culture

Madeleine Gray Novels written in prose poetry are not for everyone. It takes a very devoted reader to commit to a whole book comprising devolving sentences, words spaced out like patterns, dialogue merging with description. There can be beautiful, accessible prose...

Mireille Juchau “Essays are easy. Fiction is hard,” says British writer Zadie Smith in an interview reproduced in Dead and Alive , her fourth essay collection. “Essays are about your opinions,” she replies to a Spanish journalist from El Cultural . “Everyone has...

Monique Grbec The third of Debra Dank’s books, Ankami , rekindles the welcoming warmth of a familial camp fire. Calm, practical and mesmerising, the fire has a heart of blazing embers and flickers with the rhythmic flourish of oral storytelling. Like her record-...

Andy Jackson I’m told humans can only genuinely experience a natural environment by staying still for at least 10 minutes. Only then do birds and other animals begin to emerge from their cautious retreat. There’s a similar dynamic to reading Ben Walter’s...

James Bradley In “Later, His Ghost”, a story in her 2017 collection, Madame Zero , Sarah Hall imagines a world transformed by constant high winds. A symptom of broader environmental and social breakdown, these winds make life for the few survivors a constant...

Kirsten Krauth Luscious and rich with detail and emotional resonance, Carmel Bird’s 12th novel, Crimson Velvet Heart , is an ambitious slice of life from late 17th and early 18th century France, moving between the stories of Princess Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy and...

Kurt Johnson It has taken publisher Black Inc some time to consider the ’roo in the room. Its highly successful Shortest History series has treated the Soviet Union, music and even the Crown before the country on which its offices lie. One might understand the...

Judith Brett Change the viewing point and you change what you see. Henry Reynolds did this in 1981 when he published The Other Side of the Frontier , opening up to historical investigation Indigenous responses to the European invasion and revealing the extent of...

Heidi Maier Nature, as scientist and PhD in animal behaviour James O’Hanlon knows, is the world’s greatest trickster. His latest book, Liars, Cheats and Copycats: Trickery and deception in nature , offers readers a compelling and in-depth exploration of the...