Zig Zag Reading Room

Zig Zag and @dividedpublish Divided Publishing are thrilled to present Jackie’s first appearance in Brussels, on the 22nd of May: 𝕁𝕒𝕔𝕜𝕚𝕖 𝔼𝕤𝕤 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕗𝕣𝕠𝕞 ‘𝔻𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕪𝕝’ 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕠𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣 𝕨𝕠𝕣𝕜 Darryl Cook is a cuckold, and that’s exactly how he likes it. He has an inheritance that spares him from work, a manageable and seemingly consequence-free drug habit, and a lovely wife called Mindy who’s generally game for anything—and for as much of it as she can get. But after an accidental overdose and some serious oversharing, Darryl’s world begins to crack up. Tormented by what seems to be the secret truth in sex, and less assured of that secret’s form, Darryl steps into what used to be called real life . . . Darryl is a disarmingly funny and unabashedly intelligent look at a community of people parsing masculinity, marriage, sex (and love) on their own terms. ~ Shortlisted for The Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize 2026 and for the James Tait Black Prize in Fiction 2026 Jackie Ess @jackie_ess is a writer, teacher, and committed musical amateur, living in Berlin. Some recent publications include Darryl (Clash 2021 / Divided 2025), a novel, and Eugene (Topos Press), a stand-alone story which was once meant to be a novel but found a different shape. ~ doors open 17:30 ~ free entrance, no rsvp needed ~ Rue Blaes 52, 1000 Brussels

@flemishreview & Marktcorruptie launching ‘Poëziemachine. Teksen van & naar Paul Nougé’ marlena.tokarska

Happening NOW at ZZ ‘Twisting the Lion’s Tale’ by @nina_de_vroome @dorinevmeel

Binnenkort, in ZZ, een NL-talig event ~ De Brusselse dichter en essayist Paul Nougé (1895–1967) speelde honderd jaar geleden een hoofdrol in de doorbraak van het Brusselse surrealisme. Toch werd hij grotendeels vergeten, zeker in Vlaanderen in Nederland. Poëziemachine, een publicatie van het literaire tijdschrift Flemish Review de la Poëzie (@flemishreview ) en het zine-label Marktcorruptie, brengt daar verandering in. Astrid Dewaele (@astriddewaele ) en Ewoud Goethals vertaalden de belangrijkste poëticale teksten van Nougé naar het Nederlands en vier auteurs - Pelumi Adejumo (@pelumiadejumo ), Vincent Van Meenen (@vincentvanmeenen ), Marlena Tokarska (@tkrska ) en Veva Leye - reageerden met nieuw creatief werk. Daarnaast schreef Matthijs de Ridder (@matthijs_de_ridder ) over de literaire en artistieke context waarin Nougé zich bewoog en zorgde Elen Braga (@elenbraga__ ) voor beeldend werk. Voor de presentatie van Poëziemachine in Zig Zag Reading Room op 13 mei gaan de auteurs en vertalers met elkaar in gesprek en lezen ze voor uit hun werk. De Brusselse dichter en muzikant Alex Deforce (@alexdeforce ) brengt muziek. ~ woensdag 13 mei ~ Start: 19u30. ~ vrije toegang, geen rsvp nodig ~ Rue Blaes 52, 1000 Brussel

On the 9th of May, Zig Zag Reading Room is happy to host the following event: 𝑻𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑳𝒊𝒐𝒏’𝒔 𝑻𝒂𝒊𝒍 One year after his sudden death in 1626, Francis Bacon’s only fictional work was published under the title New Atlantis. It describes the secluded island of Bensalem, where the wise fathers of Salomon’s House govern through what we now call scientific experimentation. One could argue that the story, although utopian in its premise, mirrors our contemporary society in a grim fashion. Here we encounter a vision in which the mastery of “nature” has been fully realized for the benefit of “man.” In Twisting the Lion’s Tail, the artists Nina de Vroome and Dorine van Meel engage in a poetic dialogue, searching for echoes of this utopian vision in our dystopian present. Reflecting on early modern texts, ideas, and images, they show how nature came to be understood as external and passive: something to be manipulated and controlled. At the same time, they ask what alternative ways of relating might still be traced, recovered, or imagined. Twisting the Lion’s Tail is a collaboration between Dorine van Meel @dorinevmeel and Nina de Vroome @nina_de_vroome ~ The performance takes place in English. ~ Doors open at 19:30; the performance starts at 20:00. ~ Image credit: Dorine van Meel ~ Biographies in comments

Happening now! ‘The Art of the Hairy Monkey’ @simonwaldlasowski @augustina.cai @roma.publications Master Qiū and the hairy monkeys.

