2014 was a huge year for Australian authors. There seems no better time, January being our month of Australian Stories, to reflect on my favourite Australian authors of 2014. So many Australian authors had career defining years in 2014, but these are a few that made a huge impact with their work both on and off the page. Confused about the concept? So am I, but we’ll get there. Sonya Hart... Read more

A one size fits all definition for Australian fiction? Nup. Australian imaginations cross borders and time as easily as those from elsewhere. There is no rule that all Australian fiction must deal with the bush, or the surf or gritty inner city crime. Within the short selection below you’ll find Medieval Europe, Chinese dragons, Antarctica, Texas, CIA conspiracies and, from Christos Tsiol... Read more

I can be a little bitter sometimes… Around this time last year I finished Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and immediately shouted to the world “THIS WILL WIN THE MILES FRANKLIN!” I told everyone who would listen, swelling with literary priggishness, waving them away when they offered up other worthy winners. “No” I would say. “You&#... Read more

Could he do it? That’s the question on everyone’s lips as Richard Flanagan continues his surge towards a Man Booker Prize for his beautiful novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Flanagan’s masterpiece was controversially overlooked for this year’s Miles Franklin. 2010 winner Howard Jacobson is joined by fellow UK writers Ali Smith and Neel Mukherjee, with the new inte... Read more

In this, a year of so many extraordinary gifts from the literary world, how can one work shine so brightly on the Australian landscape? Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North finds its voice in haunting, stark prose and the deeply personal story of a POW on the Burma death railway his father was a survivor of. From the opening pages Flanagan surges across generations and lan... Read more