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n this sequel to Wolf Hall, Mantel explores the destruction of Anne Boleyn. Henry’s actions in breaking with Rome have forced England into dangerous isolation, and still lacking a male heir Henry falls in love with Jane Seymour. As Chief Minister to Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell’s fortunes rose with those of Boleyn, now Cromwell must negotiate a path through the politics of the court that Henry will accept, that secures his own future and that also serves the nation. Published on the 10th May. Find out more...
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Memoir as fiction. Karl Ove Knausgaard writes with about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and unpredictable father, and his bewilderment and grief on his father's death. In an exploration of his past Knausgaard creates a universal story of the struggles, great and small, that we all face in our lives. Described as Proustian in it’s detail this is the first volume of a planned trilogy that has been hugely popular in Knausgaard’s native Norway. It opens with a humorous and interesting essay about our attitudes to death. Find out more...
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MELBOURNE, 1985. Jason Dalton sits on his bed and counts his football cards, dreaming of the day he too is immortalised in the public eye. He's young and gifted, a natural player who can do anything with the ball in his hand. If only everything else in his life was as obvious to him as playing.GOLD COAST, 1991. The bottom has fallen out of Jason's life; he's now a high-school dropout, tired and wasted on the Gold Coast, with an explosive family secret still ringing in his ears. He needs to get his life back. But first he needs to find out who he is. Vogel Prize Winner. Find out more...
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Freewheeling through centuries of critical ideas, Eagleton sheds light on the place of literature in our culture and in doing so reaffirms the value and validity of literary thought. The 'event' of literature he argues, consists of transformative encounters between writing and the reality it strives to contain, encounters that are unique and endlessly repeatable. Find out more...
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n this collection of essays and speeches Franzen returns to the themes, both human and literary, that have long preoccupied him. Whether examining his mixed feelings about the suicide of his friend and rival David Foster Wallace, or offering a moving and witty take on the ways that technology has changed how people express their love, these pieces trace the progress of unique and mature mind wrestling with itself, with literature, and with some of the most important issues. Find out more...
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A fictionalised autobiography told in thirty sections, each of which begins with the memory of a book that has left an image on the writers mind. Murnane gives only clues to the books titles, recalling in the process a parade of great, popular, and forgotten authors. Three short pieces of fiction featuring the author as a young boy, a teacher and an old recluse, play on familiar themes in Murnane’s work – the anxieties and aspirations of a writing life and the absence of religious belief. Find out more...
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An angry and self-loathing veteran of the Korean War, Frank Money has profound mental and physical scars from the trauma he endured. Frank is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to take his abused younger sister back to the small Georgia town they come from, which he's hated all his life. As Frank revisits the memories from childhood and the war that leave him questioning his sense of self, he finds a way to live. Find out more...
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Billy, the bisexual narrator and main character of In One Person, tells the tragicomic story (lasting more than half a century) of his life as a "sexual suspect". In his most political novel in years Irving explores and embraces our sexual differences and the solitariness of a bisexual man - a story of desire, secrecy, and sexual identity that is tormented, funny and affecting. Find out more...
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Peter Robb has an uncanny ability to get into the skin of other people. In Australia, these range from Alex Dimitriades to Ivan Milat, from Marcia Langton to Julian Assange. In Italy, Robb immerses the reader in the worlds of Fellini, Caravaggio, Calvino and Pasolini. Elsewhere, his observations of EM Forster, Arthur Rimbaud, Peter Carey and Gore Vidal illuminate the real people behind the public image. Find out more...
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In 1968 Papua New Guinea is on the brink of independence, and everything is about to change. Amidst the turmoil filmmaker Leonard arrives from England with his Dutch wife, Rika, to study and film an isolated village high in the mountains. The couple are struck by the villager’s customs and art and by the intellectual ambition and idealism surrounding the new university in Moresby. In a story of friendship, love, loss, grief and betrayal, Modjeska’s novel explores the march of modernity in this fascinating and complex country. Find out more...
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When Ali Al Jenabi fled addam Hussein's torture chambers, he was forced to leave his family behind in Iraq and embark on an international odyssey through the shadow world of fake passports, crowded camps and illegal border crossings. Ali is sustained and driven by his love of freedom and family but as a man cut loose from the protections of citizenship he must confront what he has been forced to become. Find out more...
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For nearly a year Sharyn Munro travelled through rural Australia, visiting the communities in coal-mining areas. Here, literally at the coal-face, here she found towns and districts under threat from mining companies. Incidences of asthma, leukaemia and other cancers show alarming spikes in communities close to the mines. Rivers and aquifers are drying up or becoming polluted and once fertile agricultural land is becoming unusable. What was once a rich land is becoming a wasteland. Find out more...
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