Elias Khoury (1948–2024) was Lebanon’s most towering literary voice, novelist and public intellectual whose work was inseparable from the Palestinian struggle for dignity and return. He edited major Arabic cultural pages and turned them into platforms for resistance literature; reading his work is as relevant and urgent as ever. At ZZ we have a few of his titles, most of them in an edition of the stellar @archipelagobooks ~ Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam ~ Set in the destroyed village of Lydda, a survivor asks the question history keeps deferring: what does survival without justice actually cost? ~ Broken Mirrors: Sinalcol ~ Post-war Beirut, shattered identities, broken men — and beneath it all, the Palestinian dispossession as the original, unhealed crack. ~ The Journey of Little Gandhi ~ A shoe-shiner navigates war-torn Beirut with tragicomic grace, finding the epic inside the ordinary. ~ City Gates ~ Beirut as a city of exiles and arrivals, where the Palestinian camps on its edges are its unacknowledged heart. ~ Yalo ~ A young man’s repeated prison confessions become a brutal dissection of violence, complicity, and the stories men tell about themselves. ~ White Masks ~ A nameless body in Beirut; a meditation on erasure. ~ and last but not least: Gate of the Sun Khoury’s masterpiece ~ a doctor tends to a dying fighter and conjures lost Palestinian villages through an endless river of stories, because as long as someone tells them, the Nakba cannot be completed.

Zig Zag is delighted to host the BXL launch of this instant classic published by @roma.publications - the fruit of a confluence of new and old friendships, of seemingly vastly different yet ultimately kindred disciplines and affinities… 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓐𝓻𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓗𝓪𝓲𝓻𝔂 𝓜𝓸𝓷𝓴𝓮𝔂 毛猴的艺术 𝚁𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝙱𝚎𝚒𝚓𝚒𝚗𝚐’𝚜 𝚖á𝚘𝚑ó𝚞 𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚀𝚒ū 𝚈í𝚜𝚑ē𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚑𝚘𝚝𝚘𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚙𝚑𝚢 𝚘𝚏 𝚂𝚒𝚖𝚘𝚗 𝚆𝚊𝚕𝚍-𝙻𝚊𝚜𝚘𝚠𝚜𝚔𝚒 The Art of the Hairy Monkey unveils the world of máohóu, an obscure and satirical folk art from Beijing with a history spanning two centuries. Tiny, mischievous figures are crafted from materials used in traditional Chinese medicine — cicada shells and magnolia buds — and placed in rich dioramas that mirror society with wit, irony and gentle provocation. Long practised yet rarely documented, the tradition of the “Hairy Monkey” has recently been recognised as Intangible Cultural Heritage in China. This is the first dedicated publication on the subject outside its country of origin. The book sits at the crossroads of social satire, folk art, miniature sculpture and art photography, and will captivate readers drawn to Chinese culture, subversive humour and overlooked artistic traditions. The evening will include a talk of Augustina Cai @augustina.cai (on zoom) and Simon Wald-Lasowski @simonwaldlasowski , who forged a deep friendship and working relationship with Master Qiū, who will send a special video message recorded for this occasion. This presentation will be followed with a short excursion into the necessity of political satire in these challenging times at the hands of rabble-rouser Jesse van Winden @jessevanwinden reading Paul Beatty), with some Zig Zag recommendations for satirical reading lists to boot. Afterwards, there will be opportunity to make your own hairy monkey and ample time to exchange with fresh drinks and spicy insect jazz. ~ Doors open at 19:30, programme begins at 20:00 ~ Entry is free — no RSVP required ~ Copies of the book will be on sale

A selection of books at ZZ sprawling the breadth of the topic of “drugs”, including ethnographies on drug production, histories and philosophies of drug consumption and anthologies on the visual aspects of its packaging. ~ Walter Benjamin - On Hashish - Harvard University Press ~ M. Ageyev - Novel with Cocaine - Northwestern University Press ~ Jason Pine - The Alchemy of Meth: a Decomposition - University of Minnesota Press ~ Michael Taussig - My Cocaine Museum - The University of Chicago Press ~ Hector Mosko - Drug Dealer Bags Vol. 3 New York City Special - Studio H13 @studioh13 ~ Hector Mosko - Drug Dealer Bags Vol. 420 - Studio H13 @studioh13 ~ Patrick E. McGovern - Uncorking The Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, And Other Alcoholic Beverages - University of California Press

