AustLit

'Patrick Hartigan’s tableaux of a Slovak village, where his wife Lenka was born, draw us into the simple and sensory lives of a grandpa, grandma, Linda the dog and the villagers who go about their business. Hartigan chronicles the family relationships and rituals from the viewpoint of an outsider and yet the care he brings to these observations makes them feel like cherished heirlooms. The Village is Quiet is an exquisite collection of stories where strangeness and intimacy transport us into another world.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'In 2006, Sanaz Fotouhi, a young woman in her twenties, travels to Afghanistan with her partner to make a film.

'Seven years and four trips later their feature documentary Love Marriage in Kabul wins awards and the hearts of audiences in Australia and around the world.

'Love Marriage in Kabul: A Memoir is the behind-the-scenes account of the hardships and heartaches, tears and joys of the seemingly impossible project of making a film in Afghanistan. It is the story of a young woman’s determination to confront her fears to provide an insight into the hidden world of Afghanistan’s widows and orphans.

'With rare compassion and lucidity, Sanaz Fotouhi chronicles her inner struggles and external events and leads us to interrogate our own notion of humanity.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Artist Patrick Hartigan recalls the weeks leading to his father’s death and his daughter’s birth. The people he meets, the places he visits, even the objects he touches for a moment, take on a radiance usually seen in artworks we admire. Part visual memoir, part meditation on the colours and contours of life’s events, Offcuts reveals the substance of seemingly mundane moments. With stylistic precision and unreserved sincerity, Hartigan has created a work of art akin to Knausgaard’s My Struggle, with the difference that he has distilled his raw material.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In the micro stories of Lost Words, Xavier Hennekinne’s narrator takes us on a reflective journey from his entranced yet perplexed youth in France to sleepless nights as a contemporary parent. This compelling voyage through time and mood is accompanied by images by Phil Day. Just as the prose entwines us in its subtle recurring rhythms, the prints and drawings are never literal, taking ordinary objects but revealing their sinuous shapes out of dark and suggestive structures.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Lovers is an arresting tale, a mystery with a slow burn tension, which revolves around the disappearance of Lucie Bruyère. The novel unveils the truth about her charismatic yet subtly controlling partner, the world-famous artist Ernest Renfield. The suspenseful story, both police investigation and multi-voiced Rashomon, ends in a dramatic and powerful illumination.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This debut short story collection from an Australian author delves into the shifting boundaries and human displacement of our era. Of Indian-Malaysian background, Sreedhevi Iyer is adept at locating tensions within her own diaspora while also casting a forensic eye on Australian social and cultural attitudes. A teacher of creative writing at RMIT and the University of Melbourne, Iyer has a gift for radiant prose, but also an astonishing range of voices, from simple riffs on backyard suburbia to the magic realism of a narrative told by a “divine” coconut. Her sharp wit and sense of irony keep stories of refugees, inter-racial tension and human prejudice profoundly in our sights.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Gazebo Books).