Plot

Beverley Farmer is an award-winning writer but critical assessment of her achievement has been minimal. Her short stories have been reviewed in tandem with other…

In 1973, the Monash University Library acquired from the Australian bookseller Burge Lopez, a manuscript itemised as 'an anonymous unpublished typescript novel' (Arthur and…

Peter Carey has generally preferred to fictionalise Australia at a remove, to reimagine it, shape-shifted out of its present appearance by science fiction transformations, or…

Discusses the popular appeal of Ruth Park's novel The Harp in the South in the context of Park's lukewarm critical reception.

Argues that a conception of Malouf's fiction as historical is simplistic. Malouf undertakes 'fictional revisitings of moments in Australian history—moments in which, in retrospect, significant…

Peter Carey's novels are usually treated as works of postmodern fiction. This is obviously appropriate, but it can also be limiting. A.J. Hassall makes an…

Gerald Murnane's second novel, A Lifetime on Clouds, was published in 1976 only two years after Tamarisk Row. It is Murnane's last attempt…

The dynamics of what might be called colonial Gothic, by which I mean the Gothicizing of the settler-colony as a site of repression, also anticipate…

Had he been on their case, one can imagine F.R. Leavis intoning 'We will not reckon Bryce Courtenay a writer of historical fiction to appeal…