Literature

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Books we loved in 2021: Top authors reveal the best reads of the year

Jonathan Franzen, Helen Garner, Kazuo Ishiguro and other leading writers from home and abroad give thanks for the books that got them through a difficult year.

December 10, 2021

The best reads of 2021 included books by Emily Bitto, Diana Reid, Miles Allinson, Michelle de Kretser, Colson Whitehead, Eileen Chong and Colm Toibin.

What a year it’s been. Despite the turmoil of global events, the publishing world still managed to produce many great books for our delight.

As we enter the last weeks of 2021 - and with the summer holidays looming - we asked a selection of writers from home and abroad to tell us about the books they enjoyed most this year, those that eased their worries over the state of the world or lifted their spirits in what has been a trying time.

Don’t forget to tell us about your favourite reads of the year in the comments section.

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.

Hannah Kent

My year of reading has been filled with fever-dream books that have left me in odd states of rapture and disquietude. In this ongoing time of uncertainty, perhaps I have been seeking out the off-kilter. I enjoyed the profanity of Melissa Broder’s sex and food-drenched Milk Fed (Bloomsbury), and the discomfiting ambiguities explored in Diana Reid’s debut, Love & Virtue (Ultimo). But my two standout books of 2021 were Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi (Bloomsbury), an ecstatic literary hallucination, and Permafrost by S.J. Norman (UQP), ghost stories that queer and disrupt the Western gothic tradition. Both of these continue to haunt me in the best way imaginable.

Hannah Kent’s latest novel is Devotion (Picador).

Kazuo Ishiguro

My big discovery this year was the brilliant, disturbing, supernatural-infused fiction of Mariana Enriquez. Her story collection, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (Granta), is filled with damaged adolescents craving love and shelter in an Argentina whose nominally comfortable surface can’t suppress a frightening underbelly of savage inequality and the legacy of the junta years. Jonathan Coe’s Mr Wilder and Me (Penguin) is a beautifully elegiac novel told by a young woman in 1970s Greece hired as an interpreter for the great Billy Wilder as he struggles to make what he suspects will be his final film, still haunted by the horrors of 20th-century Europe that he fled decades earlier.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s most recent novel is Klara and the Sun (Faber).

Helen Garner

In The Premonition (Allen Lane) Michael Lewis, the American journalist I love best, pays raging tribute to the US epidemiologists no one would listen to as COVID-19 came surging in. Out of the wreckage of biographer Blake Bailey’s reputation staggers his subject, the mighty Philip Roth (Jonathan Cape), bloodied but unbowed. Novelist Emily Bitto kicks over the traces and breaks hearts in Wild Abandon (Allen & Unwin). Diana Reid, in her first novel Love and Virtue (Ultimo), restores what’s gone missing from contemporary sexual politics: the distinction between “being hurt and being wronged”. Meanwhile, in his novel In Moonland (Scribe), Miles Allinson lays out his territory with authority and a quiet, complex beauty.

Helen Garner’s most recent book is How to End a Story (Text).

Sofie Laguna

The Silence of the Girls and its sequel, The Women of Troy (Hamish Hamilton), by Pat Barker are a re-telling of The Iliad through the eyes of women. Female characters that have traditionally been rendered invisible and mute – objects of rape or slavery – are given life. I felt Barker, this mature, clever, articulate author, teaching me about writing. Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters (Profile), about three women – transgender and cisgender – managing an unexpected pregnancy, was illuminating and provocative. Bewilderment by Richard Powers, (Hutchinson/Heinemann) about a recently widowed father and his young son, is a book about grief set against a backdrop of astrobiology, animal extinction, climate change and US politics. What a trip.

Sofie Laguna’s most recent novel is Infinite Splendours (A&U).

