale is most highly recommended.

Roger Pulvers' translations - with detailed notes and commentary - of Japan's greatest tanka poet, Takuboku Ishikawa, is now available here for the first time in this volume. Each tanka - a poem that in Japanese has thirty-one syllables - is a microcosm of the human psyche, revealing astounding insights into human behaviors, love (and hate) relationships, as well as social and political circumstances that presage our own times.In his short life (1886-1912) Takuboku experienced many loves, a tumultuous marriage, fatherhood of three children, one of whom died shortly after birth, a brilliant career as a journalist and wildly popular poet, not to mention a political awakening that was leading him onto the path of the revolutionary.In "Old Love Letters," he writes ... There are so many spelling mistakes In those old love letters. I never noticed until now.In "The New Year" ... Will this year be like all others With my mind conjuring only things That the world will not accept?And in "The Patient" ... One push of the door, a single step And the corridor seems to stretch As far as the eye can see.Pulvers writes in The Illusions of Self ...Takuboku puts every aspect of his character on the line for us to judge. Japan today craves writers who have the integrity of self-expression and the clarity of vision on their society that Takuboku expresses to us. In the mirror of his works, we are compelled to see our own face in a clear and honest light.Of these translations, distinguished author and translator of American literature Motoyuki Shibata has written: "These masterful translations will be a revelation for lovers of Takuboku's poetry while, at the same time, comprising a stylish introduction to those who wish to know it."

"If you want to know how Russians feel about their country, read the poetry of Sergei Esenin. "The 'old plank bridge' spans not only eras but centuries; not only one Russia with another, but Russia with the rest of the world."So writes acclaimed author and translator Roger Pulvers about this collection of translations of the best and most moving poems by Sergei Esenin, still, nearly a century after his death, Russia's most popular poet.I am the last poet of the village.The old plank bridge is humble in my songs.With extensive notes and commentary on the poet, his life, loves and the tumultuous times that straddled the Russian revolution, this new collection of beautiful poems brings to light an era of grand romance and high tragedy.¿¿¿Roger Pulvers is an author, playwright, theater director, translator and filmmaker. He has published more than fifty books in Japanese and English, including novels, essays, plays and poetry. Working as assistant to director Oshima Nagisa on Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence brought him back to Japan and inspired him to become the award-winning playwright, film director and prolific author he is today. His novel, Hoshizuna Monogatari (Star Sand), which he wrote in Japanese, was published by Kodansha, Japan's largest publisher, in 2015, and subsequently in English and French in 2016 and 2017 respectively. It was released as a film, directed by him, in 2017. His most recent books are the novels, Half of Each Other and Peaceful Circumstances, his autobiography, The Unmaking of an American, and a cultural memoir, My Japan, all published by Balestier Press.

Roger Pulvers has been writing fiction set in Japan for over fifty years. Now, for the first time, a collection of his very best short stories has been brought together in a single volume. Some of these stories, like the one that gives the collection its title, The Charter tells the story of a man who has chartered a boat on Tokyo's Sumida River. He is celebrating his eightieth birthday and has invited his entire family to celebrate with him. But, curiously, it is a little girl engaging with him on the deck who comes to symbolize the real love that seems absent in his 'loved ones'. The two make a promise to each other there and then that represents another kind of 'charter'.The great variety of characters encountered in these poignant and often highly humourous stories include a little boy who, it seems, will stop at nothing to get his feuding parents together again; a young woman who reconnects with an ancestor and finds love in the process; a beautiful Japanese singer who goes to Las Vegas to make it big time; a Japanese salaryman who, on an impulse, travels to Holland in search of Vermeer and loses himself instead; a naïve American who falls for a young Japanese woman, only to have to witness her modelling in the nude for a dissolute artist he despises; two young women - one Japanese, the other Indonesian - who discover that they have the same father ... and other colourful characters that give great insight into contemporary Japanese life.

