August 2009
WORLD
Looking West: Australia and the Indian Ocean
John Birmingham
In the Australian imagination, for the most part, the future arrives every day from the east, where the sun’s first rays wash over the...
More ...SOCIETY
'Zeitoun' by Dave Eggers
Geordie Williamson
Dave Eggers first met Abdulrahman Zeitoun during a visit to New Orleans, following the launch of Voices from the Storm, a volume of oral...
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'Tom Is Dead' by Marie Darrieussecq
Jacqueline Dutton
Marie Darrieussecq is one of the rare French novelists who has had most of their work translated into English. Her debut novel, Pig Tales,...
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Genesis: Recent Australian History Writing
Alan Atkinson
Australian history writing is on the move. For a long time, the stories of our origins were completely subordinate to our history as a...
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Waste-Makers
Juliana Engberg
The aesthetic of detritus is everywhere at the moment. It’s as if the rubbish bin of the twentieth century has finally been put out for...
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Cover Story: Robert Connolly's 'Balibo'
Luke Davies
In the book Dispatches, Michael Herr’s virtuoso memoir of the Vietnam War, Sean Flynn – Errol’s son – an actor and photojournalist who went...
More ...SOCIETY
Democratic Hubris: John Keane's 'The Life and Death of Democracy'
Tim Soutphommasane
It has been a mixed year so far for democracy. There have been peaceful elections in India and Indonesia, the world’s largest and third...
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Setting Herself Apart: Sarah Blasko's 'As Day Follows Night'
Robert Forster
She’s a restless soul, Sarah Blasko, three albums in her recording career done: one in Los Angeles, one in Auckland, and now her latest...
More ...Into the Shadowed Heart: Nicolas Rothwell's 'The Red Highway'
Pico Iyer
The Red Highway (Black Inc., 288pp; $32.95) begins with a spare, haunting account of the Czech artist Karel Kupka clambering out of a plane...
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The Good Son: Nick Cave
Peter Conrad
Cave’s entangled artistic and religious preoccupations are on display this month in Nick Cave: The Exhibition at the National Library in...
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SOCIETY
Cafe Clairvoyants
Robyn Annear
Late on a blustery Tuesday afternoon in July 1932, three customers entered Black’s Café in Bourke Street, Melbourne. Despite the season,...
More ...Croakers
Gail Bell
When Michael Jackson’s heart stopped beating on 25 June, he was lean, only 50 years old, and sufficiently fit to lay down enough of his...
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CULTURE
City Lights
Alan Saunders
“We’re in the renaissance period of artificial light at night,” says composer and light designer Mary-Anne Kyriakou. “If the city at night...
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SOCIETY
The MCG and the Mango Tree
Tanveer Ahmed
I first met Zakir in my mother’s native village in Bangladesh, where he’d come to meet my family after hearing we lived in Australia. He...
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POLITICS
Comment: Turnbull's Challenge
Robert Manne
Already it is becoming clear that his attempt has failed. A decade ago, when John Howard led the Coalition and Pauline Hanson fascinated...
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SOCIETY
Norman Gunston & Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa was no stranger to Australia and its wildlife. Inspired by a monotreme encountered during his 1973 tour, the avant-rock...
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A Proper Wedding
Amanda Lohrey
I could not remember another time when a newsreader had been elevated above bishops at an important state memorial service, yet no one in...
More ...Beat Up
Kate Holden
In a lilac-painted acupuncture studio on a chic inner-urban shopping strip, a bunch of white folks are banging the crap out of some leather...
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POLITICS
Comment: Racism, Australian-Style
Waleed Aly
For all Kevin Rudd’s fantasies of international leadership, Australia rarely impinges on the consciousness of the wider world. We are...
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8 February 2012
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