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"Nothing is harder / on the soul / than the smell of dreams / while they are evaporating."––Mahmoud Darwish. Stop the Deportations!
––City Lights storefront, Fall 2017
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City Lights is a landmark independent bookstore and publisher that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics.
Founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin, City Lights is one of the truly great independent bookstores in the United States, a place where booklovers from across the country and around the world come to browse, read, and just soak in the ambiance of alternative culture's only "Literary Landmark."... Read more>>
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New at City Lights Bookstore
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My Absolute Darling
Gabriel Tallent
Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles.
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There There
Fierce, angry, funny, heartbreaking—Tommy Orange's first novel is a wondrous and shattering portrait of an America few of us have ever seen, and it introduces a brilliant new author at the start of a major career.
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Not That Bad
Dispatches from Rape Culture
Roxane Gay
In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are "routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated..
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The Displaced
Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen called on 17 fellow refugee writers from across the globe to shed light on their experiences, and the result is The Displaced, a powerful dispatch from the individual lives behind current headlines, with proceeds to support the International Rescue Committee (IRC).
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Barracoon
The Story of the Last Black Cargo
Zora Neale Hurston
A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted...
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The Order of Time
Carlo Rovelli
Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike.
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Alienation and Freedom
Frantz Fanon
A fascinating array of uncollected (and several previously lost) essays by the great Pan-African philosopher and post-colonial theorist. This tome gives us a deeper and more personal portrait of the man himself, and his essays on racism, anti-imperialism and the psychology of fascism remain deeply relevant today.—Recommended by Michael
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The Mars Room
Rachel Kushner
Stunning and unsentimental, The Mars Room demonstrates new levels of mastery and depth in Kushner's work. It is audacious and tragic, propulsive and yet beautifully refined. —Recommended by Vanessa & Paul
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A Lucky Man
Stories
Jamel Brinkley
Jamel Brinkley's stories, in a debut that announces the arrival of a significant new voice, reflect the tenderness and vulnerability of black men and boys whose hopes sometimes betray them, especially in a world shaped by race, gender, and class―where luck may be the greatest fiction of all. —Recommended by Andy
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The Sarah Book
Scott McClanahan
Scott McClanahan is one of the most important voices in American literature right now. His paragraphs get stuck in your head like your favorite songs. This book is manic, sweaty, kind, and human. —Recommended by Joey
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Black Swans
Stories
Eve Babitz
"He was not remote, elevated, or windy enough for me; by God, I liked my men humiliating or at least impossible to get to..." Eve Babitz is full of such delights. Come for the gossip, stay for the sentences. —Recommended by Vanessa & Cassie
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Homesick for Another World
Stories
Ottessa Moshfegh
There's not a single character in this collection that I liked, but I was addicted to these stories, and found myself identifying with those characters—cursing myself for it. —Recommended by Jared
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The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead
The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage—and a powerful meditation on the history we all share. —Recommended by Scott & Paul
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Ransoming Pagan Babies
The Selected Writings of Warren Hinckle
Warren Hinckle
From his galvanizing exposés in Ramparts magazine to his hand in inventing gonzo, Warren Hinckle upended twentieth-century investigative reporting and gave it new provocation and zest. In the first career-spanning collection of writings by this key figure of American journalism, Ransoming Pagan Babies contains an astonishing thematic sweep.
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Draft No. 4
On the Writing Process
John McPhee
Draft No. 4 is a master class on the writer's craft. In a series of playful, expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he has gathered over his career and has refined while teaching at Princeton University, where he has nurtured some of the most esteemed writers of recent decades.
