Every character in The Life To Come is complex, frustratingly unfulfilled, marked by kindness, selfishness, or dumb selflessness. But they are always, entirely, convincing.
A memorial in Kukenarup to the massacre that took place in the area, in which 30-40 Aboriginal men, women, and children were killed.
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To Kill a Mockingbird is no sermon. Its lessons are presented in effortless style, tackling the complexity of race issues with startling clarity and a strong sense of reality.
Kaya Scodelario as Catherine Earnshaw in the 2011 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights.
Film 4 and UK Film Council/IMDB
This week is the 200th anniversary of Emily Bronte’s birth. If reading Wuthering Heights - her only published novel - feels like a suspension in a state of waking nightmare, what a richly-hued vision of the fantastical it is.
Illustration from NickDrnaso’s Sabrina.
ItsNiceThat
Graphic novels have a long history and are becoming an ever-more popular way of bringing profound and complex stories to life.
In this 1999 photo, author Michael Ondaatje poses at Coach House Press in Toronto. In addition to receiving a coveted spot on the 2018 Man Booker longlist for ‘Warlight,’ Michael Ondaatje recently won the Golden Man Booker prize for his critically acclaimed novel ‘The English Patient.’
(CP PHOTO/Kevin Frayer)
The meanings of Ondaatje’s Golden Man Booker win is complicated and demonstrates the contradictions of literary value. Literary prizes permit us to imagine that literature is more than a commodity.
An illustration by Tosa Mitsuoki of The Tale of Genji, late 17th century.
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Murasaki Shikibu, the author of The Tale of Genji, served in the Japanese imperial court. She transformed her experiences into an intricate narrative fusing fiction, history, and poetry.
Is the belief in art’s healing power just wishful thinking, or is there something to it?
William Faulkner’s novel depicts a poor rural family from Mississippi struggling to find their place in the modernising society of the 1930s.
US Library of Congress
William Faulkner began writing As I Lay Dying the day after the 1929 Wall Street crash. It documents, through the voices of 15 characters, the emergence of a poor white family into the modern world.
Completed by Cervantes when he was in prison, Don Quixote is the tale of a man so passionate about reading he leaves home to live the life of his fictional heroes.
Australia’s romantic attitude to farming has done untold damage to the land.
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The powerful ideological connection between Australia and agriculture is being increasingly scrutinised. A spate of recent books have recast basic assumptions about our relationship to the land.
Margaret MacLean visited and wrote about the Royal Ontario museum’s collections as well as visiting Egypt for Saturday Night magazine.
(Database of Canadian Women Writers)
Did you know Lucy Maud Montgomery also published under the name Belinda Bluegrass? A new database of early Canadian women writers reveals thousands of stories about women’s lives in Canada.
A stick insect in Borneo: variation and natural selection has resulted in insects with the astonishing ability to mimic features in their natural environment.
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In this age of the pseudo-factual, its more important than ever to acquaint ourselves with the foundations of the scientific tradition, such as Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Many authors born in Latin America have produced some of their finest work while living in the United States.
Alvy Libros/flickr
Spanish-speaking writers have made exceptional contributions to American literature. Here are the best Latin American and Latino authors you probably haven’t heard of.
Philip Roth would call the Jewish resistance to his work “the luckiest break I could have had.”
AP Photo/Douglas Healey
With the Holocaust still on their mind, many American Jews were highly sensitive to portrayals of Jews in popular culture. So when Roth’s sex-obsessed characters came along, the pushback was swift.
Whether you loved him or hated him, his canonical status is beyond question.
Heart of Darkness follows a journey up the Congo River, but equally critiques the imperial powers back in Europe.
USAID Democratic Republic of Congo/Flickr
In our ongoing Guide to the Classics series, we look at Heart of Darkness: the product of dark historical energies that continue to shape our contemporary world.
Small Australian presses are publishing more contemporary works originally written in languages other than English.
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