Джеральд Мёрнайн0.0 A bittersweet farewell to the world and the word by the Australian master
"The mind is a place best viewed from borderlands . . ."
Border Districts, purportedly the Australian master Gerald Murnane's final work of fiction, is a hypnotic, precise, and self-lacerating "report" on a life led as an avid reader, fumbling lover, "student of mental imagery," and devout believer--but a believer not in the commonplaces of religion, but rather in the luminescence of memory and its handmaiden, literature.
In Border Districts, a man moves from a capital city to a remote town in the border country, where he intends to spend the last years of his life. It is time, he thinks, to review the spoils of a lifetime of seeing, a lifetime of reading. Which sights, which people, which books, fictional characters, turns of phrase, and lines of verse will survive into the twilight? A dark-haired woman with a wistful expression? An ancestral house in the grasslands? The colors in translucent panes of glass, in marbles and goldfish and racing silks? Feeling an increasing urgency to put his mental landscape in order, the man sets to work cataloging this treasure, little knowing where his "report" will lead and what secrets will be brought to light.
Border Districts is a jewel of a farewell from one of the greatest living writers of English prose.
Питер Кэри3.4 Айрин Бобс любит быструю езду. Вместе с мужем, лучшим автодилером юго-востока Австралии, она решает принять участие в Испытании "Редекс", жестокой автогонке через весь континент по дорогам, по которым почти никто не пройдет. Штурманом команды станет неудавшийся учитель Вилли, картограф-любитель, знающий, как вывести команду в победе.
Гонка в пространстве накладывается на гонку во времени: древний континент откроет дорогу в прошлое. Геноцид, неприкрытый расизм, вопиющие несправедливости – история каждой страны хранит свои темные секреты. И нам только кажется, что они вдали от дома.
Мишель де Крецер0.0 Set in Australia, France, and Sri Lanka, The Life to Come is about the stories we tell and don’t tell ourselves as individuals, as societies, and as nations. Driven by a vivid cast of characters, it explores necessary emigration, the art of fiction, and ethnic and class conflict.
Pippa is an Australian writer who longs for the success of her novelist teacher and eventually comes to fear that she “missed everything important.” In Paris, Celeste tries to convince herself that her feelings for her married lover are reciprocated. Ash makes strategic use of his childhood in Sri Lanka, but blots out the memory of a tragedy from that time and can’t commit to his trusting girlfriend, Cassie. Sri Lankan Christabel, who is generously offered a passage to Sydney by Bunty, an old acquaintance, endures her dull job and envisions a brighter future that “rose, glittered, and sank back,” while she neglects the love close at hand.
The stand-alone yet connected worlds of The Life to Come offer meditations on intimacy, loneliness, and our flawed perception of reality. Enormously moving, gorgeously observant of physical detail, and often very funny, this new novel by Michelle de Kretser reveals how the shadows cast by both the past and the future can transform and distort the present. It is teeming with life and earned wisdom—exhilaratingly contemporary, with the feel of a classic.
Ричард Фланаган3.3 A young and penniless writer, Kif Kehlmann, is rung in the middle of the night by the notorious con man and corporate criminal, Siegfried Heidl. About to go to trial for defrauding the banks of $700 million, Heidl proposes a deal: $10,000 for Kehlmann to ghostwrite his memoir in six weeks.
Kehlmann accepts but begins to fear that he is being corrupted by Heidl. As the deadline draws closer, he becomes ever more unsure if he is ghostwriting a memoir, or if Heidl is rewriting him—his life, his future. Everything that was certain grows uncertain as he begins to wonder: who is Siegfried Heidl—and who is Kif Kehlmann?
Ким Скотт4.0 From Kim Scott comes a work charged with ambition and poetry, in equal parts brutal, mysterious and idealistic, about a young woman cast into a drama that has been playing for over two hundred years ...
Taboo takes place in the present day, in the rural South-West of Western Australia, and tells the story of a group of Noongar people who revisit, for the first time in many decades, a taboo place: the site of a massacre that followed the assassination, by these Noongar's descendants, of a white man who had stolen a black woman. They come at the invitation of Dan Horton, the elderly owner of the farm on which the massacres unfolded. He hopes that by hosting the group he will satisfy his wife's dying wishes and cleanse some moral stain from the ground on which he and his family have lived for generations.
