What does capitalism do to our ability to connect with other people? Lydia Davis’ stories suggest it hollows out our words – but that the exaltation of the ordinary can connect us.
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Articles on Book reviews
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A major new history of the Australian novel is shaped by the recent renaissance in Indigenous writing, but there are some notable omissions.
James O'Hanlon’s easy and humorous style makes Silk and Venom a readily digestible and satisfying meal for anyone with an interest in the natural world.
A new book follows four women philosophers through ten of the worst years in the 20th century, spanning 1933, the year Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, to the thick of the second world war.
From a longlist of 12, six novels have been shortlisted for the 2023 Booker prize.
The narrative of Temperance is built around two disappearances, which traumatically affect the lives of a woman and her children.
Amanda Lohrey’s new novel, The Conversion, poses questions that matter to how we read, write and live now – through a couple’s renovation of a church into a home.
Is social justice advanced by focusing on people’s different identities? Or is this worldview ultimately a trap?
In The Manic, Benjamin Labatut tells the story of the ‘smartest man of the 20th century’.
Pi O is known for his wit and irreverence. His anarchism, reflexive anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism are all part of the deal.
Christos Tsiolkas’s new novel is more interested in individuals and our influences on one another than on Australia’s social problems.
As a diva, Streisand has consistently defied instructions not to do something by doubling up her efforts.
Jem Bendell encourages us to think about societal collapse in ways that are ‘profound and startlingly original’, with the potential to birth whole new social movements, says Tom Doig.
Traditional capitalists are still flourishing, but according to Yanis Varoufakis they are not driving the economy like they used to.
In Question 7, Richard Flanagan writes of the contingencies of history, and troubles the distinction between truth and fabrication.
Let Us Descend is concerned with the neglected lives of the the poor, the despised, the dark, those barely scraping a living, but cannot capture the collective experience of slavery.
Some see Elon Musk as an idiot savant; others think of him simply as an idiot. How did an unelected citizen come to wield such power?
The narrator of Charlotte Wood’s new novel has shed her life to live with nuns. The world intrudes in the form of COVID, a mouse plague and recovered bones, delivered by someone from her past.
Gabrielle Carey’s last book, about her beloved James Joyce, also includes her own life as a reader, and makes us see things that hurt and delight her.
My Life as a Jew is an honest and very personal book about a growing sense of Jewish identity, but it has its contradictions.
Top contributors
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Executive Dean (interim) Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
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Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Adjunct professor, University of Technology Sydney
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PhD Candidate, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne
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Senior Lecturer, Writing, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology
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Political Scientist, University of the Western Cape
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Professor, Chair of Australian Literature, The University of Western Australia
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Professor of Communication, Deakin University
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Professor of English Literature, University of Southern Queensland
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Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne
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Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University
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Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing, The University of Melbourne
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Dennis Altman is a Friend of The Conversation.
VC Fellow, La Trobe University
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Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Charles Sturt University
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Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University