A small selection of books at ZZ inquiring into the category of “body” and how it is historicised as a political, aesthetic and physical entity. With the possibility of creating a “third body” in a relational space. Across them runs an inquiry into psychic suffering within and through ‘institution’, pre-given the disease/illness and deviation/norm distinctions, and the possibility of healing through (re)connection with community and cultural traditions. ~ Annemarie Mol — The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice — Duke University Press @dukeuniversitypress ~ Susan Leigh Foster (ed.) — Choreographing History — Indiana University Press @iu.press ~ Victoria Pitts-Taylor — The Brain’s Body: Neuroscience and Corporeal Politics — Duke University Press ~ Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English — For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women — Anchor Books ~ Shulamith Firestone — Airless Spaces — Silver Press @silver.press ~ Gay Wilentz — Healing Narratives: Women Writers Curing Cultural Dis-ease — Rutgers University Press @rutgersupress ~ Ann Cvetkovich — Depression: A Public Feeling — Duke University Press ~ Hélène Cixous — The Third Body — Northwestern University Press @nupress ~ ed. Tanner Chin - Embodied: An Intersectional Feminist Comics Poetry Anthology — @awaveblueworld

We are a bookshop that highlights writers from the so-called global majority that have been translated into English. That said, sometimes we are surprised by what we manage to dig up in the deep seas and streams of second hand - like this small but fine selection of titles from Cameroon, Zaïre, Haïti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Argentina. This time, translated into French and there’s even some French theory and feminist writing to enjoy. ~ Amadou Hampâté Bâ — Oui mon commandant ! Mémoires (II) — Actes Sud @actessud ~ René Depestre — Non-assistance à poètes en danger — Éditions Seghers @editionsseghers ~ Tonya M. Foster — La grammaire des os (trad. Olivier Brossard & Béatrice Trotignon) — Joca Seria @jocaseria ~ Mongo Beti — Le Roi Miraculé — Buchet Chastel @editionsbuchetchastel ~ Frankétienne — Sphinx en feu d’énigmes — Vents d’ailleurs @vents_dailleurs ~ Jean-Joseph Goux, Laurence Zordan, Roger Dadoun & Collectif Psychanalyse et Politique — L’impérialisme du phallus — Des femmes / Antoinette Fouque @ed_femmes ~ Jorge Luis Borges — Chroniques de Bustos Domecq — Denoël LM ~ Roland Barthes — Le degré zéro de l’écriture, suivi de Nouveaux essais critiques — Points @editionspoints ~ Raphaël Confiant — Black is Black — Éditions Alphée @editions_alpha ~ Olivier Marboeuf — Suites coloniales : S’enfuir de la plantation — Éditions du commun @editionsducommun ~ B. Jewsiewicki (dir.) — Art pictural zaïrois — Les Éditions du Septentrion @editions_septentrion

Zig Zag is delighted to host - on Friday 20th of march - an evening of ‘politics of friendship', with authors Laura C. Forster & Joel White presenting their beautiful new publication with @plutopress 𝑭𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝑪𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒐𝒏 - 𝑩𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝑻𝒂𝒍𝒌 & 𝑸&𝑨 Friendship is full of revolutionary potential in the face of a profoundly anti-social capitalist system. Friends in Common explores friendship as a radical practice, capable of upending hierarchies and producing social change. Friendship can transcend social boundaries and political borders. It is vital in building communities and underpinning solidarity. But its transformative potency ensures that it is heavily policed and restrained by the state. Understanding the radical possibilities of friendship can help us rethink our approach to family, work and politics, and show us new routes to resistance and ways to open up spaces of solidarity and escape. We’ll be joined by the authors Laura C. Forster and Joel White who will tell us more about the book and why they wrote it. We’ll have a couple of readings and then an interactive discussion / Q&A. Bios: Laura C. Forster is a lecturer in Modern History at the University of York. She is a member of the History Workshop collective and the author of The Paris Commune in Britain: radicals, refugees, and revolutionaries after 1871 (Oxford University Press, 2025) and Friends in Common: radical friendship and everyday solidarities (Pluto Press, 2025). Joel White is a writer and researcher based in Glasgow. He is involved with groups in the city that organise around mutual aid, migrant solidarity, prison abolition and anti-racism. His writing has appeared in Guardian, Wire, Tribune and the LRB blog. He co-runs the record label GLARC. 🔹doors open at 19:00, start at 19:30 🔹 free event, copies ‘Friends in Common’ @plutopress will be on sale 🔹Rue Blaes 52, 1000 Brussels 🔹alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks will be present, and ample spsce-time to exchange after the event #friendsincommon #politicsoffriendship #joelwhite #lauracfoster