A wonderful mix of archaeology, planning, literature, food and water welcomes in November!

Ethics and Aesthetics of Translation: Exploring the Works of Atxaga, Kundera and Semprún  is our first title this month. The book engages with translation, in both theory and practice, as part of an interrogation of ethical as well as political thought in the work of three bilingual European authors: Bernardo Atxaga, Milan Kundera and Jorge Semprún. In approaching the work of these authors, the book draws upon the approaches to translation offered by Benjamin, Derrida, Ricœur and Deleuze to highlight a broad set of ethical questions, focused upon the limitations of the monolingual and the democratic possibilities of linguistic plurality; upon our innate desire to translate difference into similarity; and upon the ways in which translation responds to the challenges of individual and collective remembrance.

Next up is Integrating Food into Urban Planning, a co-publication with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). It’s a fascinating book that examines a crucial and emerging topic: the integration of food into urban planning is a crucial and emerging topic. Urban planners, alongside the local and regional authorities that have traditionally been less engaged in food-related issues, are now asked to take a central and active part in understanding how food is produced, processed, packaged, transported, marketed, consumed, disposed of and recycled in our cities.

By studying and comparing cities of different sizes, from both the Global North and South, in developed and developing regions, the contributors collectively argue for the importance and circulation of global knowledge rooted in local food planning practices, programmes and policies. If you liked Robert Biel’s book Sustainable Food Systems: The Role of the City, this one is well worth a  look!

Our final book of the month is Water Societies and Technologies from the Past and Present. We may think that the challenges that modern societies face with water, in terms of both quantity and quality are unique, but many of these challenges have already existed in the past.

This book, with specific focus on Asia,  seeks to highlight the issues that emerge or re-emerge across different societies and periods, and asks what they can tell us about water sustainability. Incorporating cutting-edge research and pioneering field surveys on past and present water management practices, the interdisciplinary contributors together identify how societies managed water resource challenges and utilized water in ways that allowed them to evolve, persist, or drastically alter their environment.