If you’re writing about something essentially trivial, your work has to be of an exceptional standard. But Michael J. Seidlinger’s Scream relies too much on his own low-stakes victimhood.
Owls are masterpieces of adaption, having honed their expertise as night predators over millions of years. Two new books delve into the world of these birds and the battle to protect certain species.
Iraqi civilians and U S soldiers pull down a statue of Saddam Hussein in downtown Baghdad.
Jerome Delay/AP
Countless memoirs have been published by US and British veterans in the 20 years since the Iraq War began in March 2003. Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad offers a fresh perspective.
Jessica Zhan Mei Yu’s witty, ‘effervescent’ debut novel follows a Sylvia-Plath-loving young Malaysian-Australian writer’s journey to ‘the heart of empire’ in the UK.
Composite image of Nadia Comaneci at the Montreal Olympic Games, 1976.
AP
Nadia Comăneci was the most famous gymnast in the world when she defected from Romania in 1989. A new book includes 25,000 pages worth of secret police surveillance material.
Australia’s decision to manufacture US missiles highlights tensions between our foreign policy stance and our trading interests. Two new books throw light the problem.
A new book exposes how the ‘chaos kings’ of high finance play with other people’s lives as if they were meaningless pieces in a parlour game for the wealthy elite.
Detail from The Dog – Francisco Goya (c.1820).
Public domain.
Nel Law’s voyage to Antarctica and back, through the choppy waters of a longstanding marriage, is the story of a woman’s right to be, to change, to grow and to love.
Emily Perkins’ ‘intoxicating’ new novel unfolds in the wake of a husband’s corruption scandal – which threatens his wife’s carefully curated lifestyle brand and forces her to question everything.
Freud doing cocaine. Psychologist William James experimenting with nitrous oxide. A new history tells of the Romantic rebels who first sampled psychoactive substances.
A woman relaxes in the pool: in their memoir, Australian writer Kris Kneen describes the freedom they find in the water.
Allgo An App for Plus-size People/Unsplash
Kris Kneen’s ‘exquisite’ memoir about living in a fat body is deeply intimate. It somehow feels even more intimate than their books about sex and desire.
From snake-like creatures with claws to jealous virgin ghosts, female monsters have long been a part of women’s lore. Such figures were Intimately tied to childbirth, sexuality and child mortality.
Anna Funder’s new book, Wifedom, is a meditation on the insidious nature of patriarchy. Funder draws parallels between our #metoo era and the time of George Orwell and his wife Eileen.