Literature
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Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar review – an antihero in search of meaning
In Martyr!, the debut novel by Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar, a troubled young man is searching for a reason to…
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Philhellene author Arnold Zable recognised from the start the Greek passion for life with a deep sense of familiarity
“My work has been written, performed, in the spirit of philoxenia, of welcoming the stranger and seeking him out. Because…
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Orwellian nightmares: What I learned about today’s rage culture from rewriting 1984
A few years ago, I got what, for a writer of political fiction, is a dream job. Sandra Newman The…
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How Emily Wilson Made Homer Modern
Some three millennia ago, a blind bard whose name in ancient Greek means “hostage” is said to have composed two…
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In J.M. Coetzee’s latest story collection, questions of the soul become urgent as the body becomes frail
What may be surprising to some about this collection is that the stories have all appeared before in some form…
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Black Music Sunday: Celebrating Shakespeare’s birthday with jazz
“Somehow I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.” -Duke Ellington Denise Oliver Velez for Community…
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Follow the money: the story of slavery and Shakespeare’s First Folio
Two stories, usually seen as disconnected, unfold themselves during the second half of the 18th century. Emma Smith The Guardian…
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Friday essay: a lament for the lost art of letter-writing – a radical art form reflecting ‘the full catastrophe of life’
While I and my other housemates went on to the full array of box-ticking life experiences – children, careers, relationships,…
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Colette at 150: why the scandalous 20th-century writer remains a revered literary figure in France
Of course that surname is her father’s – “you can’t subvert patriarchy that easily”, added Carter – but by a…
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Minimalist poet Antigone Kefala wins the Patrick White Award for her contribution to Australian literature
She is a most deserving winner by all the terms of that prize. Elizabeth McMahon The Conversation White established the…
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Writer Charmian Clift, her biographer and one surprising, Aussie-linked Greek island
Decades later, at the launch of a Greek translation of the book Clift wrote there, her biographer finds those intriguing…
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Nobel Prize in literature: Annie Ernaux – an uncompromising author who writes from experience
It is a fictionalised account of her illegal abortion ten years earlier, as a student gradually moving away from a…
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Hilary Mantel was one of the great voices of historical fiction – and so much more
She will be chiefly remembered for her trilogy on the life of the Tudor politician Thomas Cromwell. Dinah Birch The Conversation…
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Five books you’ll like if you love The Odyssey
The poem, which tells of Odysseus’ return from the Trojan War, is both the origin of our concept of nostalgia…
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Book Week: it’s not the costume that matters, but falling in love with reading
Do we have an old white dress my niece could borrow for a Book Week costume for school? Joanne O’Mara…
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The Reclusive Giant of Australian Letters
Gerald Murnane’s new book, billed as his last, surveys the rest of his output. Merve Emre The NewYorker 0n most…
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