"The book spells out the great human achievements that have been brought about by humans who hunt and gather - across the millennia. It also shows that these achievements go beyond hunting and gathering alone. They depend on particular ways of understanding the human environment and the world at large. Barnard points out that there is a lot to be learned for our own lives when getting to know a life based on hunting and gathering. This also has to do with the fact that their mode of living in many ways continues to be deeply enshrined in what we are and what we do. At the same time, learning from hunter-gatherers helps to unsettle us in a positive way. Maybe your and my way of doing things is not without alternative after all. And getting to know alternative ways of life that have been successfully put into practice by the people described in this book are a better start than fantasy and science fiction. However, the biggest lesson of all is to understand how things are connected and how people are connected. This also means that it would be naive to think that one could simply import isolated practices from elsewhere without there being effects that reach far into all domains of life. The living hunter-gatherers that Alan Barnard introduces us to in this book are often prevented to continue their way of life because of what the rest of us do: the amount of resources that we use and waste, the grabbing of land that serves a world economy banking on unsustainable growth, the power that we abuse when dealing with indigenous minorities and a false sense of superiority towards hunter-gatherers."Thomas Widlok, University of Cologne Alan Barnard FBA is Emeritus Professor of the Anthropology of Southern Africa in the University of Edinburgh. He studied in the United States, Canada and England and has taught at the University of Cape Town, University College London and the University of Edinburgh. Since 1974, he has conducted field research with Bushmen or San in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. He served as an Honorary Consul of Namibia for eleven years, and in 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Among his many books are Research Practices in the Study of Kinship (co-authored, 1984), A Nharo Wordlist with Notes on Grammar (1985), Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples (1992), Kalahari Bushmen (children's book, 1993), History and Theory in Anthropology (2000), Social Anthropology (2006), Anthropology and the Bushman (2007), Social Anthropology and Human Origins (2011), Genesis of Symbolic Thought (2012), Language in Prehistory (2016) and Bushmen: Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers and Their Descendants (2019). His works were all written in English, but have been translated into 18 other languages.

ROGER PULVERS'S ACCLAIMED TRANSLATION of Night on the Milky Way Train, previously available only in a bilingual edition in Japan, is here now for readers of all ages around the world to enjoy.Night on the Milky Way Train occupies the place in the literature of Japan that Alice in Wonderland does in the English-speaking world. This amazing story of two boys - Kenji named them Giovanni and Campanella - who find themselves on a miraculous train running through the heavens, has entranced Japanese readers for many years. What happens to the boys is a tale of both immense sorrow and equally immense hope.In addition, Pulvers offers nine other translations, all of them appearing in print outside Japan for the first time. The comical character Gauche, whose cello playing soothes the animals at his humble little cottage. The two hunters who find the tables literally turned on them as they are about to be served up to the animals they have been hunting. The pig at the Frandon Agricultural School who refuses to die. The nighthawk who, rejected by the other birds, chooses immortality in the form of a star … and more.Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) has been compared to Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. But his profound compassion, stemming from his Buddhist faith and his scientific background, makes him that unique combination of East and West that symbolises Japan's great gifts to the world. A dedicated vegetarian (a rarity even in today's Japan) and a staunch believer in animal rights mark him as a pioneer of his time and a writer who speaks directly to the greatest concerns of the twenty-first century.

Every culture has some system of knowledge to explain its place in the world. Some of these systems are more complex than others, but each has an internal consistency based on what people have experienced. Some cultures have been characterized as "savage," or "primitive" and have been considered as inferior by other cultures. Some cultures have become highly "scientific," based on certain accepted practices of controlling their environments. This book presents examples from cultures in Mesoamerica and North America of different ways of seeing the world. These examples may inspire readers to examine their own ways of knowing. Clara Sue Kidwell has served as associate dean for program development at Bacone college in Muskogee, Oklahoma (2011-2013), director of the American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2007-2011), and director of the Native American Studies program and Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma in Norman (1995- 2007). Her tribal affiliations are Choctaw and Chippewa. She received Ph.D. in History of Science from the University of Oklahoma. Before joining the faculty there in 1995 she served for two years as Assistant Director of Cultural Resources at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.Her publications include Choctaws and Missionaries in Mississippi, 1818-1918, A Native American Theology, co-authored with Homer Noley and George Tinker, Native American Studies co-authored with Alan Velie, and The Choctaws in Oklahoma: From Tribe to Nation, 1855-1970.

