Australian Book Review

This week on The ABR Podcast, Josh Bornstein discusses corporate cancel culture. Bornstein argues that ‘Companies now routinely censor their employees far more repressively than any liberal democratic government does’. Josh Bornstein is an award-winning workplace lawyer and writer. His first book, Working for the Brand: How corporations are destroying free speech was recently published by Scribe. Listen to Josh Bornstein’s ‘Feeding the beast: On corporate cancel culture’, published in the November issues of ABR.

This week, on The ABR Podcast, Paul Giles reviews Juice by Tim Winton. Juice represents a creative sidestep for the four-time Miles Franklin Award recipient, being both his longest novel and his first venture into speculative fiction. Paul Giles is Professor of English at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. Listen to Paul Giles with ‘”Schooled in doubleness”:Tim Winton’s enthralling new novel’, published in the November issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast Johanna Leggatt reviews Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race by Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden. She quotes from the book: ‘There will be another pandemic. It might not happen for another century, or it might happen very soon.’ Johanna Leggatt is a Melbourne-based writer and journalist. Listen to Johanna Leggatt’s “‘We right to go?’ Heeding the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic”, published in the October issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Michael Winkler reviews Chinese Postman by Brian Castro. ‘Reading Castro for plot is like listening to Bob Dylan for melody,’ says Winkler of the prize-winning author of eleven novels. Michael Winkler was the winner of the 2016 Calibre Essay Prize and is the author of Grimmish. Listen to Michael Winkler’s ‘Giving up mirrors: Brian Castro’s soaring stridulation’, published in the October issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Bridget Griffen-Foley reviews The Men Who Killed the News: The inside story of how media moguls abused their power, manipulated the truth and distorted democracy by Eric Beecher. Bridget Griffen-Foley is the founder of the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University and has recently co-edited the fifth edition of The Media and Communications in Australia. Listen to Bridget Griffen-Foley’s ‘Quicksand: Notes from a media outsider and insider’, published in the October issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Seumas Spark takes us to Papua New Guinea, the country of his childhood. Spark describes returning to an independent PNG as an historian and tour guide, and the noticeable cooling of Australian attitudes to the place and its ‘intoxicating possibilities’. Listen to Seumas Spark’s ‘Drinking from coconuts: When Australians weren’t scared of Papua New Guinea’, published in the October issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast we reflect on the occupation and liberation of East Timor twenty-five years on from that extraordinary rupture. Clinton Fernandes draws on secret records released last month showing attempts by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to change the Australian War Memorial’s history of East Timor. Clinton Fernandes is Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales. Listen to Clinton Fernandes’s ‘History without vexed issues: Liquidating our memories of East Timor’, published in the October issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast Geordie Williamson reviews Highway 13, a collection of short stories by Fiona McFarlane. Each story is concerned with murder, that ‘ultimate de-creative act’, and might be thought of as true crime, given the real-world familiarity of characters, places, plots. Geordie Williamson is a literary critic, editor and the author of The Burning Library: Our greatest novelists lost and found. Listen to Geordie Williamson’s ‘A chorus of souls: Fiona McFarlane’s discursive theodicy’, published in the September issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Jeremy Martens reviews They Called It Peace: Worlds of imperial violence by Lauren Benton. The book examines what Benton terms imperial ‘small wars’, those conflicts which have historically not figured in war museums or national histories, but were nonetheless lethal and, explains Martens, ‘characterised settler empires across the globe, including in Australia’. Jeremy Martens is Chair of the Department of Classical and Historical Studies at the University of Western Australia. Listen to Jeremy Martens’s ‘Raid and truce: Private violence and imperial conquest’, published in the September issue of ABR.

This week on The ABR Podcast, Kevin Bell addresses the crisis in housing in Australia – a crisis which he says is at risk of ‘turning into a social and economic catastrophe’. Kevin Bell is a self-described baby boomer who, in his role as a Supreme Court judge, wrote a number of influential judgments on human rights and housing. He is a former director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law and commissioner of the Yoorrook Justice Commission. Listen to Kevin Bell’s ‘On our moral watch: The disgrace of homelessness in Australia’, published in the September issue of ABR.