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Behrouz Boochani photographed on Manus Island. Jason Garman/Amnesty International via AAP

Truth to power: my time translating Behrouz Boochani’s masterpiece

Behrouz Boochani wrote his memoir of incarceration on Manus Island one text message at a time. Translating this work of ‘horrific surrealism’ from Farsi to English was a profoundly philosophical experience.
Gregory Peck and Harper Lee on the set of To Kill a Mockingbird. Universal Pictures/IMDB

How the moral lessons of To Kill a Mockingbird endure today

To Kill a Mockingbird is no sermon. Its lessons are presented in effortless style, tackling the complexity of race issues with startling clarity and a strong sense of reality.
In this 1999 photo, author Michael Ondaatje poses at Coach House Press in Toronto. In addition to receiving a coveted spot on the 2018 Man Booker longlist for ‘Warlight,’ Michael Ondaatje recently won the Golden Man Booker prize for his critically acclaimed novel ‘The English Patient.’ (CP PHOTO/Kevin Frayer)

Ondaatje’s win of the Golden Man Booker Prize is complicated

The meanings of Ondaatje’s Golden Man Booker win is complicated and demonstrates the contradictions of literary value. Literary prizes permit us to imagine that literature is more than a commodity.
William Faulkner’s novel depicts a poor rural family from Mississippi struggling to find their place in the modernising society of the 1930s. US Library of Congress

William Faulkner diagnosed modern ills in As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner began writing As I Lay Dying the day after the 1929 Wall Street crash. It documents, through the voices of 15 characters, the emergence of a poor white family into the modern world.
Guy Pearce as the Chandleresque private investigator Jack Irish: in the early years of Australian crime fiction, convicts and bushrangers featured prominently. Lachlan Moore

Friday essay: from convicts to contemporary convictions – 200 years of Australian crime fiction

Australia’s rich tradition of crime fiction is little known – early tales told of bushrangers and convicts, one hero was a mining engineer turned amateur detective – but it reveals a range of national myths and fantasies.
Australia’s romantic attitude to farming has done untold damage to the land. Shutterstock.com

Friday essay: Dark Emu and the blindness of Australian agriculture

The powerful ideological connection between Australia and agriculture is being increasingly scrutinised. A spate of recent books have recast basic assumptions about our relationship to the land.

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