Birnam Wood is a novel of depth and complexity, but its depiction of an unscrupulous billionaire is also refreshingly unsubtle.
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Fiction
Displaying 81 - 100 of 273 articles
Short-circuiting the language of literary value, permanently wrongfooting the custodians of taste, Gravity’s Rainbow proposes a new way of thinking about what we treasure most.
Polyglot texts — texts that use many languages — have become increasingly common as writers document struggles between regimes of European hegemony and decolonizing movements.
Paul Dalgarno’s latest novel is a meditation on the sorrows that rip a family apart and a celebration of the love that threads it back together.
Set in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Shirley switches between psychological realism and playful satire.
Kath O'Connor’s debut novel, Inheritance, follows two women – an IVF hopeful and her grandmother – who carry the BRCA1 gene and contract ovarian cancer. It’s very close to being memoir.
These literary works ask readers to rethink the histories of these half-human sea creatures and their role in society today.
From ghostly love stories to political satires and southern gothic thrillers, these are the best fiction books according to our academics.
The question behind Tom Keneally’s latest novel is how a political idealist striving for his country’s freedom could end up supporting slavery.
At nearly 90 years of age, Cormac McCarthy is striking out in new artistic directions.
In the shadow of the climate crisis, a wave of speculative stories ask what it means to live in a world where everything is not an extractable resource — and where humans are not in control.
George Saunders has described short stories as ‘thrill-producing machines’, but his latest collection is hit and miss.
With its lovingly rendered characters and sharp aphoristic prose, Sweeney and the Bicycles is a study in radical self-absorption.
Ian McEwan has forged his own genre – crisply realist surfaces mixed with sudden excursions into the darkest corridors of the mind. In Lessons, the central character reveals a writerly consciousness.
Nights of Plague is set on a fictional island in the early 20th century. Is it an allegory of empire’s fall; a contemplation on corruption and East-West tension or a reflection on pandemic life?
In this tender, thought-provoking novel, an award-winning writer explores the ambivalence that often attends female friendship.
A panoramic tale and an in-depth character study, Iris immerses its readers in a world of impoverishment and struggle.
Elizabeth Strout’s novel Oh William! has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her follow up book takes us inside the head of a small, loving, anxious, slightly neurotic person during lockdown.
Shaun Prescott’s second novel is a gothic tale of skin-crawling, psychological dysfunction.
Norman Daly’s 1972 exhibition, ‘The Civilization of Llhuros,’ presented fiction as fact – and reminded viewers of just how easily they could be duped.
Top contributors
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Executive Dean (interim) Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
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Professor of English Literature, University of Southern Queensland
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Associate Professor in Literary Studies, RMIT University
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Adjunct Lecturer, English and Creative Writing, UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney
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Dean of Research (Creative), University of South Australia
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Professor of English, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, ACU, Australian Catholic University
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IT Service Desk Coordinator, Swansea University
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Senior Lecturer, Writing, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology
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Associate Professor in Creative Writing, School of Culture & Communication, The University of Melbourne
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Professor, Chair of Australian Literature, The University of Western Australia
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Lecturer, Creative Writing, University of Adelaide
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Associate Editor, The Letters of Ernest Hemingway and Assistant Research Professor of English, Penn State
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Senior Lecturer — Writing, Editing, Publishing, University of Southern Queensland
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Professor of History, University of Warwick
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Associate Professor, Griffith University