Half of Each Other takes place in Tokyo. It tells the story of Nick and Setsuko York, a once very fond married couple devoted to their adorable five-year-old daughter, Emi.Half of Each Other is the story of a woman and a man challenged by the shock of an overwhelming grief. Both are overcome by an immense sorrow … both are tempted by the passions of an extra-marital affair.We are all half of each other.How these two people, who were once madly in love with each other, overcome their grief and come to terms with the death of their daughter, provides the narrative of this intensely moving, heart-rending and uplifting Irish-Japanese love story.

Kris et Kate construisent un bateau dans le sable et leur chien Holly gambade autour d'eux. Ils s'aventurent dans une crique, sous le regard de leur me¿re reste¿e sur le rivage.Un doux conte magique admirablement illustre¿ qui incite ä la de¿couverte de l'histoire naturelle.Traduit de l'anglais par Gwendolyne Thio et Jocelyne Chalumeau-Thio

"It is my belief that there is no such thing as silence," declares profoundly Evelyn Glennie. In Listen World!, the Grammy Award-winning percussionist challenges misconceptions about deafness, and asserts instead the incredible world of sound she lives in. Having dedicated her entire life to breaking boundaries, Glennie now seeks to transform the entire world - to listen, and to teach others to listen.Listen World! is an incredible insight into the mind behind a musical revolution. From innovative collaborations with choreographers to the incorporation of technology into her work, from her performance at the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony to her production of Shakespeare, Glennie has undoubtedly changed the way we think of sound in the world. More than that, her autobiography gives an unprecedented sense of the character, passion and heart behind it all. In listening to her story, every reader moves one step closer to the compassionate, sensitive, and individual new world she imagines."I've never met anyone who listens with as much of herself-mind, body, and heart-as does Dame Evelyn Glennie. Her listening is a bridge, a profound and self-giving attentiveness that can heal what can't be cured. I was blessed to learn from Evelyn what it means to truly listen, and I trust you will be as well."-Michael Verde, Founder of Memory Bridge"In this immensely personal book, Evelyn Glennie asks us to listen with our whole being to the magic of music"-Keith Howard, Professor of Music, SOAS, University of London"This book is an invitation to tap into the wonders of listening, what that means to you and everything you engage in. What happens when you engage with the chatter in your head? When you travel to school and college. Is listening only about sound or can our whole body be a resonating chamber? Is listening about observing? How can we begin to enhance our relationship to 'listening' and how can it influence all the decisions you make from minute to minute? My experience is that listening is an activity that never sleeps… even when we are asleep we continue to listen! What an opportunity we have to re-engage, rethink, revisit our everyday lives to make what we do much more vivid and meaningful, and as a result, feel part of the wonders of the world?"- Evelyn Glennie

"Roger has fearlessly thrown himself into the whirlpool of cross-culturalism. His life reads like an adventure story."-Ryuichi SakamotoThe Unmaking of an American is an engaging and entertaining cross-cultural memoir spanning decades of dramatic history on four continents. Author, playwright, translator, journalist, theater and film director Roger Pulvers explores the nature of memory through life connections created from people and places, both past and present.Born into a Jewish American family in New York and raised in Los Angeles, Roger Pulvers journeyed outside the U.S. for the first time in 1964, when he visited the Soviet Union, returning there the following year and heading to Poland in 1966. In 1967, he moved to Japan, forming a tie to that country that has lasted more than half a century. Pulvers became an Australian citizen in 1976 and has chronicled life-political, social and cultural-in those countries in hundreds of articles and essays, as well as works of fiction."No memory, however trivial and banal, is unimportant if it remains with you; no feeling that was once felt cannot be retrieved when you feel the absolute need to access it. And it is our memories that order the chaotic conglomeration of experience and sentiment that make up our selves.""I drifted from the United States to Eastern Europe to Japan and then to Australia. This movement in itself was no different from that of hundreds of millions of people who have migrated from one country to another. The only anomalous feature of my choices is that not many people leave the "land of golden opportunity" for good; not many choose to opt out of their tie to "the home of the free.""You are taking a step. But it is not leading you in a straight line. Each step reminds you that your life is taking a turn, however imperceptible, and each turn represents a moment in the present where the future can be glimpsed simultaneously. What is the direction of these stepping-stones? Where are they leading you? It is impossible to tell. They lead nowhere, and they seem to come back to the place you were before."

