This Book Week, don’t stress about the costume and don’t worry about what the other mums or dads are sewing or buying. Costumes are fun but what matters is to let your kid read what they enjoy.
Streetscenes, Melbourne, 1950.
Mark Strizic/State Library of Victoria
Jay Carmichael’s novel explores how Australian same-sex attracted men lived during the repressive period after the end of the second world war. But does it impose present concerns on the past?
An anonymous 15th century painting of Isabella and Richard II.
Wikimedia Commons
Part historical novel, part speculative fiction, A History of Dreams examines the themes of inequality and authoritarianism from the perspective of a coven of witchy young women.
Orestes Pursued by the Furies - William Adolphe Bouguereau (1862)
Public domain
The intimate connections between life and art are explored in the deeply satisfying conclusion to a quartet of novels about one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.
On International Women’s Day, two women writers discuss feminism, writing in the age of Trump and Covid – and being ‘flabbergasted’ by the absence of birth from Western art and philosophy.