'Australianness' is no longer the measure of a book's success. Instead, our writers have become anthropologists of the wider world and some of its darkest hours. down under, it turns out, is just the place from which to view the underbelly

It was an observation dropped by a friend, Hilary McPhee, that made Carmen Callil realise how close to home she had in fact remained despite half a century away. "She said to me 'only you could have written this book and only an Australian could have written it'," Callil recalled during a recent promotional tour for Bad Faith (Jonathan Cape, 2006), her acclaimed biography of the man dubbed 'the French Eichmann', Louis Darquier, adding: "And it's so true."