Science fiction writing often serves as a thought experiment that explores shared and hidden beliefs whose material and political reverberations lie further in the future.
Janine, a Handmaid, in series three of The Handmaid’s Tale.
Sophie Giraud/Channel 4
Status anxiety and conspicuous consumption generate a dazzling, often surreal poetry in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. But Gatsby’s rise and fall exposes deep fissures underlying the American Dream.
We shouldn’t assume that discussion of bodily changes necessarily means progression towards a more equal society.
The burial of some of the Japanese prisoners of war who lost their lives in the mass outbreak from B Camp, (the Japanese section), at No. 12 Prisoner Of War compound in the early hours of August 5, 1944.
Australian War Memorial (073487)
It’s one of the largest prison escapes in world history and it’s through fiction we can understand the tragedy, from both an Australian and Japanese perspective.
Melissa Lucashenko, winner of the 2019 Miles Franklin Award.
Courtesy of the Miles Franklin/ Belinda Rolland
This prize confirms Melissa Lucashenko’s status as one of Australia’s top writers of contemporary fiction.
The six shortlisted authors for this year’s Miles Franklin, from left to right: Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Gail Jones, Gregory Day, Melissa Lucashenko, Rodney Hall and Jennifer Mills.
Courtesy of the Miles Franklin/ Belinda Rolland
The omniscient narrator is alive and well in fiction. Kim Scott’s most recent novel uses a collective narrative voice that encompasses the landscape as well as the human.
A drawing of Philip Marlowe, an icon of hard-boiled detective fiction created by author Raymond Chandler.
CHRISTO DRUMMKOPF/flickr
The archetype can be traced back to 1920s detective fiction, when gruff, gun-toting, cigarette-smoking mavericks became heroic figures.
A retouched photo of Mary (Mollie) Dean from Sydney newspaper Truth (1 February 1931). Dean, who was murdered in Melbourne in 1930, was the subject of two Australian books published in 2018.
Public domain/The Conversation
True crime-related storytelling has shrugged off its former low-brow baggage. Two recent Australian books show how victims’ stories can be told sensitively and humanely.
Judith Kerr, author of the Tiger Who Came to Tea, at the International Literature Festival Berlin in 2016.
Christoph Rieger
As the daughter in a Jewish family fleeing the Nazis, Judith Kerr’s childhood was change, upheaval and deprivation. But this ‘clever refugee girl’ made her mark, creating stories of ideal childhood.
Romance is officially dead.
Featureflash Photo Agency
The world’s highest selling writer says 22-hour working days are the route to literary riches. But, say, our literary experts, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
Man Out of Time is an affecting portrait of a family rocked by the patriarchal figure’s long-term depression.
shutterstock
Stephanie Bishop’s latest novel demonstrates a sophisticated approach to the relationship between time and narrative: novelists and aspiring writers would do well to look closely at her achievement.
Pieter-Louis Myburgh’s “Gangster State” is one of South Africa’s top sellers.
Charles Leonard