The golden age of singer–songwriters
Treasure in the Attic
By Robert Forster
As far as romantic professions go, it’s up there with lighthouse-keeping, lion-taming or jobbing as a private detective in Los Angeles in the 1940s. The hours are long and the chances of earning decent money low. The rewards are mostly received in private, although what you create is made to be shared. You will watch as people your age in other trades pass you by in their accumulation of wo
'Tom Is Dead' by Marie Darrieussecq
By 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, became an international success and another nine novels have followed in the decade since then. Her latest, Tom Is Dead, explores a mother’s mourning ten years after the death of her son. Given the novel’s unexpected setting in Sydney and the Blue Moun
Life in a Bangkok Prison
The King & I
By Harry Nicolaides
Compound One. For weeks I lay on my back, delirious with influenza. When I was able to stand, I shuffled around like a zombie, pushed here and there by the heaving population of sweaty, half-naked inmates, most of them Thai, Burmese or Cambodian.One night I was so overcome with anxiety that I started to hyperventilate. I begged the cell captain to open the cell door and allow me to walk the corridor. When I started to cough phlegm, I be