Alexis Wright

During lockdown, I worked steadily on my next novel, but also found time to enter the dazzling world of British poet Alice Oswald. Her work sweeps across time and often evokes the world of Homer. One of her works is Memorial (Faber), which is an elegy for 200 soldiers killed in the Trojan War. More than just a historical fable, it tells a timeless story of the unrecognised victims of war. In Falling Awake (Vintage), I admired Oswald’s acute sense of the natural world in her poem 40 Minutes in the Life of the Dawn. In another work, Nobody (Vintage), sea voices surround an ancient poet who has been abandoned on a stony island. Dart (Faber), features Oswald’s magnificent corpus of voices heard along the River Dart in Devon, and where we find dreamers, swimmers, fishermen, poachers, ferrymen, and a character she calls the rememberer. Oswald has also edited a unique anthology titled The Thunder Mutters: 101 poems for the Planet (Faber). This book should be on every bookshelf. It includes a marvellous verse version of an ancient Aboriginal story of this country from East Arnhem Land titled Song-Cycle of the Moon Bone.

Alexis Wright’s most recent book is Tracker (Giramondo).

Craig Silvey

I can think of no more prestigious literary honour than the Silvey Nod Of Approval For Books I Enjoyed This Year. For fiction, it’s hard to go past Emily Bitto’s brilliant and inventive Wild Abandon (A&U). For non-fiction, the strange and extraordinary Larrimah (A&U) by Caroline Graham and Kylie Stevenson held me captivated. For memoir, look no further than Nina Simone’s Gum (Faber) by Warren Ellis – it’s a wise and inspiring and fascinating journey. Paige Clark’s deft and original She Is Haunted (A&U) resoundingly takes the prize for short stories. And for younger readers, I absolutely adored the beautiful and bittersweet Ghostbear (Scholastic) by national treasure Paul McDermott.

Craig Silvey’s most recent novel is Honeybee (A&U).

Min Jin Lee

This past year, I’ve been reading a good deal of non-fiction. I found the memoir Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford (Bonnier) profoundly moving. Ford writes honestly about her father’s incarceration and her family’s response to it with great dignity and compassion. A young person’s natural yearning for the love of all members of her family and wish to honour her family’s privacy are handled with grace and love. Ford’s writing is insightful, elegant, and full of vulnerability.

Min Jin Lee’s most recent novel is Pachinko (Head of Zeus).

Anna Funder

I was enthralled and amazed by Chloe Wilson’s story collection Hold Your Fire (Scribner). Elizabeth Strout’s Oh William! (Viking) is moving, so acutely observed. I loved Deborah Levy’s third instalment in her “living autobiography”, Real Estate (Hamish Hamilton). Delia Falconer’s beautiful Signs and Wonders (Scribner) is both solace and alarm as she renders the impact of living in the anthropocene. Michelle de Kretser’s Scary Monsters (A&U) is scary – about the thoughtcrimes that divide us, but also stunning, profound and funny. George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (Bloomsbury) is pure joy – reading Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol stories and then watching Saunders take them lovingly apart. Philosopher Kate Manne’s Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (Penguin) is a trenchant and accessible follow-up to her powerful Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (Penguin).

Anna Funder’s Wifedom: The Invisible Life of Orwell’s First Wife will be published by Penguin Random House next year.

Jonathan Franzen

I recommend two books by American women with complicated names: Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum’s story collection Likes (Picador US) and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans (Swift Press). Bynum, whose Ms. Hempel Chronicles (Atlantic) is one of my favourite books of the past 15 years, brings a distinctive melancholy wryness to stories that manage, somehow, to be both subtle and shocking. Villavicencio, by contrast, comes straight at you, in a blaze of intelligence and fierce opinion. Until very recently, she herself was an undocumented American, and her non-fiction portraits of her fellow immigrants, whom she endeavours to present in their full humanity, add up to a stereotype-buster of the first order.

Jonathan Franzen’s most recent novel is Crossroads (Fourth Estate).

Caroline Baum

Female authors who died too soon were the subjects of the two best biographies of 2021. The monumental, definitive Red Comet (Jonathan Cape) by Heather Clark provides a feminist and often radically new perspective on Sylvia Plath, one of the most mythologised writers of the 20th century. Bernadette Brennan plunges with verve and sensitivity headlong into the intense and extreme life of Gillian Mears in the intimate and often unsettling Leaping into Waterfalls (A&U). For sports fans, Christopher Clarey’s access-all-areas biography The Master (John Murray) follows Roger Federer on and off the circuit, engaging with fans and sponsors. His insights into coaching styles and training methods are especially fascinating.

Caroline Baum’s podcast is Life Sentences.