The book is a vivid honest story of a Fashion designer, looking for her inner voice and true self, throughout creative process dynamics, critical thinking, inspirations, fashion dramas, failing attempts and lots of self-analysis.Deep socio-anthropological reflections alternate with story-telling, helping the curious reader to discover the intricate maze of an artist's mind, unravelling doubts and questions regarding the psychological flux at the base of every creative process, its relevance, and crucial role in fostering a deeper sense of awareness and consistent artistic sensitivity within the individual.The "blank canvas", as a constant, delicate presence, since the very beginning, is a metaphor of our existence, of a never-ending learning process, that finally finds its perfect solution and representation in the final chapters, unleashing its inner deepest meaning. The results is a perfect blend of narrative, non fiction, and ironic autobiography, that not only leads the upcoming artist, but also the curious reader, even when avulsed from creative processes towards a journey of re-discovery of its imaginative potential, and creative being.Marella Campagna is a fashion designer by origin and a writer by adoption.In her adolescence she endured classical studies, which lit her passion for literature, reading and writing, complementing the artistic skills which she nurtured ever since she was a child, particularly in the areas of drawing and garment design.

Once upon a time in the long long ago there were two children. One was poor. One was rich. One was very good at sums. The other one was not. But they liked each other a lot. And all the time they were playing together... A fairytale retold by Ruth Finnegan, illustrated by Liz Amini-Holmes.

Mother Bunny prepares a special family dinner for Mid-Autumn Festival. She sets out early in the morning and meets lots of friends along the way: Mother Hedgehog, Mother Squirrel, Little Bee, Uncle Beaver, Mother Duck and her ducklings. Little does she know that Mr Wild Wolf is sneaking after her… (Winner of the 2016 Bronze and Sunflower Picture Book Awards)

Singapore, late 1980s. As women gain power and independence, what's an insecure guy to do? Lonely Face is the story of a man on the cusp of middle age, left behind by changing times. Fleeing his crumbling marriage on an overnight bus to Genting Highlands, he tries his luck at slot machines rather than the vagaries of modern romance. This snapshot of a society in flux is a newly-translated early work by acclaimed novelist Yeng Pway Ngon, Cultural Medallion recipient and three-time winner of the Singapore Literature Prize.The Society of Authors TA First Translation Prize Shortlist 2019

In the 1910s, thirteen-year-old Leong Ping Hung comes to Singapore from China to seek his fortune. Decades later, he is a lonely old man mourning his shattered dreams. His granddaughter Yu Sau struggles to take care of him while trying to make sense of her own life in a rapidly changing country. He speaks Cantonese, and she Mandarin - but will they be able to find common ground through a shared love of Cantonese opera? As Yu Sau looks to her family's past to understand her present, she begins to uncover the secrets that went missing along with the old man's cherished opera costume.

This fascinating fictional account of the life and times of Lafcadio Hearn probes the question: "What was the nature of this man, born wanderer, informant of the fiendish details of Japanese lore... a man who chose to live his life 'in defiance of the season'?" Though now largely forgotten in the West, he is, in the 21st century, still considered by the Japanese to be the foreigner with the most insight into their mind and mores. Orphan of Europe, chronicler of the eerie and the grotesque, journalist and ethnographer of subcultures, Greek-Irish author Lafcadio Hearn arrived in Yokohama from the United States in 1890. During his 14-year stay in Japan he wrote 14 books about the country, becoming known, in the decades succeeding his death, as the foremost interpreter of things Japanese in the West. The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn is a novel not only about Hearn in Meiji Japan but about any person in any era who may feel, for a time or forever, more at home in a foreign land than in their own. The novel is preceded by a detailed introduction on Hearn from the time of his birth in Greece in 1850 until his death in Japan in 1904.