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Houses of Ravicka
Renee Gladman
From a foremost literary imagination; the reader (re)enters
the strange city-state of Ravicka—follows the city's only comptroller as they examine the strange topography and architecture of the city. Truly something else.—Recommended by Jared
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As Lie is to Grin
Simeon Marsalis
David, the narrator of Simeon Marsalis's singular first novel, is a freshman at the University of Vermont who is struggling to define himself against the white backdrop of his school. He is also mourning the loss of his New York girlfriend, whose grandfather’s alma mater he has chosen to attend. —Recommended by Paul
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New and Forthcoming from City Lights Publishers
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Loaded
A Disarming History of the Second Amendment
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"If . . . anyone at all really wants to 'get to the root causes of gun violence in America,' they will need to start by coming to terms with even a fraction of what Loaded proposes."—Los Angeles Review of Books
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Impeaching the President
Past, Present, and Future
Alan Hirsch
FORTHCOMING FALL 2018: An historical look at the practice of impeachment, how it impacted the terms of Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton, and how it may affect Donald Trump.
"Lucid, balanced, and deeply informed. Anyone in search of a reasoned guide to the unreason of our current situation should read it."--Elizabeth Kolbert
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I Couldn't Even Imagine That They Would Kill Us
An Oral History of the Attacks Against the Students of Ayotzinapa
John Gibler
Chosen as a Best Book of 2017 by Publishers Weekly!
Harrowing personal narratives describing how Mexican authorities disappeared, killed, and injured scores of students and others in a still-unsolved crime. |
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The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way
On Writers and Writing
Charles Bukowski, David Stephen Calonne
A collection of columns, reviews, introductions, interviews, and previously uncollected stories revealing the method behind the madness and critical acumen of Charles Bukowski.
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American Nightmare
Facing the Challenge of Fascism
Henry A. Giroux
A far-ranging critique of the rise of authoritarianism and white nationalism in the US and the consequences for democracy.
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Poso Wells
Gabriela Alemán
Celebrated Ecuadorian author Gabriela Alemán's first work to appear in English: a noir, feminist eco-thriller in which venally corrupt politicians and greedy land speculators finally get their just comeuppance!
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A Good Day for Seppuku
Short Stories
Kate Braverman
Haunting new stories about girls on the brink of adulthood, women on the verge of breakdowns, and families undone by past deceptions.
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Rad American Women A-Z
Rebels, Trailblazers, and Visionaries Who Shaped Our History . . . and Our Future!
Kate Schatz, Miriam Klein Stahl
New York Times Bestseller! A book for children—and their parents, teachers, and cool grown-up friends—documenting America's famous and unsung heroines.
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The Stone Building and Other Places
Aslı Erdoğan
Vivid stories from one of Turkey's most admired contemporary female authors, whose political activism has made her the target of state persecution.
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venture of the infinite man
Pablo Neruda
Neruda's long-overlooked third book of poetry, critical in his poetic evolution, now translated into English for the very first time!
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Storming the Wall
Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security
Todd Miller
Fast-paced frontline reportage chronicling how climate change is accelerating migration, border build-up, and militarization in the U.S. and beyond.
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Cruel Futures
City Lights Spotlight Series No. 17
Carmen Giménez Smith
A Latina feminist State of the Union address at the intersection of pop culture and interiority.
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Heaven Is All Goodbyes
Pocket Poets Series No. 61
Tongo Eisen-Martin
"This is resistance as sound."—Claudia Rankine
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Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?
Mumia Abu-Jamal
"A must-read for anyone interested in social justice and inequalities, social movements, the criminal justice system, and African American history. An excellent companion to Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Ava DuVernay's documentary '13th'."—Library Journal, Starred Review
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Doc/Undoc
Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática
Felicia Rice
MacArthur Genius Guillermo Gómez-Peña and award-winning book artist Felicia Rice create a multi-media, border-crossing hybrid: the book as performance art.
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Like a Dog
Tara Jepsen
"[Like a Dog] announces a singular new voice in American fiction—one which is deeply alive, hard-hitting, and tender."––Maggie Nelson
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The Novel of the Tupinamba Indian
E.F. Granell
Picaresque novel of the Spanish Civil War written by one of the most important post-WWII members of the Surrealist Movement.
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Invocation to Daughters
City Lights Spotlight Series No. 16
Barbara Jane Reyes
Volume 16 in the City Lights Spotlight Series: Feminist experimental poetry in the tradition of Audre Lorde and Theresa Kyung Cha from a prominent Filipina American poet.
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