Comments on: Best Australian writing 2003-2007?

Question: Best Australian writing 2003-2007?

No-sword — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 05:53:36 -0800

Please recommend your favorite Australian book(s) of the last five years.

In a few weeks I will take a trip to Australia. While I am there I will visit bookstores, some used and some new. I would love to hear any suggestions anyone has about what Australian books I might want to keep an eye out for while browsing, especially books that it would be difficult to buy outside of Australia (no offense, Peter Carey).

I don't really mind what kind of book they are or what they're about -- fiction, scholarship, poetry, journalism, whatever; I just want good writing by Australian writers. (Not really interested in collections of photos etc.) My only requirements are:

1) They must to be reasonably priced. I don't have the funds to buy books priced for the University library market, no matter how interesting.

2) They must have been released within the last five years -- anything earlier than that and I probably already read 'em. (So the answers from this question are mostly irrelevant.)

Thanks!

By: TheOtherGuy

TheOtherGuy — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 06:40:22 -0800

I just finished reading 'The Broken Shore' by Peter Temple and thought it was great. Don't be dissuaded by the fact it is a 'crime novel' - it is far from derivative and has won rave reviews for its literary merit.

It won the prestigious Gold Dagger Award this year.

By: leahwrenn

leahwrenn — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:03:25 -0800

I really liked the first and third books (Souls in the Great Machine and Eyes of the Calculor ) in Sean McMullen's Greatwinter trilogy. (The second was ok, but I didn't prefer it.) The books are fairly independent: I actually read them in the order 3, 1, 2 and that was ok. The first and third are set in a post-nuclear-winter? "greatwinter", anyway, version of Australia. If I had a better map of Australia and knew more about Australian geography, I could probably even locate the major cities in the books.

By: leahwrenn

leahwrenn — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:04:15 -0800

Sean McMullen's "shadowmoon" series is entertaining too, but less Australia-related.

By: brujita

brujita — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 09:25:43 -0800

Australian fiction and nonfiction have their own sections in bookstores.

By: No-sword

No-sword — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 15:30:14 -0800

Thanks, folks, keep 'em coming!

Australian fiction and nonfiction have their own sections in bookstores.
Yeah, I know, but I don't think I'm going to have time to individually consider every book in those sections. Hence my attempt to harness the power of the hive mind via this question.

By: mosessis

mosessis — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 15:30:30 -0800

all via a friend of mine living in Melbourne

Bryce Courtney is always a reliable author; he's had a few books published since 2003. Not considered literature by "the establishment", however immensely popular. Recommending Colleen McCullough's Angel Puss, set in 1960's Sydney. Morris West: great Australian author, but he passed a way about 8 years ago, and most of his books were either of an international or religious flair.

As for nonfiction, Chris Masters and Paul Barry are two Australian journalists who have written a lot of nonfiction books that always have a strong line of questioning.

By: firstdrop

firstdrop — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 17:59:45 -0800

I'm kinda liking Kate Grenville's "The Secret River". Shortlisted for the Booker Prize last in 2006. It's a story of struggle against dispossession. Some of the descriptions of Australia through first settlers' eyes are great.

By: Wolof

Wolof — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:23:55 -0800

Anything at all by David Malouf.

By: brujita

brujita — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 00:10:51 -0800

I bought a ton of books on my trip three years ago; circumstances have forced me to pack them away before I can read them--but what I did manage to read were Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock and Doris Pilkington/Nugi Garimara's Caprice: A Stockman's Daughter--Rabbit-Proof Fence had been released in a US edittion.

I found a copy of James Vance Marshall's Walkabout in a used bookstore in LA.

By: brujita

brujita — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 00:12:11 -0800

This doesn't really help with the past -five- year question though.

By: No-sword

No-sword — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 06:24:04 -0800

OK, I've hosed this thread down but good with Best Answers (thanks everyone!) but if anyone arrives in the thread late, I'm still open to suggestions.

By the way, I probably should have made it clear that I am actually from Australia. So this isn't so much "I want to learn about Australian literature" as it is "I want to know what's happened in Australian letters since I left."

By: roofus

roofus — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 15:51:33 -0800

Seven Types of Ambiguity and The Reasons I Won't Be Coming, both by Elliott Perlman, whose Three Dollars was recommended in the previous thread.

By: jonathanstrange

jonathanstrange — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:25:38 -0800

A friend of mine published a book called "Rohypnol" which has been widely acclaimed.

I've read half of it, and found it interesting, but it really isn't my usual cup of tea.