New Zealander Anna Smaill’s debut novel is an interesting choice for the Man Booker longlist. It crosses at least one, and I suspect, two, general Booker taboos – it’s genre fiction, and it...
Australian author Sofie Laguna’s second novel for adults, The Eye of the Sheep, won the Miles Franklin Award on 23 June. It was a well-deserved win of Australia’s richest literary prize by a book...
First were the fuchsia kangaroos appearing in Paris' arrondissements. Then neon canvases were seen in galleries and museums from Adelaide to New York. Next thing you know, colourful diamond patterns...
A couple of years ago, when it first came out, Andrew Solomon’s 10-years-in-the-making magnum opus, Far from the Tree, was the book du jour in Australian book-reading parenting circles. I missed it...
There is a scene in the 1993 German war film “Stalingrad” where a bronzed platoon of elite storm troopers victorious from the lightening battles in the West and North Africa confront their dead...
Australia’s newest literary prize, the Stella Award (for writing by women) was bestowed on debut novelist Emily Bitto less than a month ago, for her novel about two children growing up as part of a...
It hasn’t been the best month in Australia. As we hurtle towards the year’s end and summer takes hold, the headlines have been far from the usual froth and bubble of December lifestyle...
It’s a scary time to be Muslim in Australia. On 18 September, anti-terrorism raids in connection with IS were conducted in Sydney and Brisbane. Australia’s terror alert has also been raised from...
Director David Michôd’s dystopian Western “The Rover” is a Spartan, intimate affair played out over vast distances in the Australian outback. Set ten years after a global economic collapse the...
This year’s Man Booker Prize, in its first outing since the controversial rule change, was widely tipped to be The Coming of the Americans writ large. Previously open only to novels by Commonwealth...