by NRB | 20 Mar 2024 | Fiction |
Through the story of Matilda, Robyn Bishop’s novel reveals the constrained lives of women in rural New South Wales in the late 1800s. It is July 1892 and Matilda is just old enough to help Clara out of her cot, change her nappy and dress her, but not old enough to...
by NRB | 2 Nov 2023 | Non-fiction |
David Marr’s account of his ancestors’ involvement with the Native Police and the murder of Aboriginal people is distressing and important. Several years ago, one of David Marr’s older relatives informed him that his great-great-grandfather Reginald...
by NRB | 29 Jun 2023 | Non-fiction |
Stan Grant remains committed to responding with love as he interrogates Whiteness in Australia and around the world. In The Queen is Dead Stan Grant uses the death of the person he calls ‘The White Queen’ as a springboard to discuss not only fundamental questions...
by NRB | 20 Jun 2023 | Non-fiction |
Like its predecessors Girt and True Girt, David Hunt’s third volume is a riotous romp through Australian history. Covering the late 19th century in the lead up to Federation, Girt Nation brings the makers and shapers of our country to not-so-glorious life as it notes...
by NRB | 30 May 2023 | Non-fiction |
David Scrimgeour charts local successes and government failures for Aboriginal people in the Western Desert. While there has been a growing awareness over recent decades, it would still be reasonable to suggest that most non-Indigenous Australians have only limited...
by NRB | 20 Apr 2023 | Non-fiction |
Julianne Schultz finds difficult truths – and some hope – in her examination of the Australian psyche. Is it a good thing to be racist? For one group of people to believe they are superior to others and to act accordingly in the name of creating a ‘perfect society’?...
by NRB | 2 Mar 2023 | Non-fiction |
Dreamers and Schemers provides an expert overview of Australia’s political history. There is always a place for big history such as this. Near the end of his introduction, author Frank Bongiorno outlines his approach: The book begins in deep time, among Indigenous...
by NRB | 30 Aug 2022 | Non-fiction |
These essays are a tribute to one of Australia’s most significant historians, Stuart Macintyre. Stuart Forbes Macintyre has the distinction of being Australia’s leading historian of the last half century. Born in Melbourne in April 1947, educated at Scotch...
by NRB | 16 Jun 2022 | Non-fiction |
Deidre O’Connell recounts how an American jazz band caused panic in White Australia. In the latter part of the 1920s, the JC Williamson Company was on the lookout for American talent to attract patrons to vaudeville shows at their Tivoli Theatres. One of the...
by NRB | 14 Dec 2021 | Non-fiction |
Historian Janet McCalman discovers what happened to the freed convicts who settled in Victoria. New Zealanders like to call convicts ‘Australian royalty’, omitting the inconvenient fact that boundaries and identity were hardly fixed in stone back then. A convict could...
by NRB | 21 Sep 2021 | Fiction |
Ben Ford Smith talks to the author of The Glass Harpoon about being longlisted for this year’s ARA Historical Novel Prize and South Australia’s history. After its inaugural year in 2020, the ARA Historical Novel Prize is already Australasia’s richest genre...
by NRB | 29 Jun 2021 | Non-fiction |
Save Our Sons and Radicals remind us that the anti-war protesters of the 1960s and 70s were many and varied, and so too were their campaigns. These two books canvass the decade 1965-75, during which the Vietnam War dominated political life in Australia. We had...
TIM WINTON Juice. Reviewed by Robert Goodman24 October 2024Tim Winton’s new novel dives into a post-climate-change world where violence [ … ]
EMILY TSOKOS PURTILL Matia. Reviewed by Ann Skea22 October 2024Emily Tsokos Purtill’s debut novel ranges across continents to tell the stories [ … ]
STEVEN HAMILTON and RICHARD HOLDEN Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck17 October 2024Australia’s Covid response may have had problems, but Steven Hamilton and [ … ]
ELIZABETH STROUT Tell Me Everything. Reviewed by Michael Jongen15 October 2024Pulitzer-winner Elizabeth Strout explores themes of isolation and connection in [ … ]