AustLit

'Every city, town and village has its memorial to war. Nowhere are these more eloquent than in Australia, generations of whose young men have enlisted to fight other people's battles - from Gallipoli and the Somme to Malaya and Vietnam. In THE GREAT WORLD, his finest novel yet, David Malouf gives a voice to that experience. But THE GREAT WORLD is more than a novel of war. Ranging over seventy years of Australian life, from Sydney's teeming King's Cross to the tranquil backwaters of the Hawkesbury River, it is a remarkable novel of self-knowledge and lost innocence, of survival and witness.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage reprint).

'In the mid-1840s, a thirteen-year-old boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by Aborigines. Sixteen years later, when settlers reach the area, he moves back into the world of Europeans, men and women who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place, hopeful and yet terrified of what it might do to them.

Given shelter by the McIvors, the family of the children who originally made contact with him, Gemmy seems at first to be guaranteed a secure role in the settlement, but there are currents of fear and mistrust in the air. To everyone he meets - from George Abbot, the romantically aspiring young teacher, to Mr Frazer, the minister, whose days are spent with Gemmy recording the local flora; from Janet McIvor, just coming to adulthood and discovering new versions of the world, to the eccentric Governor of Queensland himself - Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge, as a force which both fascinates and repels. And Gemmy himself finds his own whiteness as unsettling in this new world as the knowledge he brings with him of the savage, the Aboriginal.' - Publisher's blurb (Chatto & Windus, 1993).

'In prose that is both elegant and lyrical, David Malouf departs from the little-known facts of Ovid's exile beyond the pale of civilization to create a deeply moving novel of extraordinary beauty. An outcast in a vast wasteland at the edge of the Black Sea, Ovid discovers a feral child. As he teaches the boy to speak the language of the civilized world, the child tutors him in his own tongue, the language of nature, and the once barren landscape begins to resonate with meaning.' (Publisher's blurb)

'For thirty-nine years Harry Joy has been the quintessential good guy. But one morning Harry has a heart attack on his suburban front lawn, and, for the space of nine minutes, he becomes a dead guy. And although he is resuscitated, he will never be the same. For, as Peter Carey makes abundantly clear in this darkly funny novel, death is sometimes a necessary prelude to real life.' (From the author's website.)

'Oscar Hopkins is an Oxford seminarian with a passion for gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. The year is 1864. When they meet on the boat to Australia their lives will be forever changed ...'

(Source: Publisher's website)

'The year is 1827, and in a remote hut on the high plains of New South Wales, two strangers spend the night in talk. One, Carney, an illiterate Irishman, ex-convict and bushranger, is to be hanged at dawn. The other, Adair, also Irish, is an officer of the police who has been sent to supervise the hanging. As the night wears on, the two discover unexpected connections between their lives, and learn new truths. Outside the hut, Adair's troopers sit uneasily, reflecting on their own pasts and futures, waiting for the morning to come. With ironic humour and in prose of starkly evocative power, the novel moves between Australia and Ireland to explore questions of nature and justice, reason and un-reason. , the workings of fate, and the small measure of freedom a man may claim in the face of death.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage reprint).

'Here are nine haunting stories from the award-winning author of "Remembering Babylon," in which history and geography, as well as the past and the present, combine and often collide, illuminating the landscape and revealing the character of Australia.

'An eleven-year-old boy sees his father in his own elongated shadow only to realize that he will not return from the war. In a parting moment, a young woman hired to "marry" vacationing soldiers, grasps the weight of the word "woe." When a failing farmer senselessly murders a wandering aborigine, he imperils his son but discovers in the spring of sympathy that follows the power to influence others.

'Wise and moving, startling and lyrical, "Dream Stuff" reverberates with the unpredictability of human experience, revealing people who are shaped by the mysterious rhythms of nature as well as the ghosts of their own pasts.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When the boy was almost eight a woman stepped out of the elevator into the apartment on East 62nd Street and he recognized her straight away. It was the smell his heart knew - patchouli, jasmine, other stuff. .. That was pretty typical of growing up with Grandma Selkirk. No one would dream of saying, here is your mother returned to you. His Illegal Self is the story of Che. Raised in isolated privilege by his New York grandmother, he is the precocious son of radical student activists at Harvard in the late sixties. Yearning for his famous outlaw parents, denied all access to television and the news, he takes hope from his long haired teenage neighbour who predicts, They will come for you, man. They'll break you out of here.