But the sins of the past will not be so easily expunged.
We walk with the ragtag group through this taboo country and note in them glimmers of re-connection with language, lore, country. We learn alongside them how countless generations of Noongar may have lived in ideal rapport with the land. This is a novel of survival and renewal, as much as destruction; and, ultimately, of hope as much as despair.
Ричард МакГрегор0.0 'Stunningly good' Michael Burleigh, Evening Standard, Books of the Year 2017
A Financial Times Best Book of 2017
'A shrewd and knowing book.' Robert D. Kaplan, The Wall Street Journal
'A compelling and impressive read.' The Economist
'Skillfully crafted and well-argued.' Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Financial Times
'An excellent modern history. . . . provides the context needed to make sense of the region's present and future.' Joyce Lau, South China Morning Post
The dramatic story of the relationship between the world's three largest economies, one that is shaping the future of us all, by one of the foremost experts on east Asia
For more than half a century, American power in the Pacific has successfully kept the peace. But it has also cemented the tensions in the toxic rivalry between China and Japan, consumed with endless history wars and entrenched political dynasties. Now, the combination of these forces with Donald Trump's unpredictable impulses and disdain for America's old alliances threatens to upend the region, and accelerate the unravelling of the postwar order. If the United States helped lay the postwar foundations for modern Asia, now the anchor of the global economy, Asia's Reckoning will reveal how that structure is now crumbling.
With unrivalled access to archives in the US and Asia, as well as many of the major players in all three countries, Richard McGregor has written a tale which blends the tectonic shifts in diplomacy with the domestic political trends and personalities driving them. It is a story not only of an overstretched America, but also of the rise and fall and rise of the great powers of Asia. The confrontational course on which China and Japan have increasingly set themselves is no simple spat between neighbors. And the fallout would be a political and economic tsunami, affecting manufacturing centers, trade routes, and political capitals on every continent.
Елена Докич, Джессика Халлоран4.1 This is a story of Jelena Dokic's survival. How she survived as a refugee, twice. How she survived on the tennis court to become world No. 4. But, most importantly, how she survived her father, Damir Dokic, the tennis dad from hell.
Jelena was a prodigious talent, heralded as Australia's greatest tennis hope since Evonne Goolagong. She had exceptional skills, a steely nerve and an extraordinary ability to fight on the court. Off it she endured huge challenges; being an "outsider" in her new country, poverty and racism. Still she starred on the tennis court. By 18, she was in the world's top 10. By 19, she was No. 4. The world was charmed by her and her story—a refugee whose family had made Australia home when she was 11 years old.
Jelena has not told a soul her incredible, explosive story in full—until now. From war-torn Yugoslavia to Sydney to Wimbledon, she narrates her hellish ascent to becoming one of the best tennis players in the women’s game, and her heart-breaking fall from the top. Her gutsy honesty will leave you in awe. Her fight back from darkness will uplift you. Most of all, Jelena's will to survive will inspire you.
Шейла Фицпатрик0.0 On a winter's day in 1943, 22-year-old Mischka Danos chanced on a terrible sight as he skied through Latvian woods-a pit filled with the bodies of Jews killed by the occupying Germans. The world was full of such atrocities, which makes Mischka's decision to escape conscription to the Waffen-SS by going on a student exchange to Germany all the more remarkable. Even more so when Mischka later discovered he was part-Jewish.But his was no ordinary life. He narrowly escaped death in the Allied fire bombing of Dresden. He then lived the precarious life of a Displaced Person in occupied Germany before heading north with the hope of crossing the border into Denmark, where he finally reunited with his mother Olga. He went on to become a member of the exceptional Heidelberg school of physics. They were both resettled in the US at the beginning of the 1950s, which is where, much later, he met, fell in love with and married Sheila Fitzpatrick. Fitzpatrick pieces together her late husband's story through diaries, correspondence and recollections: 'This is a historian's book but it's also a wife's book about her husband ... an offering of love that is also a search for knowledge.'
