Skip to content
Inside Story
About
Donate
Sign up
Search
Search
Menu
About
Donate
Sign up
Search
Search
fiction
Books & arts
What kind of noise annoys an oyster?
Darren Tofts
14 January 2014
Melancholy and occasionally joyous, the story of two “squinty daughters” doesn’t quite justify the pictures, writes
Darren Tofts
Essays & reportage
Loving Europe
Susan Carson
23 October 2013
Charmian Clift’s
Peel Me a Lotus
has inspired Australian women travel writers for over half a century, but the result has been a quite different kind of writing,…
Books & arts
“Unfounded attack on Dad and Dave comedies!”
Julieanne Lamond
9 October 2013
By the time Ken G. Hall filmed
Dad Rudd M.P.
, his film-making had come to reflect international popular culture as well as Australian traditions, writes
Julieanne Lamond
Books & arts
A premonition of bloodshed
Richard Johnstone
25 September 2013
Richard Johnstone
reviews Muriel Spark’s
The Mandelbaum Gate
Books & arts
Desire denied
Glenn Nicholls
31 May 2013
Glenn Nicholls
reviews Cory Taylor’s novel about love in an Australian internment camp
Books & arts
The adaptive eye
Brian McFarlane
2 May 2013
The boldest translations of book to film usually make for the best cinema, argues
Brian McFarlane
Books & arts
Poison? Ivy? No: merely the least-read great novelist
Brian McFarlane
29 August 2012
There is no one quite like Ivy Compton-Burnett, writes
Brian McFarlane
Books & arts
Lifelines
Matthew McGuire
7 August 2012
David Park’s new novel adds to the evidence that we are in the midst of a golden age of Northern Irish fiction, writes
Matthew McGuire
Books & arts
Another universe
Richard Johnstone
3 August 2012
Richard Johnstone
reviews Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s
Ambiguous Adventure
Books & arts
Landscape with figures
Richard Johnstone
4 July 2012
Richard Johnstone
reviews William Maxwell’s
The Château
Books & arts
An outsider at war
Richard Johnstone
4 June 2012
Richard Johnstone
reviews Frederic Manning’s extraordinary account of the foot soldiers of the first world war
Books & arts
How weird does this mob still seem?
Brian McFarlane
1 May 2012
Impossibly remote in many ways, the late fifties are portrayed with verve and nuance in John O’Grady’s bestselling novel, writes
Brian McFarlane
Essays & reportage
Life; London; this moment of June
Jill Kitson
13 April 2012
Although she undoubtedly drew on her own life, Virginia Woolf’s modernist novels are not essays about herself
Books & arts
Friending
Richard Johnstone
7 March 2012
Richard Johnstone
reviews Kirsten Tranter’s
A Common Loss
Essays & reportage
Along the pot-holed track
Sylvia Lawson
16 February 2012
Extract
| Visiting Alice Springs opens up other journeys captured on film and in prose and poetry
Books & arts
How it went with the whale
Richard Johnstone
1 February 2012
Richard Johnstone
reviews Matías Néspolo’s
Seven Ways to Kill a Cat
Books & arts
Plum pudding
Brian McFarlane
18 January 2012
Brian McFarlane
reviews a huge collection of the correspondence of the very prolific P.G. Wodehouse
Books & arts
Dickens’s full marathon
Richard Johnstone
8 December 2011
If it reminded us of nothing else, the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth underlined his extraordinary energy
Books & arts
The real thing
Richard Johnstone
2 December 2011
Richard Johnstone
’s paperback of the month,
The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages
From the archive
“I feared I would never be able to write a book again”
Geoff Wilkes
20 October 2011
A bestselling author in the early thirties, Irmgard Keun left Nazi Germany in 1936 only to return during the war
Books & arts
Sensational fiction in Marvellous Melbourne
Kylie Mirmohamadi & Susan K. Martin
5 October 2011
Susan K. Martin
and
Kylie Mirmohamadi
look at a sub-genre of popular writing that spanned the globe from London to Melbourne
Books & arts
Caught again by Catch-22
Brian McFarlane
22 August 2011
On its fiftieth anniversary
Brian McFarlane
rereads Joseph Heller’s classic anti-war novel
Books & arts
Something in the water
Linda Jaivin
16 August 2011
Linda Jaivin
reviews the Chinese-language edition of Chan Koonchung’s controversial novel
The Fat Years
, now available in English
Books & arts
Hearts and minds
Christopher Snedden
28 June 2011
Christopher Snedden
reviews two books – a memoir and a novel – about the conflict in Kashmir
Books & arts
What are critics for?
Brian McFarlane
14 June 2011
Brian McFarlane
reviews a new collection of critical essays about contemporary novels
Books & arts
Versions of ourselves
Richard Johnstone
2 June 2011
Richard Johnstone
considers the art of screen adaptation – with and without a literary source
From the archive
Women behaving badly
Jill Kitson
16 May 2011
Does Jane Austen teach us how to live?
Books & arts
A first: John Lang, Australian novelist
Brian McFarlane
27 January 2011
Brian McFarlane
reviews a novel by an Australian, set in Britain and first published in India
Books & arts
Each man was an island
Glenn Nicholls
19 October 2010
Glenn Nicholls
reviews the German-language edition of Herta Müller’s latest novel,
Everything I Possess I Carry with Me
Books & arts
Kindling
Terry Lane
6 October 2010
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
Newer posts
Older posts