December 2010 - January 2011
SOCIETY
High Priest: David Walsh and Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art
Amanda Lohrey
The Moorilla estate is set on a peninsula of sandstone cliffs that juts out into the Derwent estuary on Hobart’s northern fringe. Framed to...
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POLITICS
Comment: Cronulla Five Years On
Malcolm Knox
One such line was drawn in the infamous early summer of 2005, when Sydney seemed to fracture into racial violence. From Cronulla to Lakemba...
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SOCIETY
Harry Vanda & George Young
At 13, Johannes Hendricus Jacob van den Berg began teaching himself guitar in the basement of the tenement where his family lived in The...
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SOCIETY
'Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Battle for Supremacy in the 21st Century' by Hugh White
Hugh White
Monsoon melds two very different books into one. One book is a geopolitical treatise, conceived on a grand oceanic scale. It argues that...
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SOCIETY
'Hand Me Down World' By Lloyd Jones
Delia Falconer
“I was with her at the first hotel on the Arabian Sea. That was for two years. Then at the hotel in Tunisia for three years. At the first...
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SOCIETY
Failure to Communicate: Tom Hooper’s 'The King’s Speech' and Derek Cianfrance’s 'Blue Valentine'
Luke Davies
“Do you know any jokes?” asks a speech pathologist of his newest patient, a stammerer. “Timing is not my strong suit,” the uptight patient...
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SOCIETY
Magical Thinking: Aravind Adiga on VS Naipaul’s 'The Masque of Africa'
Aravind Adiga
For over 40 years now, VS Naipaul has met, interviewed and annoyed people in dozens of countries to produce a body of travel writing that...
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POLITICS
Man of Wood: Robert Manne on John Howard’s 'Lazarus Rising'
Robert Manne
Having wrestled with this long and boring book for six entire days, I was astonished when I finally realised how little I had discovered...
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SOCIETY
Scream: The Glory and the Madness of being a ‘60s and ‘70s Australian Pop Singer
Robert Forster
It begins in Brisbane in the late ’60s, when I was 11 and 12 years old. The Saturday afternoons were never-ending and on some of them,...
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SOCIETY
A Touch of the Sun
David Malouf
Earlier than the sun and stronger, our need for comfort in the dark. Always on time with its doodle-do and smallgrass recitativo we...
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SOCIETY
The Voyage
Murray Bail
It was not so much a headlong rush from Europe, more a slow return to Sydney, for instead of hopping onto a plane, which would have been...
More ...The Gaza Strips
Christos Tsiolkas
I’m ageing; I’m becoming the old fart I never wished to be. I am succumbing to nostalgia and its lethal evil twin, bitterness. I listen to...
More ...First-Class Passage
MJ Hyland
UPDATE: A version of this piece by MJ Hyland, shortlisted for a BBC National Short Story award.*It’s not even eight o’clock and...
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SOCIETY
While Not Writing a Book: Diaries
Helen Garner
Early in the morning, after a heavy night of babysitting, I’m watering out the back when I hear a shuffling sound. Olive comes up behind me...
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SOCIETY
Secret Worlds: Damascus
Robert Dessaix
For days I’ve just been mooching around the Old City in a dream, cocooned within its walls, time-travelling through the maze of its gloomy...
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SOCIETY
An Otter's Life: Learning to Swim
Kate Jennings
For our summer holidays, we surfed every year for six weeks at Narrabeen. My brother and my city cousin, Stephen, and I formed a feral and...
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POLITICS
A Nobel Affair: Liu Xiaobo
Linda Jaivin
When I last checked, over 1 million readers had viewed this cryptic message. Among the more than 25,000 comments, the multiple effusions (“...
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SOCIETY
The Way to the Watering Hole: Sharia Law
Sally Neighbour
Meanwhile, in a tiny office in Lakemba, south-western Sydney, with prayer beads hanging from the bookshelves and Islamic texts stacked to...
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SOCIETY
Court Order
Anna Funder
My friend Sylvie-Anne loves everything about playing netball for the Pearlers, except that their uniform, a skirted bodysuit in white and...
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SOCIETY
Christmas Blues
Tim Rogers
“I live in an apartment on the 99th floor of my block / And I sit at home looking out the window imagining the world has stopped.” These...
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