Стюарт Келлс0.0 Libraries are filled with magic. From the Bodleian, the Folger and the Smithsonian to the fabled libraries of middle earth, Umberto Eco’s mediaeval library labyrinth and libraries dreamed up by John Donne, Jorge Luis Borges and Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Stuart Kells explores the bookish places, real and fictitious, that continue to capture our imaginations.
The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders is a fascinating and engaging exploration of libraries as places of beauty and wonder. It’s a celebration of books as objects and an account of the deeply personal nature of these hallowed spaces by one of Australia’s leading bibliophiles.
Крис Мастерс0.0 The soldiers of the SAS, the Commandos and Special Operations Engineer Regiment are Australia's most highly trained soldiers. Their work is often secret, their bravery undeniable and for thirteen years they were at the forefront of Australia's longest war. Shunning acclaim, they are the Australian Defence Forces' brightest and best skilled.
In an extraordinary investigation undertaken over ten years, Chris Masters opens up the heart of Australia's Special Forces and their war in Afghanistan. He gives voice to the soldiers, he takes us to the centre of some of the fiercest combat Australia has ever experienced and provides the most intimate examination of what it is like to be a member of this country's elite fighting forces. But he also asks difficult questions that reveal controversial clouds hanging over our Special Operations mission in Afghanistan.
For Australia, there is no more important war to examine in detail. Afghanistan lives in our recent past and will continue to occupy our future. Masterfully told, No Front Line will find a place as one of Australia's finest books on contemporary soldiering.
'In this remarkable book about the intense combat environment experienced by our soldiers in Afghanistan, Chris Masters captures the highs, the lows, the courage and the sacrifice of Australian warriors and their loved ones in our longest war.' - Air Chief Marshal Sir Angus Houston AK, AFC (Ret'd)
'This book tells a story that many of us had not told our loved ones and will no doubt help to articulate and heal all those who sacrificed much in and out of uniform.' - Commando Warrant Officer
'I was impressed by [No Front Line's] detail, quality and objectivity...I wanted to reassure you that most Regiment members understand this and are speaking positively about the book.' - Former SASR Patrol Sergeant
'Thank you Chris Masters for your dedication and attention to detail in documenting this most comprehensive story of Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan.' - Former Commando corporal
'I have always felt that 90% of the blokes in the unit would be supportive of the book...' - SASR Troop Sergeant
'Brilliant. There's seriously no one else in Australia with the knowledge that Chris Masters has in relation to Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan. Lots of lessons learned and examples of heroism that if not for Chris Masters would be lost forever.' - Former Commando Major
'Thanks for your professionalism and intellectual honesty. It is much needed in this space.' - Former SASR Trooper
'Well done. Great to see the boys being recognised for their sacrifice.' - Former Commando Lance Corporal
'I think you captured the feelings of many of us at the end of that deployment perfectly.' - Former Special Forces Major
Ричард Яксли0.0 This is my blood, This is my song.
In the 1940s, musician Rafael Ullmann is sent to a Nazi concentration camp.
In the 1970s, Annie Ullmann lives a lonely life on a Canadian prairie.
Three decades later, in Australia, Joe Hawker is uncertain about himself and his future ... until he discovers a song, written by his grandfather many years ago.
This Is My Song crosses three continents and time-lines, chanting the need for each of us to find our own music, to sing to those we love most. This compelling and unforgettable story, by award-winner Richard Yaxley, will strike a chord and pluck the heartstrings.
Judith Clarke0.0 A masterful, moving story about a teenage boy caught between faith and love, by one of Australia's finest YA writers.
'Frankie believed in Heaven quite literally, as if it was another lovely world out past the stars. And when he spoke the word "love", it seemed to spring free and fly into the air like a beautiful balloon you wanted to run after. But I couldn't tell my parents about Frankie, not properly. I told them I'd made friends with the boy in the room next to mine, and how he'd come from this little town out west. I couldn't tell them how he was becoming the best thing in my world. I couldn't tell anyone, I hardly admitted it to myself.'
In the 1950s, 'entering' the seminary was for ever, and young boys were gathered into the priesthood before they were old enough to know what they would lose. Tom went to St Finbar's because he was looking for something more than the ordinary happiness of his home and school.
