Books
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The big idea: could you have made different choices in life?
Now is the time when we look back over the past year and wonder: how did I do? Philip Ball…
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The Ghosts of Kennan
We all read him, those of us who did graduate work in U.S. diplomatic history in the late 1980s and…
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Time is arrested in Gail Jones’ beautiful new novel of war and art, Salonika Burning
The image is of a city on fire, watched by soldiers at a distance who despite, or perhaps because of,…
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How the 20 year rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has transformed Turkey
The seemingly unstoppable rise of political Islam throughout the turbulent 1990s had finally culminated in a much-dreaded loss for a…
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Margo Jefferson and the Art of Life
In her work, especially her new book Constructing a Nervous System, she transforms criticism into an experience one feels in…
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Like Primo Levi at Auschwitz, Behrouz Boochani testifies for the people who lived and died in a prison camp
I thus find myself drawn to thinking about Behrouz Boochani’s project of writing the histories of Manus Prison as being part of…
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‘How are they losing their children like this?’
“How are they losing their children like this, all over the country? Lucy Christopher The Conversation They aren’t used to…
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Hilma af Klint: A Biography by Julia Voss review – portrait of the painter as a mystic
The voices in her head told Hilma af Klint she would be a great artist. Madoc Cairns The Guardian They…
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Friday essay: how the West betrayed Syria
It was a statement of intent that proved to be prophetic. Alex Bellamy The Conversation In early 2011, the…
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New bookstore Goodwood Books to highlight underrepresented authors and their works
Goodwood Books, co-owned by Emma Coventry and Sarah Tooth, is located in the inner-southern suburb of Goodwood, just south of…
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This Jewish woman’s story of surviving the Holocaust by passing as Catholic and sheltering with Nazis is (rightly) hard to read
But these are only two of the names by which she has been known. Jordana Silverstein The Conversation Mala, 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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Model minorities and murder: Tracey Lien investigates the Vietnamese Cabramatta of the 1990s
In her debut novel, All That’s Left Unsaid, Tracey Lien researches her experience to convey the emotional complexity of Vietnamese refugee…
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How Saidiya Hartman Changed the Study of Black Life
Saidiya Hartman has shaped studies of Black life for over two decades. Elias Rodriques The Nation Her first book, 1997’s Scenes…
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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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Triumph, tragedy and climate change: telling the stories of the Sherpas of Everest
This minority group, living across the high-Himalaya border between Tibet (China) and Nepal, has become famous for its many world-class…
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