Christos Tsiolkas

Emily Bitto’s Wild Abandon (A&U) is a wonderful novel, daring and surprising, and profoundly humane. I haven’t been so moved by a book in a long while. Equally humane is Alice Pung’s One Hundred Days (Black Inc.). I love the quiet, bold power of Pung’s writing, the commanding precision of her prose. PiO’s Heide (Giramondo) is staggering in its audacity, and an intoxicating thrill to read. It is history as ode, and a bold vindication of art. As always with his work, it is also wickedly funny and heretical: this is our secret singing. Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus (Oneworld) was originally published in Russian in 2012. This shapeshifting and beautifully told story of faith, set in the medieval plague years, proved to be a balm to read during lockdown. David Milne’s Worldmaking: The Art and Science of American Diplomacy (Farrar, Straus, Giroux) was a joyful surprise. It essays the last century of US diplomacy with rigour. Milne has a born writer’s intuition for narrative and character. He is the rarest of creatures: a non-pedantic academic.

Christos Tsiolkas’ latest novel is 7½ (A&U).

Lucy Treloar

Trying to make sense of another year of lockdown, I turned to books of fragmentation and reckoning. Elizabeth Strout’s poignant Oh William! (Viking), the third in her enthralling Lucy Barton series, shows her delicately circling Lucy’s first husband to reveal his haunted past. Another exploration of family, Miles Allinson’s In Moonland (Scribe), is a darkly funny novel of generational bonds, a dazzling ride that is full of heart. I also loved poet Eileen Chong’s piercing reflections on memory and loss in A Thousand Crimson Blooms (UQP). This luminous collection has remained on my desk all year. And finally, a work that seems made for these times, perhaps all times: Anwen Crawford’s No Document (Giramondo), a superb non-fiction of resonant power, about grief, politics, ephemerality and art.

Lucy Treloar’s most recent novel is Wolfe Island (Picador).

Peter Carey

There have been so many deaths this year, so many of them tragically premature. Among that number was David Graeber, who spent 10 years co-writing (with David Wengrow) The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (Allen Lane), a book that unexpectedly permits some optimism about the future of our species. Both the authors are academics, so although the writing is never anything but accessible, it means you should be ready for a fair amount of stating, restating and concluding. I also got enormous pleasure from Colm Toibin’s The Magician (Picador), a fictional account of the life of Thomas Mann which is frighteningly relevant now as we see fascism make an impossible return. It is a vast, original, emotionally complex novel which should, surely, have been short-listed for the Booker Prize.

Peter Carey’s most recent novel is A Long Way From Home (Penguin).

Graeme Simsion

Clem Bastow’s Late Bloomer: How an Autism Diagnosis Changed My Life (Hardie Grant) is a frank and fearless memoir, and Kay Kerr’s The Social Queue (Text), a young adult romcom with an autistic protagonist who’s young, female and not particularly good at maths. The Wingmaker (Text) by Mette Jakobsen and A Town Called Solace (Chatto & Windus) by Mary Lawson are stories of damaged people helping each other find a way through. Dare I say “uplifting”? And, in the same space, my crime-writing partner, Anne Buist, recommends Jacqueline Bublitz’s Before You Knew My Name (A&U). Good advice that I’m passing on.

Graeme Simsion is the author of the Rosie books (Text).

Curtis Sittenfeld

I just read an outrageously thought-provoking book of non-fiction from last year, The Tragedy of Heterosexuality by Jane Ward (NYU Press), which is an academic (but easy-to-read) analysis of the ways that straight men and women often find each other annoying and physically repellent and the whole culture that simultaneously accepts this dynamic as preordained and attempts to “fix” it. With insight, humour, and sensitivity, Ward breaks down a phenomenon that feels like it’s been hiding in plain sight since forever – and, though the book is far from a dating or marriage manual, she actually does offer some advice at the end.

Curtis Sittenfeld’s most recent novel is Rodham (Transworld).

Toni Jordan

It’s no surprise that this was my year of vicarious travel. David Allan-Petale’s nostalgic Locust Summer (Fremantle) transported me to the open skies of Western Australia’s Wheatbelt to follow a young man as he farewells the family farm with one final harvest; Miles Allinson’s insightful and ambitious In Moonland (Scribe) took me to a cultish ashram in 1970s India, among other places; and Antoni Jach’s funny, layered Travelling Companions (Transit Lounge) made me feel like a young backpacker criss-crossing Europe by train in the pre-smartphone era. And for dessert: in Amal Awad’s charming The Things We See in the Light (Pantera), a courageous young pastry chef reinvents herself despite the trauma and secrets of her past.

