Australian Book Review
ABR goes to London
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Dennis Altman
In any given year we will read but a tiny handful of potential ‘best books’, so this is no more than a personal selection. Here are two novels that stand out: Stephen Eldred-Grigg’s Shanghai Boy (Vintage) and Hari Kunzru’s Tranmission (Penguin). Both speak of the confusion of identity and emotions caused by rapid displacement across the world. The first is the account of a m ... (read more)
Do we need them?
Dear Editor,
Forgive me for taking advantage of the hospitality of your letters column to reflect on the matter of our national honours. Evidently some professions are better than others at nominating and supporting worthy candidates. If eminent writers and artists tend to go unacknowledged, to some degree we have only ourselves to blame for not taking more active steps to insur ... (read more)
Jonathon Otis – a true believer
The winner of the 2008 ABR Reviewing Competition is Jonathon Otis for his review of Julian Barnes’s memoir, Nothing to Be Frightened Of. Mr Otis receives $1000 and future commissions in the magazine. Second prize, valued at $250, goes to Elizabeth Campbell for her review of Brook Emery’s poetry collection Uncommon Light. Third prize, a set of Black Inc. books ... (read more)
The many in one
Dear Editor,
In responding to Peter Craven’s broad-brush review of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature in last month’s ABR, which I suppose you ran for the sake of controversy, let me touch on the wider debate about what’s in the book, and why.
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The Choir of the Just
Peter Craven’s review of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature has generated much comment, some of it favourable, some not. Much of the latter was concentrated on the Internet, with the kind of reflexive, personality-driven, bien-pensant umbrage that often passes for literary discourse in the blogosphere. James Joyce’s phrase ‘the choir of the just’ sp ... (read more)
‘Urgent things to say’ in the Calibre Prize
The competition was keen, the field unprecedentedly large (almost 200 entries), but after main readings and much discussion Kevin Brophy’s and Jane Goodall’s essays struck the judges of this year’s Calibre Prize for an Outstanding Essay (Gay Bilson, Peter Rose and Rebecca Starford) as being in a class of their own. It was impossible to split t ... (read more)
Nam Le is the author of The Boat (2009). He has received the Dylan Thomas Prize (2008), the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for Book of the Year (2009) and the Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist Award (2009), among other prizes. His fiction has been widely anthologised. Currently the fiction editor of the Harvard Review, he divides his time between ... (read more)
Celebrating Calibre
Dear Editor,
This is a note to congratulate you on the quality of the latest Calibre Prize essays, by Jane Goodall and Kevin Brophy, in the April edition of ABR. The two pieces maintain the incredibly high standards of the Prize, of which I was honoured to be an inaugural judge.
As you know, I’m a staunch supporter of the essay. Walter Murdoch, one of only a handful of Aus ... (read more)