Australian fiction
The Desert Knows Her Name by Lia Hills
Towards the end of The Desert Knows Her Name, one of the main characters muses on how people can love and destroy the same thing; over and over, apparently.
In this unusual novel set in the Wimmera desert, the…
Hurdy Gurdy by Jenny Ackland
Jenny Ackland’s new book unfolds in a world that has already lived through a series of endings; a near-future version of Australia where climate-stricken shanty towns litter the earth and ill-fated space missions dart across the sky. Out of the…
Why Do Horses Run? by Cameron Stewart
Cameron Stewart asks many things in this novel, most pensively: what does it take to walk away from one life to another? He asks us to consider how grief and loss can separate people but also bring others together. While…
All the Beautiful Things You Love by Jonathan Seidler
This is not your usual love story. Elly and Enzo break up in the first line of the first paragraph on the first page of the novel, and you know it’s the end for them. Elly now sells items from…
Ghost Cities by Siang Lu
Siang Lu’s protagonist, Xiang Lu, is fired from his job as a Mandarin–English translator at Sydney’s Chinese Consulate on account of his not being able to speak Mandarin. This, the opening joke of the novel, becomes more and more serious…
Safe Haven by Shankari Chandran
Set in a detention centre in Port Camden, Safe Haven focuses on the lives of refugees after their perilous journeys. As Shankari Chandran writes, they trade the prison of the home they ran away from, the wars, atrocities and violence…
Only the Astronauts by Ceridwen Dovey
What do we owe the objects we send into space? This might seem like a strange question to ask, but after reading the five heartfelt stories of Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Astronauts, it’s a question at the forefront of…
The Pyramid of Needs by Ernest Price
What do transgender identities, pyramid schemes and the climate crisis have in common? The answer is Ernest Price’s Pyramid of Needs. In his eclectic debut, Price introduces us to Linda, a 70-year-old woman who has spent most of her…
Thunderhead by Miranda Darling
Winona Dalloway wakes up at 5am to steal a sense of freedom. From the outside, she seems an ordinary suburban mother/wife/person, but inside the thunder is growing louder and louder. Chaos stirs and swells into the corners of her mind…
The Work by Bri Lee
Bri Lee’s foray into fiction should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following this smart and perceptive writer. Reflected in her nonfiction work are the issues of privilege, consent, relationships, and identity, and clearly, here, she…
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