'Soon Che too is an outlaw, fleeing down subways, abandoning seedy motels at night, he is pitched into a journey that leads him to a hippy commune in the jungle of tropical Queensland. Here he slowly, bravely, confronts his life, learning that nothing is what it seems. Who is his real mother? Was that his real father? If all he suspects is true, what should he do?' (Publisher's blurb)

'Theodore Honey is a shy, inconspicous aircraft engineer whose eccentric interests in quantum mechanics and spiritualism are frowned upon in aviation circles. But when a passenger plane crashes in unexplained circumstances, Honey must convince his superiors that his unorthodox theories are correct before more lives are lost.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (2011 Vintage ed.).

'Nevil Shute was a pioneer in the world of flying long before he began to write the stories that made him a bestselling novelist. This autobiography charts Shute’s path from childhood to his career as a gifted aeronautical engineer working at the forefront of the technological experimentation of the 1920s and 30s. The inspiration for many of the themes and concerns of Shutes novels can be found in this enjoyable and enlightening memoir.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage International ed.)

'When Tom Cutter hires Constantine Shaklin as an engineer in his international air freight business, he little realizes the extraordinary gifts of his new recruit. Shaklin soon proves to possess a charismatic power that inspires everyone he meets to a new faith and hope for humanity. As Cutter’s business expands across the Middle East and Asia, so does Shaklin’s fame, unifying people from a wide array of cultures and religions with his unusual blend of the practical and the spiritual.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage International ed.)

'Keith Stewart is a quiet and unassuming man called upon to undertake an extraordinary task. A skilled maker of miniature working models, he lives a modest life devoted to his hobby. But when his sister and her wealthy husband die in a shipwreck on a coral reef in the Pacific—while trying to smuggle out of England their entire fortune in diamonds hidden in the keel of their yacht—Keith becomes trustee for his orphaned niece. To save her from destitution he must travel halfway around the world and risk a long voyage in a small boat in inhospitable waters to recover her inheritance. In the course of his adventure-filled quest, a colorful and international cast of characters mobilize to help him, and this humble man discovers he has more friends and admirers than he could have dared to imagine.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage International ed.).

'When seasoned pilot Johnny Pascoe tries to rescue a sick girl from the Tasmanian outback, his plane crashes and leaves him stranded and dangerously injured. Ronnie Clarke, who was trained by Pascoe, attempts to fly a doctor in to help, but rough weather makes his mission more difficult than he imagined. As he waits overnight at Pascoe’s house for a chance to try again the next day, Clarke revisits the past of this unusual man—and reveals the shocking and tragic secrets that have influenced his life.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage International ed.).

'When a young Englishwoman named Jennifer Morton leaves London to visit relatives on their sheep ranch in the Australian outback, she falls in love both with the gloriously beautiful country and with Carl, a Czech refugee who was a doctor in his own land and now works as a lumberjack. They are brought together through dramatic encounters and strange twists of fate, but their relationship hangs in the balance when Jennifer is called back to England.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage International ed.).

'After the war is over, a radioactive cloud begins to sweep southwards on the winds, gradually poisoning everything in its path. An American submarine captain is among the survivors left sheltering in Australia, preparing with the locals for the inevitable. Despite his memories of his wife, he becomes close to a young woman struggling to accept the harsh realities of their situation. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from the United States and the submarine must set sail through the bleak ocean to search for signs of life.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (2009 Vintage ed.).

'John Howard is determined to brighten up his old age by taking a fishing trip to France. However, during his stay the Nazis invade and he is forced to try to escape back to England with the two small children of some friends who are forced to stay behind in order to help the Allied war effort. As the conflict grows closer the roads become impassable and Howard also comes across five more children who need his help. He ends up leading this motley group of youngsters through the French countryside, constantly beset by danger yet heroically protecting his charges.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (2009 Vintage ed.).

