Lawrence & Gibson Publishing

30/04/2025

In-depth, thoughtful review of Kartik Popat from Jack Ross in Landfall Review. “A relentless chronicle of ‘the time of our time’ (to borrow a phrase from that great Satan, Norman Mailer). There are some scenes here I doubt I’ll ever be able to scrub out of my memory, no matter how hard I try.”

Jack Ross on The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat by Brannavan Gnanalingam

06/04/2025

"Kartik starts his memoir by disclosing that he shares a birthday with Charles Ponzi, ‘the Italian cottage Industrialist,’ therefore hinting at the kind of broad perspective that later endears him to the political class."

The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat by Brannavan Gnanalingam. Lawrence & Gibson (2024). RRP: $30.00. PB, 304pp. ISBN: 9780473725976. Reviewed by Cybonn Ang. Brannavan Gnanalingam’s eighth novel, The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat, is a witty, highly entertaining memoir of one Kartik Popat, a ...

03/04/2025

One of those rare reviews that really excavates the themes of the book in a way that is infinitely quotable: "Gnanalingam’s instantly iconic and deceptively clever thought-experiment The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat, connects endstate far-right disinfo Disgrasians with our classic Asian diaspora starting point of ‘what if I was a loser with no friends?’"

An 'Asian horror story' and an 'instantly iconic' political satire.

27/03/2025

Our founding editor Murdoch is off overseas for a spell again, so we all know what that means: reprinting a tonne of copies of Turncoat which just keeps selling, now at the stage of having about 8 classroom copies being taught around the motu. Here's a shot of what Rebel Press looks like right now.

20/03/2025

"I’ve just published my novel, The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat, which is my eighth since 2011. I admit that’s quite a feverish pace, which is probably explained by the fact I’ve had close relatives die of heart disease and war by their forties (I’ve just turned forty-one)."

SATELLITES connects the past, present and future of Aotearoa Asian art.

12/02/2025

Great hearing Bran's latest featuring in this RNZ reviewers favs of 2024.

Hannah August reviews three of her favourite books from last year.

21/01/2025

Not even our shortest release, but great seeing Sharon Lam's Lonely Asian Woman living on in the recommends for great shortish books.

Ten brilliant – and brilliantly short – books to kickstart the year.

03/01/2025

20 years in publishing. We're gonna do something of a year by year, book by book blow as and when we feel like it. Our first book was Richard Meros' On the conditions and possibilities of Helen Clark taking me as her Young Lover (2005) which was later turned into a raucously fun play that toured the country in 2007/08 by Arthur Meek and Geoff Pinfield.

The biggest beginners luck coup was when Toby Manhire, who was writing for the Guardian at the time, gave the book a short review which we mined for all the quotes we could, but which no-one really believed actually happened (see below for linx). The book is now out of print, but we nabbed this cover pic of the original hot pink version from BookHaven who have a copy of it in stock.

27/12/2024

Today Adrian is sharing his favourite reads of 2024 ✨

"2024 was a laugh. I opened the year with Tihema Baker and finished it with Brannavan Gnanalingam, both from local indie publisher Lawrence & Gibson, both outrageously funny and deeply serious takes on not being pākeha in Aotearoa. I finally caught up with le Carre’s Karla trilogy from last century and Knausgaard’s newer Morning Star sequence of novels. All my favourites had me grinning. But the best of them was Roger Lewis’s crazy love/hate bio of Burton and Taylor – a beautiful and vulgar car crash of a book."

Adrian's Books:
Erotic Vagrancy by Roger Lewis
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carre
The Life & Opinions of Kartik Popat by Brannavan Gnanalingam
Turncoat by Tīhema Baker
A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Caledonian Road by Andrew O'Hagan
James by Percival Everett
The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard

20/12/2024

It really is too late to buy from our website if you want to gift an L&G books for Christmas and even if Unity Books Wellington didn't love Bran's book we'd still direct you to get your last minute books from them... I mean, I'm not going to lie, the store is likely frenetic, but there's a happy stack of our new and old catalogue and with that I will conclude this year. Kia ora! ☺️

19/12/2024

Not bad... not bad at all... it might even end up a quote in the frontispiece in our New Year reprint!

11/12/2024

"Gnanalingam pulls us under the skin of a character that is at once loathsome, hilarious and wholly realised. It's a book for this age: a timely, incendiary, and chilling glimpse into representational politics, echo chambers and how the algorithm machine has forever changed modern democracy."

Who better to ask for their favourite books from Aotearoa now that 2024 has entered its final chapter? Kete reviewers give their thoughts. ...