But then he discovered that being able to love another person was the most important thing of all. For Tom, loving Frankie made him part of the world. Even when Frankie was gone...
Демет Диварорен0.0 We all love someone. We all fear something. Sometimes they live right next door - or even closer.
Kane will do everything he can to save his mother and his little brother Sam from the violence of his father, even if it means becoming a monster himself.
Mrs Aslan will protect the boys no matter what - even though her own family is in pieces.
Ada wants a family she can count on, while she faces new questions about herself.
Mr Bailey is afraid of the refugees next door, but his worst fear will take another form.
And Gugulethu is just trying to make a life away from terror.
On this street, everyone comes from different places, but to find peace they will have to discover what unites them.
Зана Фрайон0.0 Kept by a ruthless gang, three children manage to escape from slavery. But freedom isn't just waiting on the outside.
Separated, scared and looking after a small child, Esra will do whatever she can to reunite with her friend Miran, who was captured by the police - the police who she mustn't trust.
Hiding in the shadows of the forest, Esra is found by a local boy, a boy with his own story. Together they will create a man out of mud. A man who will come to life and lead them through a dark labyrinth of tunnels until they finally have the courage the step above ground. Until they finally have the courage to speak their story. Until they finally have the courage to be free.
Брюс Уотли0.0 Ruben's dreams were of places that made no sense to him. Places that didn't exist. At least not anymore. Ruben is a triumph of Bruce Whatley's imaginative and technical skills.
Гленда Миллард0.0 I am the small green pea, you are the tender pod, hold me Words sing over the pictures in this evocative story: a beautiful lullaby about what we can be for each other. A mother and baby, a boy and a dog run for their lives. A little boat carries them across the sea. A polar bear, too, has come adrift. When will they find land? Where will they find friends? Who will welcome them in? The Pea Pod Lullaby is an inspiring and timely story of courage, endurance, and hope...for a world in which we can reach out and embrace one another.
Сара Бреннан0.0 A beached whale is the focus of a poetic read-aloud text by Sarah Brennan and superb illustration from Jane Tanner. Three sisters battle against the odds through a violent summer storm to rescue the stranded whale - but in the morning they find that nature has taken its course. A wonderful story about the power of the natural world, and one that will encourage children to think and care about our natural environment.
Тэмсин Джану0.0 Figgy and her friend Nana win scholarships to attend school in Ghana's big city, Accra. The city is exciting, and full of new friends and adventures. But when Nana begins acting strangely, and disappears, Figgy follows him to a place that is scary and sad.
She must convince Nana that he belongs, no matter where he comes from. And she learns that sometimes change is not so bad - especially if you have somewhere and someone to go home to.
Лиза Шанахан0.0 The story of an irrepressible little girl and her very big imagination, from two award-winning creators of Australian picture books - Lisa Shanahan and Binny
Ruby Lee is a little girl with a very big imagination. Every week Ruby's teacher, Mrs Majestic-Jones, asks special people to do special jobs in her class. Ruby would do anything to be the messenger, as she's the best in her class at announcing. But will her wild imagination get in the way?
A delightful story about an adorable and irrepressible heroine from CBCA award-winning author Lisa Shanahan and Illustrators Australia award-winner Binny. Perfect for fans of CHARLIE AND LOLA and OLIVIA.
Short-listed for the CBCA Book of the Year: Early Childhood.
Illustrations on endpapers.
For primary school age.
Брайан Кастро0.0 Suffering from a fatal disease, Lucien Gracq travels to Paris to complete the epic poem he is writing and live out his last days. There he joins a secret writers’ society, Le club des fugitifs, that guarantees to publish the work of its members anonymously, thus relieving them of the burdens of life, and more importantly, the disappointments of authorship. In Paris, Gracq finds himself crossing paths with a parade of phantasms, illustrious writers from the previous century – masters of identity, connoisseurs of eroticism, theorists of game and rule, émigrés and Oulipeans. He flees from the deathly allure of the Fugitives, and towards the arms of his beloved – but it may be too late.
