Skip to content
Inside Story
Current affairs and culture from Australia and beyond
About
Support
Sign up
Search
Search
Menu
About
Support
Sign up
Search
Search
fiction
Books & Arts
The Magician’s many guises
Glenn Nicholls
20 October 2021
Colm Tóibín’s novelised life of the German writer Thomas Mann bridges a cultural gap
Books & Arts
Feeding the machine
Susan Lever
11 October 2021
In what ways did the typewriter affect how — and how much — writers wrote?
From the archive
Self and Other
Zora Simic
4 October 2021
In a previously unpublished novel, Simone de Beauvoir traces a life-changing friendship
Books & Arts
The many selves of Gillian Mears
Drusilla Modjeska
25 September 2021
A new biography captures the enigmatic Australian writer
Books & Arts
A mania for reality
Jane Goodall
20 September 2021
Have the addictive qualities of Elena Ferrante’s novels distracted readers from their literariness?
Books & Arts
The lives of others
Sara Dowse
15 September 2021
Leïla Slimani vividly reimagines her grandmother’s life as a young French woman in Morocco
Essays & Reportage
A town not quite like Alice
Hamish McDonald
13 August 2021
The past meets the future in the town that inspired Nevil Shute’s bestselling novel
Books & Arts
Sydney’s modernist wave
Meg Brayshaw
18 June 2021
Linked by its famous waterway, the city’s interwar fiction proved remarkably prescient
Books & Arts
Letting the repellent in
Patrick Mullins
30 April 2021
The biographer who promised not to be prim or judgemental has his own scandal to deal with
Books & Arts
Reckless game
Brian McFarlane
11 February 2021
Books
| A lifetimes’s flirting with danger lay behind the fictions of Graham Greene
Books & Arts
A hard nut in the centre
Susan Lever
18 December 2020
Books
| A writer’s complex life emerges in Helen Garner’s diaries
Books & Arts
From cold warrior to Tory radical
Peter Love
14 December 2020
The long writing career of John le Carré, who died on Saturday
Books & Arts
Imaginative affinities
Susan Lever
10 September 2020
Books
| Australian modernist literature looks a little different through an international lens
From the archive
What more can we expect?
Susan Lever
21 July 2020
The fiction of Elizabeth Harrower, who died earlier this month
Books & Arts
Iannucci gets inside Dickens
Brian McFarlane
10 July 2020
Cinema
| An unlikely coupling produces a vivid two hours of cinematic storytelling
Books & Arts
Deeper truths
Susan Lever
6 April 2020
Books
| What can novels tell us about how political ideas circulate?
Books & Arts
Emma rules again
Brian McFarlane
6 March 2020
Cinema
| Autumn de Wilde takes just enough liberties with Jane Austen’s classic
Books & Arts
Like lying on the analyst’s couch
Sara Dowse
2 March 2020
Books
| Literary critic Vivian Gornick’s latest book is as much about life as it is about reading
Books & Arts
Rich world’s folly
Susan Lever
19 November 2019
Books
| Andrew McGahan was a talented writer with a strong ethical sense who never took himself too seriously
Books & Arts
Being there
Libby Robin
15 November 2019
Books
| Heather Rose has written a novel for uncertain times
Books & Arts
Fabber & Fabber
Jock Given
16 August 2019
The Russell Square twins, Fabberdum and Fabberdee, Fabber & Fabber — whatever the nickname, the famous London publisher tells us a lot about creative enterprise
From the archive
Ferrante’s dangerous genius
Jane Goodall
6 December 2018
Television
| This carefully paced adaptation of
My Brilliant Friend
brings a corner of Naples to life
Books & Arts
An adaptation for grown-ups
Brian McFarlane
6 December 2018
Cinema
|
The Children Act
succeeds because of its ideas as much as its narrative
Correspondents
Anna Burns, a Booker with soul
David Hayes
17 October 2018
The Belfast novelist’s prize underlines the BBC’s cultural drift
National Affairs
Stranger than fiction
Graeme Smith
10 October 2018
Two journalist–novelists compare notes on Chinese espionage
Books & Arts
Writers over America
Susan Lever
25 September 2018
Books
| Critics and readers in the United States played a little-known role in the history of Australian fiction
Books & Arts
The man and his city
Shane Maloney
30 August 2018
From the archive | Shane Maloney
surveys the career of one of Sydney’s best-known fictional characters and the achievement of his creator, Peter Corris, who died this week
Books & Arts
Two novels, two films
Brian McFarlane
16 July 2018
Cinema
| Translating short works to the screen has its special challenges
Books & Arts
Interruptions
Sara Dowse
9 July 2018
Books
| Two writers grapple with the demands of motherhood, real and imagined
Books & Arts
Hell or high waters
Glenn Nicholls
7 April 2018
Books
| A remarkable novel by a one-time internee in Australia has attracted critical acclaim in Germany
Older posts