Prints and books designed by Miriam Elia on sale at U–jazdowski online bookshop – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

We do Lockdown

In We do Lockdown Mummy, John and Susan go through an indefinite period of self-isolation during lockdown. In this solitary time, the children will be forcibly adapted to the “new normal”, where a joyless existence is heroically embraced to save humanity. The children will come to have no real-life friends, no education, and conditioned to see their peers as portable germ vessels.

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  • Written and illustrated by Miriam Elia
  • Text in English
  • Colour illustrations
  • Format: 116×177 mm, 46 pages
  • ISBN: 978-0-9928349-2-0
  • Published by Dung Beetle Books Ltd, London 2020
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• → buy at Tarabuk bookshop in the Ujazdowski Castle
• → buy at our online bookshop
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We see the sights

After the success of We do Lockdown, We see the sights follows Mummy, Susan and John on a jolly sightseeing trip of post-covid London. Throughout the trip various drones hover around, monitoring the children’s thoughts and feelings, whilst calculating their “social credit” score. We see the sights is a humorous and satirical take on contemporary society, using cheerful 1960’s tourism as a vehicle.

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  • Written and illustrated by Miriam Elia, Ezra Elia
  • Text in English
  • Colour illustrations
  • Format: 116×177 mm, 46 pages
  • ISBN: 978-1-7391442-0-3
  • Published by Dung Beetle Books Ltd, London 2022
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• → buy at Tarabuk bookshop in the Ujazdowski Castle
• → buy at our online bookshop
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We go to the gallery

Have you taken children to a gallery recently? Did you struggle to explain the work to them in plain, simple English? With this Dung Beetle book, both parents and young children can learn about contemporary art, and understand many of its key themes. Join John and Susan on their exciting journey through the art exhibition, where, with Mummy’s help, they will discover that real meaning does not exist.

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  • Written by Miriam Elia, Ezra Elia
  • Illustrated by Miriam Elia
  • Text in English
  • Colour illustrations
  • Format: 116×177 mm, 46 pages
  • ISBN: 978-0-9928349-1-3
  • Published by Dung Beetle Books, London 2019
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• → buy at Tarabuk bookshop in the Ujazdowski Castle
• → buy at our online bookshop
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The Diary of Edward the Hamster 1990–1990

Edward is a hamster—yet he contains multitudes. Trapped in a cage with a wheel that taunts him with its meaninglessness, Edward records the existential ennui that is the sum of his short life. His diary is an extraordinary work, filled with profound meditations on the nature of captivity, the emptiness of life, and the irrational will to live. This 10th anniversary edition celebrates the first printing by Dung Beetle Books and is imbued with new meaning in a post-pandemic world.

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  • Written by Miriam Elia, Ezra Elia
  • Illustrated by Miriam Elia
  • Text in English
  • Black and white illustrations
  • Format 12,5 x 13 cm, 96 pages
  • ISBN 978-1-7391442-0-3
  • Published by Dung Beetle Books, London 2022
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• → buy at Tarabuk bookshop in the Ujazdowski Castle
• → buy at our online bookshop
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Piggy Goes to University

“To live is to rebel, and to rebel is to conform to the University’s rules and regulations”. In Piggy Goes to University Miriam and Ezra Elia turn their satiric cannons on the perverse world of radical student activism, and the universities which foster them. Styled as a post-modern update to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the story presents a story of Piggy who is a new student at the University, keen to make his mark. There, new inductees are subjected to a slow and arduous “induction process,” by which all undergraduates learn their place in an ecosystem of painfully delineated, multi-grouped identities. Here, feelings become truer than facts, and reason acts only in the service of a profound, vague guilt.

Follow Piggy on his momentous spiritual journey at the Central State University, learn from his fantastic triumphs, and gawp at his pathetic, guilt-racked demise.

Illustrated entirely in red and black, and printed in a limited edition woven hardback which echoes the stylings of Mao’s Little Red Book and wartime socialist literature, Piggy Goes to University ultimately portrays a new, absurd species of tyranny – a tyranny of kindness – to hilarious effect.

This quaintly illustrated comic novella should make compelling reading for any university student, of past, present, or future.

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  • Written and illustrated by Miriam Elia, Ezra Elia
  • Text in English
  • Format 158×175 mm, 90 pages
  • ISBN 978-0-9928349-5-1
  • Published by Dung Beetle University Press, London 2018
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• → buy at Tarabuk bookshop in the Ujazdowski Castle
• → buy at our online bookshop