Literature
Albo’s holiday reading list: Six books to keep the PM busy at the beach
Each year the Grattan Institute recommends a short selection of must-reads for the nation’s top office holder.
- by Jason Steger
Latest
Holly Ringland’s new novel is a story of love and total escapism
The ABC presenter is a virtuoso of fairytale storytelling for adults and clings to the pattern of her bestselling debut novel.
- by Jessie Tu
Forget Netflix’s gloomy Marilyn Monroe movie. Read the masterful book instead
Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prolific novelists working today and Blonde is her masterpiece.
- by Jane Sullivan
Sunglasses of iconic writer Joan Didion sell for $US27,000
Didion, the revered author and essayist whose precise social and personal commentary in such classics as The White Album and The Year of Magical Thinking, died last year.
- by Hannah Elliott
Why it’s time to get lost in the greatest novel ever written
What can a privileged and neurotic Frenchman who’s been dead for a century tell us about what it’s like to be alive today?
- by David Free
‘A poet in plain prose’: Reflections on Helen Garner’s amazing opus
Some of Australia’s finest minds reflect on the work of this “unflinching” writer, who has allowed us inside her head, without artifice, and tamed our most wild things into narrative.
- by Kerrie O'Brien
Phryne Fisher is back - and the divine detective is in excellent form
Kerry Greenwood’s intrepid, hedonistic detective is pursuing a new love interest in her latest adventure.
- by Sue Turnbull
The army officer and playwright who refuses to conform to tradition
Ever wondered what it’s like to be in the army? This show reveals life on the ground in an active war zone in all its shocking detail.
- by Kerrie O'Brien
How $1.2 million from a soap company helped change the publishing landscape
The Next Chapter program has bolstered the careers of dozens of diverse Australian writers, but with local Aesop funds drying up, its future is now in doubt.
- by Meg Watson
Love across the lines, and it can be so cruel
Yumna Kassab follows up her novel Australiana with a story of doomed love.
- by Beejay Silcox
‘Happiness so easily destroyed’: A riveting look inside Ukraine’s new reality
Andrey Kurkov’s Diary of an Invasion is the first important literary work to emerge from a conflict that appears likely to alter the course of history.
- by Simon Caterson