'Alan Duncan returns to his family home in Australia after the war and several years of study in England. But his homecoming is marred by the mysterious suicide of his parents' quiet and reliable parlour-maid. A search through her belongings in search of clues leads to heartbreaking revelations about the woman's identity, the death of Alan's brother Bill, and, above all, the disappearance of his brother's fiancee, Janet.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (2009 Vintage ed.).

'In their trusty fishing boat Genevieve, armed with a flame thrower and limited ammunition, a small group of officers and men take a stand against the might of the German army after the fall of France in World War II. This is classic Shute: at once a thrilling adventure that will keep you on the edge of your seat, and a heartbreaking tale of the ravages of war.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (2009 Vintage ed.).

'Olivier is a young aristocrat, one of an endangered species born in France just after the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer, wanted to be an artist but has ended up in middle age as a servant.

When Olivier sets sail for the New World - ostensibly to study its prisons, but in reality to avoid yet another revolution - Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil. Through their adventures with women and money, incarceration and democracy, writing and painting, they make an unlikely pair. But where better for unlikely things to flourish than in the glorious, brand-new experiment, America?

A dazzlingly inventive reimagining of Alexis de Tocqueville's famous journey, Parrot and Olivier in America brilliantly evokes the Old World colliding with the New. Above all, it is a wildly funny, tender portrait of two men who come to form an almost impossible friendship, and a completely improbable work of art.' (From the publisher's website.)

''It was a spring evening in Washington DC; a chilly autumn morning in Melbourne; it was exactly 22.00 Greenwich Mean Time when a worm entered the computerised control systems of hundreds of Australian prisons and released the locks in many places of incarceration, some of which the hacker could not have known existed. Because Australian prison security was, in the year 2010, mostly designed and sold by American corporations the worm immediately infected 117 US federal correctional facilities, 1,700 prisons, and over 3,000 county jails. Wherever it went, it traveled underground, in darkness, like a bushfire burning in the roots of trees. Reaching its destinations it announced itself: THE CORPORATION IS UNDER OUR CONTROL. THE ANGEL DECLARES YOU FREE.'

'Has a young Australian woman declared cyber war on the United States? Or was her Angel Worm intended only to open the prison doors of those unfortunates detained by Australia's harsh immigration policies? Did America suffer collateral damage? Is she innocent? Can she be saved? ' (Publication abstract)

'A novel of the cruelty of war, and tenuousness of life and the impossibility of love.

'August, 1943. In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma death railway, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.

'This savagely beautiful novel is a story about the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.' (Publisher's blurb)

'First Person, Flanagan’s first novel since winning the Man Booker Prize in 2014, is inspired by Flanagan’s real-life experience ghost-writing the memoir of Australian conman Johann Friedrich Hohenberger.

'The novel is written in the first person by reality TV producer Kif Kehlman and details how Kif, as a younger, penniless writer unable to finish his first novel, agrees to ghost write the memoir of a notorious con man, Ziggy Heidl, who has defrauded the banks of $700 million.

'As work gets underway, Kif begins to fear that he is being corrupted by the con man and grows ever more uncertain as to whether he is ghost writing a memoir, or if Ziggy Heidl is rewriting him.

'At the novel’s heart is a question: what is the truth?' (Publication summary)

'The two-time Booker Prize-winning author now gives us a wildly exuberant, wily new novel that circumnavigates 1954 Australia, revealing as much about the country-continent as it does about three audacious individuals who take part in the infamous 10,000 mile race, the Redex Trial.

'Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best car salesman in south eastern Australia. Together they enter the Redex Trial, a brutal race around the ancient continent, over roads no car will ever quite survive. With them is their lanky fair-haired navigator, Willie Bachhuber, a quiz show champion and failed school teacher who calls the turns and creeks crossings on a map that will remove them, without warning, from the white Australia they all know so well. This is a thrilling high speed story that starts in one way, and then takes you some place else. It is often funny, more so as the world gets stranger, and always a page-turner even as you learn a history these characters never knew themselves.' (Publication summary)