The Conversation, Fernando Pascullo/Wikimedia Commons
Rachel Cusk’s twelfth novel is strange, compelling and ferociously intelligent. It explores artists, mothers and daughters, and the ‘blankness of spirituality’ on the other side of gender.
Australian soldiers firing on Japanese positions on Mount Shiburangu near Wewak, Papua New Guinea, June 1945.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
War writing can be formulaic and clichéd, but Catherine McKinnon resists glorification and the usual narrative of “us against them” .
Emilio Garcia/Unsplash
Anne Carson’s playful new book, Wrong Norma, meaningfully makes apparently random connections – and the result is compelling.
Alones/Shutterstock
The intriguing stories in Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Astronauts bring obscure historical footnotes to life.
Scene from The Tattooist of Auschwitz, directed by Tali Shalom-Ezer.
Stan Originals.
Holocaust stories have often been criticised for their distortions and misrepresentations, but they can also encourage audiences to learn from history.
Mikael Damkier/Shutterstock
Safe Haven is an excoriating account of a shameful period of Australian history, told in a life-affirming voice that imagines a more humane future.
The shortlisted authors, clockwise from top left: Hayley Singer, Katia Ariel, Emily O'Grady, Alexis Wright, Katherine Brabon and Sanya Rushdi.
Composite image/The Conversation, The Stella Prize
This year’s shortlist doesn’t offer much in the way of consolation, but it might shake up how you see the world.
Rythme Joie de Vivre – Robert Delaunay (1930).
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Two fascinating new novels are not particularly difficult, but their relationship to established traditions of experimental literature is clear.
Author provided
The End of the Morning is Charmian Clift’s most successful piece of fiction. But it is only a piece and one that leaves two matters unresolved.
Winnie Dunn.
Hachette
Winnie Dunn has made it her project to bring a more sensitive intercultural understanding to an unfamiliar readership
Shutterstock
Australian literature is a rich and largely untapped source of information about how Australians think about AI.
Gabriel García Márquez on his 87th birthday, March 6, 2014.
Maria Guzman/EPA via AAP
Until August is the fruit of Gabriel García Márquez’s labour against adversity, a moving testament of his love for and commitment to literature.
Sotheby employees hang the painting Cabra by Jean-Michel Basquiat ahead of its auction in New York in 2017.
Frank Augstein/AAP
The novel Appreciation is a literary page-turner with no shortage of dramatic flair.
Finding Bear by Hannah Gold is a heartwarming adventure story about a girl’s quest to help save a polar bear.
Levi Penfold
Climate stories that focus on solutions are more likely to inspire positive environmental action.
The Otago (1884).
State Library of Queensland. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Gail Jones has written a richly evocative novel that warrants attention, both for its fascinating subject-matter and for its outstanding writerly qualities.
Wassily Kandinsky – Composition 8 (1923).
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Yevgeny Zamyatin was a born loner and instinctive satirist, whose usual response to collective enthusiasm was to dissent.
Scene from The Zone of Interest, directed by Jonathan Glazer.
Madman Films
In The Zone of Interest, Martin Amis represents our familiar world from a radically unfamiliar angle.
Main images Shutterstock/sea background Pexels.
Shutterstock/Pexels
Technically, ChatGPT can do (some of) the work of a human editor. But an experiment comparing three separate human edits of a literary short story to edits by ChatGPT exposes AI’s serious limitations.
WellStock/Shutterstock
Fiction offers precious and sobering insights into the impact of alcohol in the lives of women and children.
Photo of J.M. Coetzee: Laterthanyouthink, via Wikimedia Commons
The fiction of J.M. Coetzee is always formally daring, brave in its social critique and its refusal to play by the rules.