In John Le Carré’s five-decade writing career, Peter Love detects growing echoes of an older voice
10 May 12 Comments (1)How weird does this mob still seem?
Impossibly remote in many ways, the late fifties are portrayed with verve and nuance in John O’Grady’s bestselling novel, writes Brian McFarlane
01 May 12 Comments (0)Life; London; this moment of June
Although she undoubtedly drew on her own life, Virginia Woolf’s modernist novels are not essays about herself, writes Jill Kitson. Woolf wrote about “life and death, sanity and insanity, through the shimmer of thoughts”
13 Apr 12 Comments (3)
Along the pot-holed track
Visiting Alice Springs opens up other journeys captured on film and in prose and poetry, writes Sylvia Lawson in this extract from her new book
16 Feb 12 Comments (2)
Dickens’s full marathon
Charles Dickens turns 200 in February. Richard Johnstone looks at a life that might have turned on the placement of an inkstand
08 Dec 11 Comments (0)
“I feared I would never, in my life, be able to write a book again”
A bestselling author in the early thirties, Irmgard Keun left Nazi Germany in 1936 only to return during the war, writes Geoff Wilkes
20 Oct 11 Comments (0)Sensational fiction in Marvellous Melbourne
Susan K. Martin and Kylie Mirmohamadi look at a sub-genre of popular writing that spanned the globe from London to Melbourne
05 Oct 11 Comments (0)Caught again by Catch-22
On its fiftieth anniversary Brian McFarlane rereads Joseph Heller’s classic anti-war novel
22 Aug 11 Comments (0)Something in the water
Linda Jaivin reviews the Chinese-language edition of Chan Koonchung’s controversial novel The Fat Years, now available in English
16 Aug 11 Comments (0)Hearts and minds
Christopher Snedden reviews two books – a memoir and a novel – about the conflict in Kashmir
28 Jun 11 Comments (0)What are critics for?
Brian McFarlane reviews a new collection of critical essays about contemporary novels
14 Jun 11 Comments (0)Versions of ourselves
Richard Johnstone considers the art of screen adaptation – with and without a literary source
02 Jun 11 Comments (0)A first: John Lang, Australian novelist
BOOKS | Brian McFarlane reviews a novel by an Australian, set in Britain and first published in India
27 Jan 11 Comments (0)Each man was an island
BOOKS | Glenn Nicholls reviews the German-language edition of Herta Müller’s latest novel, Everything I Possess I Carry with Me
19 Oct 10 Comments (0)Kindling
BOOKS | Terry Lane reads a few new novels, and a pile of old ones, on his brand new Kindle, and discovers that it’s not always the same experience
06 Oct 10 Comments (1)The truth and nothing but
BOOKS | Maria Edgeworth’s last novel shows the influence of Jane Austen but also foreshadows Elizabeth Gaskell’s broader social range, writes Brian McFarlane
16 Sep 10 Comments (0)Great expectations
Chrissy Sharp and Michael Williams talk to Peter Clarke about Melbourne’s new literary hub, the Wheeler Centre
02 Dec 09 Comments (0)