Written in thirty-four cantos, Blindness and Rage recalls Virgil and Dante in its descent into the underworld of writing, and Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin with its mixture of wonder and melancholy. The short lines bring out the rhythmic qualities of Castro’s prose, enhance his playfulness and love of puns, his use of allusion and metaphor. Always an innovator, in Blindness and Rage he again throws down a challenge to the limits of the novel form.
Джон Эдвардс0.0 John Curtin became Australia’s Prime Minister eight weeks before Japan launched war in the Pacific.
Curtin’s struggle for power against Joe Lyons and Bob Menzies, his dramatic use of it when he took office in October 1941, and his determination to be heard in Washington and London as Japan advanced, is a political epic unmatched in Australian experience. As Japan sank much of the Allied navy, advanced on the great British naval base at Singapore, and seized Australian territories in New Guinea, Curtin remade Australia.
Using much new material John Edwards’ vivid, landmark biography places Curtin as a man of his times, puzzling through he immense changes in Australia and its region released by the mighty shock of the Pacific War.
It shows Curtin not as a hero and certainly not as a villain but as the pivotal figure making his uncertain way between what Australia was, and what it would become. It locates the turning point in Australian history not at Gallipoli or the Western Front or even Federation but in the Pacific War and in Curtin’s Prime Ministership.
This two volume work is a major contribution to Australian biography, and to how we understand our history. In this first part, Edwards takes Curtin’s story from the late nineteenth century socialist ferment in Melbourne through to his appointment as prime minister and a Japanese onslaught so complete and successful that within a few months of launching it military leaders in Tokyo debated between the options of invading Australia, or sealing it off from Allied help.
Джудит Бретт0.0 This insightful and accessible new biography of Alfred Deakin, Australia’s second prime minister, shines fresh light on one of the nation’s most significant figures. It brings out from behind the image of a worthy, bearded father of federation the gifted, passionate and intriguing man whose contributions continue to shape the contours of Australian politics.
The acclaimed political scientist Judith Brett scrutinises both Deakin’s public life and his inner life. Deakin’s private papers reveal a solitary, religious character who found distasteful much of the business of politics, with its unabashed self-interest, double-dealing, and mediocre intellectual levels. And yet politics is where Deakin chose to do his life’s work.
Destined to become a classic of biography, The Enigmatic Mr Deakin is a masterly portrait of a complex man who was instrumental in creating modern Australia.
Пол Айриш0.0 Contrary to what you may think, local Aboriginal people did not lose their culture and die out within decades of Governor Phillip’s arrival in Sydney in 1788.
Aboriginal people are prominent in accounts of early colonial Sydney, yet we seem to skip a century as they disappear from the historical record, re-emerging early in the twentieth century. What happened to Sydney’s indigenous people between the devastating impact of white settlement and increased government intervention a century later?
Hidden in Plain View shows that Aboriginal people did not disappear. They may have been ignored in colonial narratives but maintained a strong bond with the coast and its resources and tried to live on their own terms.
This original and important book tells this powerful story through individuals, and brings a poorly understood period of Sydney’s shared history back into view. Its readers will never look at Sydney in the same way.
Paul Irish has breathed new life into people written out of history. – Stan Grant
This landmark book will open your eyes to the enduring Aboriginal history of Sydney, a story which was there all along, a story that changes everything. – Grace Karskens
Джейн Персиан0.0 170,000 Displaced Persons arrived in Australia between 1947 and 1952 - the first non-Anglo-Celtic mass migrants. Australia's first immigration minister, Arthur Calwell, scoured post-war Europe for refugees, Displaced Persons he characterised as `Beautiful Balts'. Amid the hierarchies of the White Australia Policy, the tensions of the Cold War and the national need for labour, these people would transform not only Australia's immigration policy, but the country itself. Beautiful Balts tells the extraordinary story of these Displaced Persons. It traces their journey from the chaotic camps of Europe after World War II to a new life in a land of opportunity where prejudice, parochialism, and strident anti-communism were rife. Drawing from archives, oral history interviews and literature generated by the Displaced Persons themselves, Persian investigates who they really were, why Australia wanted them and what they experienced.
