by NRB | 2 Apr 2024 | Non-fiction |
These stories of refugees who have found new lives in Australia encompass enormous suffering, courage, and determination to survive. ‘We are not numbers or statistics. We fled from our homelands because we were standing up for what we believed was right. We had...
by NRB | 30 Jan 2024 | Non-fiction |
The Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer reflects on his life and what it means to be a Vietnamese refugee in America. In 2015 Viet Thanh Nguyen published The Sympathizer, a novel that explored the Viet Nam war, particularly the involvement of America,...
by NRB | 12 Aug 2021 | Fiction, SFF |
Clare Moleta’s novel canvases big questions as a mother searches for her child in a hostile landscape. The opening scene of Clare Moleta’s debut novel describes two farmers standing in the rain. Their daughter runs towards them – she’s scared; she’s five years...
by NRB | 6 Apr 2021 | Fiction |
Olivia Sudjic’s second novel ranges from London to Sarajevo and explores displacement, exile, and refuge. Too often, the quotations an author chooses to preface their book seem to be put there to puzzle the reader. The two quotations chosen by Olivia Sudjic for...
by NRB | 12 Mar 2020 | Fiction |
Booker Prize-winning author Aravind Adiga takes on the issue of refugees and asylum seekers in his latest novel Amnesty. Set in Sydney, on a day sometime in the recent past, Amnesty concentrates on Dhananjaya Rajaratnam, aka Danny the Cleaner, as he grapples with his...
by NRB | 11 Feb 2020 | Fiction |
Jeanine Cummins’s novel about the journey of a Mexican mother and son fleeing to the US has sparked a storm of controversy. American Dirt opens with a scene that is as shocking as it is gripping. Eight-year-old Luca is going to the toilet when a bullet fired...
by NRB | 12 Dec 2013 | Fiction |
This quietly powerful novella proves there’s still a lot to add to the asylum-seeker debate. It’s been more than a decade since the infamous Tampa affair, and still Australian political discourse returns time and time again to the same sorry shambles – our...
by NRB | 12 Nov 2013 | Non-fiction |
This anthology of essays, fiction, memoir and poetry contains some powerful and impassioned writing from some of Australia’s best-known writers. The first contribution in this absorbing book, ‘Moonlight’, by Rodney Hall, is a wonderful piece of writing...
by NRB | 15 Jan 2013 | Fiction |
From colonialism to the internet, Michelle de Kretser explores big themes in this tale of two travellers. Australian literary fiction is sometimes accused of lacking ambition. Michelle de Kretser’s fourth novel attempts to defy this criticism with a palimpsest of...