The Marsh Birds, by Eva Sallis, is a bleak but poignant account of one boy’s consuming loss and bewilderment as war and internal political tension separate him from his family, his home and his country. It is the story of parallel journeys in the life of Dhurgham Mohammad As-Samarra’i as he grows to manhood in an unforgiving world and searches for love and acceptance. Throughout this pilgrimage, Sallis examines concepts of anguish and hopelessness, social hostility and exclusion, fear of difference and the collision of cultures. In the tradition of Sallis’s City of Sea Lions (2002) and Mahjar (2003), themes of self-discovery, escape, constraint, and the obstacles to freedom and solace in other societies are revisited.

Campaigning during the 1912 US presidential election, the great labour leader and socialist Eugene Debs used to tell his supporters that he could not lead them into the Promised Land because if they were trusting enough to be led in they would be trusting enough to be led out again. In other words, he was counselling his voters to resist the easy certitude that zealotry brings; to reject a politics that trades on blind faith rather than the critical power of reason.

Where are the great menopause novels? In The Change (1991), Germaine Greer described menopause as the ‘undescribed experience’, but then noted that it had in fact been described extensively, mostly ‘by men for the eyes of other men’. Wendy Harmer’s Farewell My Ovaries is written by a woman for the eyes of other women, but it does not really aspire to greatness. It is unashamedly ‘chick lit’ – or ‘chick-making-the-uneasy-transition-to-hen-lit’.

At the start, Catherine Jinks’s teen novel Evil Genius resembles a local edition of ‘cult’ blockbuster phenomena such as Harry Potter and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer – wish-fulfilment fantasies about misfits initiated into a hidden élite. On page one, we are introduced to Jinks’s protagonist, Cadel (Welsh for ‘battle’), a brilliant but barely socialised young boy obsessed with computers. His adoptive parents are named Stuart and Lanna Piggott, which should tell you all you need to know. Aged eight, this outwardly placid but potentially vengeful nerd learns from his psychologist mentor that his true father is a mad scientist named Phineas Darkkon, who has made millions through scams such as a line of shonky vending machines, and who subsequently bankrolls a secret University of Evil located in central Sydney, where, a few years later, Cadel precociously winds up. Among the subjects on offer are Basic Lying, Forgery, Assassination and Guerrilla Skills; the other students include a Goth chemist who is trying to turn himself into a vampire, and a pair of bitchy, telepathic twins.

When I first heard that Tom Frame’s latest book was about the Voyager disaster, I wondered if the author had come down with amnesia, for he had already published a book on this subject thirteen years ago. However, if the federal government required two royal commissions to come to a conclusion about this naval accident, it is surely appropriate that Frame, having written Where Fate Calls: The HMAS Voyager Tragedy, should write a second book – The Cruel Legacy: The HMAS Voyager Tragedy – to revisit and reconsider this complex and controversial event.

John Curtin was recently voted Australia’s best prime minister by a panel of nine scholars of political leadership (The Age, 18 December 2004). He narrowly won over Robert Menzies (by one vote), but easily beat the likes of Bob Hawke, Ben Chifley and John Howard – in that order. Given that Curtin was prime minister for less than four years, while Menzies ruled for eighteen years, and given that most of Curtin’s policies were tough austerity measures of wartime preparation, his enduring reputation as Australia’s best prime minister is surely remarkable. Then along comes economist and former Keating adviser John Edwards, who says that Curtin’s deification has been pronounced for all the wrong reasons.

Dreams of leaving can be a powerful force in the lives of young people. These four novels are each touched by the desire for other places. The idea that a more authentic self lurks beyond our familiar zones shapes these books, three of which are written by Australians, and one by an American writer who spends half his time in Australia and half in New York.

When five Chinese set themselves ablaze in Tiananmen Square in January 2001, Falun Gong made world headlines. Horrified disciples of the spiritual and qigong (like t’ai chi) organisation claimed that none of the five was a member and dissociated themselves from the tragedy, in which one person died. Today, Falun Gong still sees itself as a victim of a government conspiracy to discredit its 100 million faithful. Sydney-based Jennifer Zeng asks: why did police, some thirty fire engines and cameramen arrive within a minute? How did they get distant, mid-range and close-up images of the self-immolation from so many different angles unless it had been prearranged? Zeng suggests answers to these and other questions in Witnessing History.

Robert Ingpen is one of Australia’s best-known and most distinguished artists. Throughout his long career, he has illustrated scientific publications and numerous books for children and young people. He is the only Australian illustrator to have been awarded the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Children’s Literature. He has designed bronze doors, stamps, and murals, and has acted as designer for Swan Hill Pioneer Village, one of Australia’s first open-air museums. His recent work includes the design of a tapestry celebrating the sesquicentenary of the Melbourne Cricket Ground; illustrating a centenary edition of Peter Pan and Wendy; and holding an exhibition at the 2002 Bologna Children’s Book Fair.