AustLit

'In 1982, Sofija Stefanovic is born into a stable and peaceful Yugoslavia. Marshal Tito is dead but the guiding principles of Brotherhood and Unity that have held the republic together for 40 years are holding firm. With a doting extended family, and parents who have enjoyed the socialist republic’s free education system to become professionals – her father an engineer and her mother a psychologist – her early childhood is happy.' (Introduction)

'When my mind returns to Jessie Cole’s grief memoir Staying, her third book after the novels Darkness on the Edge of Town and Deeper Water, my thoughts flood with a lush green. It returns often, to the secluded Eden in northern New South Wales where Jessie and her baby brother, Jake, are born. Built by hippie parents searching for a different life, their haphazard house doesn’t intrude on the surrounding forest but evolves symbiotically, limbs tenderly entwined. “We all grew together, from nothing much to something,” writes Cole.' (Introduction)

'It’s been a long time between drinks for Justine Ettler. Marilyn’s Almost Terminal New York Adventure, Ettler’s previous novel, was released in 1996, and her debut prior to that, The River Ophelia, saw her heralded as a star of ’90s grunge lit alongside the likes of Andrew McGahan and Linda Jaivin. Her new novel, Bohemia Beach, is an ambitious and flawed attempt to connect addiction with personal, intergenerational and national post-traumatic stress disorder, while also referencing the Gothic Brontës and Kundera, among others.' (Introduction)