AustLit

'Son of Mine is a beautiful, multi-layered account of what it means to be a family. Peter Papathanasiou successfully intertwines two life journeys – his own and his mother’s – over the course of nearly a hundred years, to tell the story of an astonishing act of kindness, and an incredible secret kept hidden for two decades.

'This exceptional memoir sensitively documents the migrant experience, both from the unfamiliar perspective of first-generation migrants and the tension felt by the second-generation trapped between two cultures. At its core, Son of Mine is about the search for identity – for what it means to be who you are when everything is torn down and questioned, and the wisdom we can pass on to the next generation.

'Son of Mine is a compelling account of unknown heritage, of life gifts and losses, and the reclamations of parenting. It is dramatic, poignant and uplifting. But above all, it is a memoir of shock, discovery and reconciliation, all delivered in exquisite prose.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'She loved … and killed … both men and women. She was utterly beautiful and utterly mad. This is a tale of passionate horror … a breath-taking venture into abnormal psychology … a story which cannot be forgotten.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Salt Publishing 2014 reprint).

'There are very few major European poets of the early twentieth century not already known to English-language audiences, but Srecko Kosovel is one. Often called the Slovene Rimbaud (he died at twenty-two, leaving almost 1,000 poems), the full range and significance of his poetry has been revealed only slowly even to Slovenians themselves, and yet he is a major voice of Central European modernism, whose work explores powerfully and incisively the problems of individual identity and allegiance in the face of the new century with its strong call, to one living through the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to international socialism.

'Kosovel's poetry reflects at once the turmoil of the Balkans after the Great War and, at exactly the same time as Ungaretti, Joyce and Rilke were experiencing it, so deep a love of and connection to his native Karst region thet he turns it into aone of the most remarkable symbolic landscapes of twentieth century poetry.

'Although certain limited English selections of his work have appeared in the past, this edition, superbly translated by the poets Bert Pribac (Slovenia) and David Brooks (Australia), is the largest and most comprehensive selection to have appeared in any language other than his own.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Alison Croggon's bold new collection, Theatre, uses a range of narratives, fables, monologues and compressed lyrics to examine female identity and the idea of divine experience. Stepping confidently between different registers and a wide range of forms, Croggon's poetry shows a writer at the height of her powers narrating a female world of folk tales, trials, challenges, transgressions, and mythologies, where rites of passage are both linguistic, spiritual and political, and where persona is stripped back to an essential humility always journeying into fragile and impossibly beautiful worlds.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Space travel likened to a dream, pursued refugees, bikes 'ridden in a free-form dance with cars', Olympian exertion, and a crime whose solution involves global flight - these are some of the many forms of motion in Andrew Sant's tenth collection of poems. Set in Australia, China and Europe, the poems predominantly angle in on aspects of speed, a matter the French historian Marc Bloch considered the one particularly distinctive feature that distinguishes contemporary civilisation from those which preceded it. They include narratives, lyrics, dramatic monologues - diverse points of view with social and political dimensions.

'The other liberties of the title exist - often under pressure but whose boundaries are often broadened by wit - in recognisable rural and urban environments as well as in imagined places, for example in a playfully conceived banana's republic. Another is an island which has affinities with Robinson Crusoe's. The book also introduces for the first time Mr Habitat, a brisk character with a strong voice, who is nowhere at home yet in gutsy, colloquial language expresses his views and makes wry observations - often in tight urban situations.

'It is a collection that's verbally headlong, edgy and energetic, richly observant and wide-ranging, concluding with the celebratory poem 'Abundance', about bird and sea life off the Irish coast, and which suggests there is much to be gained from recognising that certain liberties exist at an irreversible cost.' (Publisher's blurb)