In her new memoir Hope, Rosie Batty reflects on her ‘absolute despair’ at our failure to protect women and children from gendered violence – and the personal toll of becoming an unlikely campaigner.
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Articles on Book reviews
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McDermid artfully weaves Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth with Scotland’s Queen Gruoch, the real woman who inspired her.
Edwina Preston approaches Nova Weetman’s ‘generous and open’ grief memoir from a place of shared loss.
An 8000-km hitchhiking trip is at the heart of Anna Broinowski’s Datsun Angel. Dominic Gordon, in contrast, kicks his young self around Melbourne’s alleys like a half-squashed can of energy drink.
For poet Robert Adamson, the natural world offered a form of deliverance.
Rushdie feared until he dealt with the attempt on his life, he ‘wouldn’t be able to write anything else’. The book is a clearly cathartic story of courage and resilience, but it’s curiously one-eyed.
Two fascinating new novels are not particularly difficult, but their relationship to established traditions of experimental literature is clear.
A new book paints intricate portraits of plant and animal species, showing how they are woven into their ecological setting and describing how that weave is unravelling.
The debut novels of two forceful, intelligent journalists are bold, brash stories of powerful women at the top of their game. One details a horrific sexual crime, the other ugliness in the art world.
Storyselling, unlike narration, attempts to eradicate uncertainty. It cannot perform the important task of imagining the future.
In Black Duck, Bruce Pascoe traces a calendar year on Yumburra, the farm his bestseller Dark Emu helped to purchase.
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.
Donor conception, surrogacy, artificial womb technologies … a new book delves into how families are changing.
Winnie Dunn has made it her project to bring a more sensitive intercultural understanding to an unfamiliar readership
Writer and psychotherapist Adam Phillips is often hailed as one of the world’s great essayists. His new book – exploring the topic of giving up, among other things – is both erudite and slippery.
Nathan Thrall’s harrowing account of an avoidable tragedy doubles as a devastating analysis of the everyday realities of occupation, in the context of Palestinian and Israeli history.
Lives that matter: new novels by Trish Bolton and Graeme Nash defy the stereotypes of older women in fiction.
Svend Brinkmann’s idea of thoughtfulness is not just about exercising our rational powers to solve puzzles, but the existential dimensions of thinking.
A novel about first-wave feminists cleverly critiques the movement’s privilege. The first fiction from Nakkiah Lui’s imprint highlights uncomfortable truths. And a debut about teen girls is ‘too naive’.
Catherine Chidgey’s disquieting, award-winning novel The Axeman’s Carnival explores the disintegrating relationship of a rural couple from the perspective of their pet magpie, Tama.
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