Kris and Kate build a boat in the sand, then, dreamlike, it becomes a rowing boat. Their dog Holly frisks round them.They venture out into a sea inlet, watched by their mother from the shore. Kate, assuming that girls take the energetic lead, insists on rowing, Kris dreams with fish. After all that excitement they they get hungry and eventually, with Holly, fall asleep! With their mother alarmed on the shore, the boat drifts out to sea. But the birds and the fish that Kris had befriended rally round and pull them back to shore.Their mother lifts them out, still asleep and, Holly beside them, their mother kisses them goodnight as they dream of their next adventure

It is a common notion that Africa has, and indeed ought to have, learned much from the west. This is not wrong; all cultures rightly learn from each other. But less is said of what there is to learn from Africa: from her stories, myths, music, proverbs, insights - and more. Here an acclaimed African scholar steps into the gap by uncovering for us something of the great legacy of African thought and practice in ways that will astonish many. Written with verve and authority and directed above all to students and sixth formers, this book will also delight and often surprise those who know something of Africa as well as those hitherto ignorant.Ruth Finnegan OBE FBA is Emeritus Professor The Open University, Foreign Associate of the Finnish Literature Bureau, and International Fellow of the American Folklore Society. An anthropologist and multi-award author, she has published extensively, chiefly on Africa, musical practice, and English urban life. Recent books include How is Language?, Fiji's Music: Where Did It Come From?, her edited Entrancement: The Consciousness of Dreaming, Music and The World, and two prize-winning Africa-influenced novels Black Inked Pearl and Voyage of Pearl of the Seas.

A climate crisis in the Ice Age.A cold snap leads to an unrelenting glacial. For our prehistoric ancestors survival is threatened. Food gets harder to find in the frigid lands of Central Asia.Yet the tribes living near the Altai Mountains have found a refuge. A river and a lake allows some plants and trees to survive, herds come to graze - prey to hyenas and wolves.And man!Hunting together is tribal law. Shiga, failed his Initiation, ran away from First Hunt. Law-breakers are exiled but Shiga, expert Carver is offered a last chance.He will also lose Urm, his childhood hearth-mate to Bruj. Unless he hunts with the tribe.Urm is a healer and path-breaker.Gathering plants in the Growing season gets harder. Urm discovers she can grow plants with warmth and water - in secret. For it's forbidden to tamper with Earth Mother's children. But in that harshening climate Urm foresees starvation.She also prays Shiga will hunt big game. Otherwise, she must accept Bruj.Can Shiga and Urm forge new ways of living?A historical novel for young adults The Game Hunters is based on research and findings of Asian prehistoric people in Southern Siberia. Set in the Last Glacial Maxim when human populations struggled to survive; survival was only made possible by cooperation, courage and the forging of new ways.The Game Hunters is a story of innovation and acceptance, love and death in Ice Age Asia.* * *"An intriguing account of prehistoric life. Truly stimulating! To hunt or to heal... A must-read to understanding our roots from an eco-critical perspective." -- Dr. Ilg¿m Veryeri Alaca, Professor, Koç University, Istanbul

A long time ago, in a beautiful litter river lived Water Girl. She loved playing in the river with her river animal friends. One day, she got tired of it. A cockeral heard about this and decided to bring her to the river bank. That was when she met him. His whole body was covered in an inky black. What future does this encounter hold?

Set in a fictional town in West China, this is the story of the Duan-Xue family, owners of the lucrative chilli bean paste factory, and their formidable matriarch. As Gran's eightieth birthday approaches, her middle-aged children get together to make preparations. Family secrets are revealed and long-time sibling rivalries flare up with renewed vigour. As Shengqiang struggles unsuccessfully to juggle the demands of his mistress and his wife, the biggest surprises of all come from Gran herself (Winner of English Pen Award)';Yan Ge's writing is outstandingly imaginative The Chilli Bean Paste Clan delves deep into the pettiness and shortcomings of family relationships, dissecting them with remarkable insight and humour.... Yan Ge is not just a talented story-teller, she is also a versatile stylist, able to put her mastery of the local dialect to excellent use.' China Literature Media Award judging panel, 2013';A fascinating glimpse into the life of a dysfunctional family in modern China.'Marina Lewycka, author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian