THE MONTHLY ESSAYS

"Is there a mission in the vindictive madness Cave unleashes in his songs and novels? What gives him his faith in a cleansing, cauterising violence, and prompts him to rectify the world with blades, bullets and a voice that, as he says in one of his songs, bellows at the firmament? These are questions that, with a shudder of alarm, he occasionally asks himself."

In "The Good Son", Peter Conrad explores the preoccupations that have absorbed Nick Cave throughout his artistic career. Part review, part psychological profile, Conrad examines the realm of riotous excess where much of Cave's music resides, as well as the saturnine depths of his novels. Conrad's study culminates in a discussion of Cave's new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, and reveals the paradoxical lust for life at the heart of Cave's interest in obscenity and defilement.

"Cave's grudges and rages and festering vendettas made him an artist, and his despair and hatred made him a believer; at this late hour, he is exactly the kind of rankling conscience the world needs."

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"The alacrity with which [the civil ceremony] was taken up by Australians of all classes, and in all regions and subcultures, is testimony to how accurately [Lionel] Murphy read the public mood. Twenty years ago, 60% of marriages in Australia were performed by clergy. Today, the number of marriages performed by civil celebrants stands at 64%, and is continually rising. The Murphy marriage has become the mainstream."

In "A Proper Wedding", Amanda Lohrey traces how the preferences of Australians towards their wedding ceremonies have changed since Lionel Murphy's bold appointment of marriage celebrants in the 1970s. Lohrey shows that the desire to create meaning outside the auspices of the church has generated some truly odd nuptial moments, but that overall the shift has created space for a deeper sense of involvement and ownership of these significant events in people's lives.

"Over time, say the experienced celebrants, they have been asked to do fewer and fewer 'weird' weddings. The delight of DIY novelty has worn off and there is a consensus that the traditional format works better. It's also the case that people have learned how to behave. One experienced celebrant remarked that in her early weddings she had to deal with barracking from the crowd ... But that's changed and the groomsmen have stopped pretending they've lost the rings."

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And in "Looking West", John Birmingham provides an insight into the growing global significance of the Indian Ocean. Concentrating on the emergent power bases of China and India, Birmingham analyses the military, economic and political development of the region. He suggests that the coming century will see a worldwide political realignment, in which the Indian Ocean will become a focal point of power.

"The next century will only partly belong to the Pacific. Just as Europe's rise made the Atlantic a setting for 500 years of maritime and naval contention, shifting power centres will draw new fleets of merchantmen and warships into play across the 68.6 million square kilometres of the Indian Ocean. Geographically dominating the south-east quarter of those open seas, rich in mineral and energy resources, and long allied globally and regionally with the declining power of the US, Australia is about to undergo the wrenching experience of having its world literally turned around."

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THE NATION REVIEWED

"Climate change has been the most important instance of Turnbull's attempt to transcend the Howard legacy. While he was Howard's minister for environment, Turnbull let it be known that he supported Kyoto ratification. He was also probably responsible for the Howard government's eleventh-hour conversion to an emissions trading scheme. As Liberal leader, he has tried to go further."

In the first Monthly Comment, Robert Manne considers the various challenges Malcolm Turnbull has faced as federal Opposition leader. He focuses on Turnbull's early attempts to re-position the Liberal Party on environmental issues, particularly climate change. Manne argues that Turnbull has been forced to capitulate in the very areas that would have set him apart as leader, and that he has failed to establish a unified and relevant identity for the Liberal Party.

"In a fortnight, Turnbull's satisfaction rating dropped from 44% to 25%. His standing as preferred prime minister reached the danger level of 18%. Turnbull's plans to refashion the Liberal Party had effectively collapsed. In a metaphor that Turnbull would appreciate, in one reckless gamble all his political capital had been spent."

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"There is more than a whiff of hypocrisy in the international stereotyping of Australia, yet even so, it would be wilful blindness to dismiss the charge of racism as malicious fantasy."

In Comment II, "Racism, Australian-Style", Waleed Aly explores this uncomfortable terrain. He examines the contrasting ways in which Australian society comes to terms with its unresolved racial issues: privately, in federal politics, and through the reflected prism of the international media.

"We understand the existence of racism in our society and everyday life, but we seem to lack the political technology to deal with it frankly in our public life without feeling as though we are undermining our worth as a nation."

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In "The MCG and the Mango Tree", a companion piece to Waleed Aly's take on Australian multiculturalism, Tanveer Ahmed gives a personal account of his friendship with Zakir, a Bangladeshi student he meets when travelling to his mother's native village. Though their upbringings could not have been more different, Zakir's longing to study and work in Australia eventually unites them in the home city of the MCG.

"Zakir arrived in Australia soon after, living in a rented house in outer-suburban Melbourne with eight other young men, all of them international students from the Subcontinent. They slept in bunk beds and worked 80-hour weeks. They spoke of getting bobcat licences and doing lucrative all-night shifts in factories. All loved Australia and were determined to gain permanent residency."

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Plus, in "Croakers", Gail Bell considers the uses and abuses of narcotics and anaesthetics as aids to the often insatiable desire for oblivion; in "Café Clairvoyants", Robyn Annear delves into the world of the coffee-break fortune-telling session; Kate Holden experiences the inner-urban craze for African drumming in "Beat Up"; and in "City Lights", Alan Saunders reports on the embrace of light as a creative element in the construction of nocturnal urban spaces in Australia.

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ARTS & LETTERS

"The first effect of any open space is to concentrate the eye; when few things are around, you start to pay close attention to every one, and begin to find in each seemingly casual detail a universe of resonance. So it is with Rothwell's characteristically deep, private and often terrifying work."

In "Into the Shadowed Heart", Pico Iyer reviews Nicolas Rothwell's The Red Highway, inviting us to partake in the eloquence of Rothwell's prose; to share his haunted, echoing vision. The Red Highway is Rothwell's account of his return to Darwin – itself an adopted home – after a year in the Middle East, where he was covering wars for the Australian. Through his "questing journeys into the interior", Rothwell reveals the heart of the continent to be deeper and darker than we have perceived.

"It's almost as if he has decided to turn a telescope the wrong way round, so that a land routinely seen in terms of bright surfaces, blond lifestyles and perpetual, unhistoried newness is here shown to be old and dark. Certainly I've never come across a depiction of Australia so weighted with a classical, sepulchral sense of prophecy before."

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In "Setting Herself Apart", Robert Forster praises Sarah Blasko's new album, As Day Follows Night, for its elegance and ingenuity. He discusses the influence of producer Björn Yttling on Blasko's enriched sound, with its preference for natural, unadorned timbres, and regards As Day Follows Night as a courageous step forward.

"The album is a triumph. It is one of those breakthrough records that only when it arrives and you hear the progression in spirit and song do you see the potential that was always there, just waiting for the artist to make the jump. And Blasko has made a leap."

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In "Genesis", Alan Atkinson analyses a new style of Australian history writing that is capable of providing us with both a more nuanced sense of our national story, and a less inhibited view of our cultural origins. He reviews four locally-focused works, maintaining that these authors all stray from traditional, nationally-focused narratives, sharing an interest instead in "the local, short-term and intimate."

"The national is bypassed. Or rather, it is just one part of the story, and not necessarily the most interesting part. These authors link the trivial directly with the profound. They appeal not to a late-twentieth-century moral sense, with its concern for individual identity, but to a sense of responsibility rooted in daily relationships and in attachment to familiar and remembered sites, wherever they might be."

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Plus, in "Democratic Hubris", Tim Soutphommasane considers Australian philosopher John Keane's new work The Life and Death of Democracy; in "Waste-Makers", Juliana Engberg examines the current interest of artists in all things fractured and fragmentary; and in "Cover Story", Luke Davies reviews Robert Connolly's new film Balibo, revisiting that somewhat obscured moment in our history when five Australian journalists were shot in East Timor.

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There's also Geordie Williamson on Dave Eggers' account of one man's experience of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, Zeitoun; Jacqueline Dutton on Marie Darrieussecq's controversial tenth novel, Tom Is Dead; and Shane Maloney on Norman Gunston's LA interview – and subsequent Sydney concert appearance – with Frank Zappa.