Many child narrators in adult fiction are precocious. This enables them to describe events and people in ways that would not be possible for ordinary children of their age.
Book theft in South Africa has recently been under the spotlight.
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The late Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko and political philosophers Frantz Fanon and Achille Mbembe top the list of writers who get routinely abducted by discerning pirates of the book world.
Sofie Laguna last night became the fourth woman to win the Miles Franklin award in as many years.
Allen&Unwin
If a society should be judged by the way it treats its children, and those who are struggling on the margins, then Laguna’s work once again proves that the novel is a crucial means for drawing attention to the burning problems of our times.
The idea of the happy ending as appropriate literary fare for children is an illusion.
Geraint Rowland
The very idea of the happy ending as appropriate literary fare for children is an illusion. Most fairy tales are full of darkness and violence, and as often as not do not end happily.
Fan tributes on Oscar Wilde’s tomb.
Chrissy Hunt/Flickr
The desire to connect with literary places supports a substantial tourist trade. And the reasons why people embark on literary pilgrimages are as diverse as the kinds of fiction that inspire them.
Eleanor Catton won the 2013 Man Booker Prize, for a novel centred largely on men.
EPA/Tal Cohen
We know that male writers win more prestigious literary awards than female writers, but sadly, when women do win, it’s typically because they write about male characters, or “masculine’ topics.
Make no mistake: patriarchy and capitalism are completely entwined.
Shehan Peruma/Flickr
Wednesday Martin’s book Primates of Park Avenue has stirred debate over the so-called “wife bonus”, but feminism needs to be about more than the ability to buy things.
Technology has always transformed the novel and given it new shapes to play with.
Thomas Leuthard
Victor Hugo famously claimed the invention of the printing press destroyed the edifice of the gothic cathedral. Others fear the internet age will eventually destroy the novel. But guess what? It won’t.
Sacks’ works have introduced readers to the marvellous complexities of the mind.
Mars Hill Church Seattle/Flickr
The popular neurologist revealed earlier this year that he only has months to live – a statement which casts his recently-released memoir, On the Move: A Life, in a new light.
A new collection of essays explores the role of books in founding and dismantling The British empire.
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Books have active political lives. They inspire social movements and bind people together. Books can stand as short-hand symbols for larger galaxies of ideas.
Ben Okri’s The Age of Magic expresses dissatisfaction with the careless bustle of our everyday lives.
Metsavend
“We need something by which to judge, by which to navigate our journey through the stars, which is to say our journey through time.” Ben Okri discusses his new novel The Age of Magic and our busy lives.
An author who demands to be read.
Gyula Czimbal/EPA
“I have a bit of resistance to the way the world is and making up my own world is a response to that,” says Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid, a guest at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival.
Should we be upset that some of our favourite authors don’t actually exist?
Mark Nye
Modernism – and western culture generally since the late 18th century – taught us that books were written in solitary creative frenzies. But ghostwriters are increasingly challenging that assumption.
The pantheon of the Bard’s plays is now larger by one – or so the headlines would have you believe.
George
You’d be forgiven for thinking Double Falsehood was recently “found” and confirmed as being by Shakespeare. But that’s not what the researchers behind the computational tests actually said. So what’s up?
Zannoni’s 1771 Map of the British Isles shows the heart of the “civilised” world – at least according to Adam Smith when he was writing The Wealth of Nations.
Wikimedia Commons/Geographicus Rare Antique Maps
To burnish the virtues of “civilised” Europe, Adam Smith relies on a barrage of racial insults. Where did his information about the so-called “savage peoples” come from in the first place?
Memory makes us human but also sometimes inhumane.
Trung Bui Viet
Though Kazuo Ishiguro makes us wonder whether remembering is really better than forgetting, he also makes it clear that the answer is irrelevant. Remembering is our fate.
Bitto has remarked on the major impact of the Stella Prize and the conversations it has encouraged about women writers.
Jone
Emily Bitto has won the 2015 Stella Prize for her debut novel, The Strays. The prize is now in its third year and was established to redress the way in which women writers were typically overlooked for major literary prizes
A fantasy about free markets in primitive society lies at the heart of Adam Smith’s wealth of nations – but did they ever exist?
Steve Rhodes/Flickr
The State Library of Victoria has received the greatest single bequest of rare books in its history, coupled with an endowment for the collection’s preservation. No wonder book scholars are smiling.