The book prize is the publisher’s answer to the persistent grumble that fiction is in its death throes; an attempt to combat the perceived threat of the digital.
The Wizard of Oz series was swept from US libraries in the 1930s and 1940s.
Wikimedia
When most people think of book censorship, they imagine political regimes and potentially book burning in Nazi Germany. What is little considered is that most books that have been challenged or banned are books for young people.
The definition of ‘literature’ is changeable, and inextricably linked with fashion.
Pratchett image: EPA/Alessandro Della Bella. Austen image: Wikimedia Commons
Pratchett’s work is often classified as ‘genre fiction’ rather than literary fiction. Yet his relationship with genre is complex and adversarial. He sets genre stereotypes up to be deconstructed.
What role does the philologist play in our ongoing engagement with great writing?
AAP image/Art Gallery NSW/ 'John Coetzee' by Archibald finalist Adam Chang, 2011.
David Attwell’s new book is the first extended investigation of the South African author composed since the recently-opened Coetzee archive at the University of Texas. So what does it teach us?
Chigozie Obioma, whose book The Fishermen has been nominated for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.
Supplied
Framing younger writers’ work within the footsteps of giants is always fraught with risk; the risk of shadowing the merits and faults of the former in an attempt to assess the legacy of the latter.
For publishers, Australian political memoir or biography is likely to pay its own way, at the very least.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
More than a dozen political memoirs were published in Australia last year. Does that make us a nation of political junkies? If not, why so many books and what do they contribute to cultural debate?
Just another pair of traditional romantics.
BBC Pictures/Hartswood Films
Italian novelist Elena Ferrante has been called “one of the great novelists of our time” and her Neapolitan novel cycle “an unconditional masterpiece”. But the author herself remains an intangible figure.
Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love, the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling yoga memoir.
Sony Pictures
Yoga fiction is a burgeoning genre of books that tell tales of spiritual enlightenment through an ancient Indian practice. But what happens when such practices are severed from their cultural roots?
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s work strives deliberately towards constructing “real” experience – with all the failure that entails.
editrrix
As individuals, we are driven by thoughts of success, so it makes sense that failure might make us feel slightly uneasy. And yet failure – and what that means in writing – is having a moment.
Oliver Sacks died of cancer this past week.
Joshua Wanyama/flickr
‘I knew and counted Terry among my friends, and I watched Alzheimer’s slowly and insidiously strip him of attributes and faculty.’ So what can we make of his final Discworld novel, published posthumously?
Superman’s over the hill.
'Superhero' via www.shutterstock.com
Debate about the lack of diversity in young adult literature isn’t new, but thanks to recent campaigns such as We Need Diverse Books, there’s renewed focus on why diversity in literature is crucial.
Politicians who cling to the past can view the scientist’s addiction to evidence as highly subversive.
Francisco Osorio
At events such as the Melbourne Writers Festival, it’s hard to avoid noticing that science, and scientists, are receiving special billing. The reading list of this Nobel Laureate is instructive.
Michael Mohammed Ahmad asks us to reconsider who the insiders and outsiders are in modern Australia.
Sally Tsoutas
Arab-Australian identity is not some singular, homogeneous label. Rather it exists as a spectrum and contains more complexity and diversity than the mainstream media allow.
English caricaturist Richard Newton’s 1798 cartoon depicts John Bull farting on the face of King George III.
Library of Congress
John Hersey’s article Hiroshima (1946) is seminal in historical and literary terms: the shocking realities of the atomic bomb demanded a new way of writing.
A major challenge facing writers who want to take on the Bomb is that conventional description fails.
EPA/HIROSHIMA PEACE MEMORIAL MUSEUM HANDOUT
Hollywood has kept its distance from the bombing of Hiroshima, 70 years ago, and novelists, aside from sci-fi authors, have largely ignored the catastrophe as a means of exploring human nature. Why?
The burden of creating a more inclusive, fairer and more tolerant society is carried by the younger generation.
Hadi Zaher/Flickr
There are many similarities between blockbusting young adult novels such as The Hunger Games series and Australian books such as Taronga – but there are also clear differences in their messages for the young.