Toni Jordan’s Dinner with the Schnabels will be published by Hachette next year.

Trent Dalton

I’m currently swept up, heart and soul, in Anthony Doerr’s latest, Cloud Cuckoo Land (Fourth Estate). How appropriate that such an ode to the wonder and salvation to be found in storytelling (and cherishing books) would be one of the most ambitious feats of storytelling I’ve ever swan-dived into. I thought Hannah Bent’s debut novel, When Things Are Alive They Hum (Ultimo), was so heartfelt and sweet. It’s about the power and love of siblings, a subject close to my heart. And I had a blast with Plum (Fourth Estate) by Brendan Cowell. It really was the brain-damaged-rugby-league-poet-book I was waiting all my life to find.

Trent Dalton’s most recent book is Love Stories (Fourth Estate).

Mark McKenna

Best Books of the Year? Impossible. But here’s a handful that I’ve read recently that have stayed with me. Bernadette Brennan’s Leaping into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears (A&U) is a skilful, unforgettable distillation of a writer’s creative imagination. Sean Kelly’s The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison (Black Inc.) is outstanding for the subtlety of its psychological insights, weighing of evidence, and the breadth of reading that Kelly brings to bear on his slippery subject. Finally, Saskia Hamilton’s edited collection of the correspondence between Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick, The Dolphin Letters 1970-1979 (Faber), vividly captures the couple’s entangled separation in the last years of Lowell’s life.

Mark McKenna’s most recent book is Return to Uluru (Black Inc).

Robert Adamson

It was a year for exceptional books. Michael Palmer’s brilliant Little Elegies for Sister Satan (New Directions) is probably his best book of poetry so far; and his line “So it is that we spend our moments or midnights fashioning a language from that which cannot be said” can stand for all my choices this year. J.S. Harry’s exciting New and Selected Poems (Giramondo), meticulously compiled and introduced by Nicolette Stasko, is a tribute to Harry’s imaginative genius. Finally, two books of essays: Jennifer Moxley’s For The Good Of All, Do Not Destroy the Birds (Flood) for lovers of the avian world, gorgeous prose that explores the mysteries of song. Along with Delia Falconer’s Signs and Wonders (Scribner), exquisite writing that swerves with heartbreaking facts, into hidden realms of our broken world, luminous with humanity.

Robert Adamson’s most recent book is Reaching Light: Selected Poems (Flood).

Fiona Wright

Most of my best-loved books this year were non-fiction: Olivia Laing’s Everybody (Picador), a strange and wonderful blend of biography – the subject is early psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich – personal reflection and philosophy. Everybody is ostensibly about bodies, and freedoms, but also about hope, and it felt like a tonic. I loved Fiona Murphy’s The Shape of Sound (Text) for its deft explorations of disability and self-discovery, and the wildness of Kathryn Heyman’s Fury (A&U). Sarah Sentilles’ Stranger Care (Text) broke my heart. In fiction, my favourites included Michelle de Kretser’s Scary Monsters (A&U), Emily Maguire’s Love Objects (A&U), and Jennifer Mills’ The Airways (Picador).

Fiona Wright’s most recent book is The World was Whole (Giramondo).

Jane Harper

Time-poor and locked down, a book had to be completely gripping for me to even crack the spine this year. Fortunately, Sally Hepworth yet again delivered wit, warmth and suspense with The Younger Wife (Pan Macmillan), as did Liane Moriarty with Apples Never Fall (Pan Macmillan). Like thousands of other readers, this was also the year I happily bounded onto the bandwagon of British writer Richard Osman, with his brilliant debut The Thursday Murder Club, and its equally excellent follow-up, The Man who Died Twice (Penguin). Fun from first page to last.

Jane Harper’s most recent novel is The Survivors (Pan Macmillan).

Cassandra Pybus

It was a revelation to read the reissue of Shirley Hazzard’s 1980 masterpiece The Transit of Venus (Penguin) to discover that the glorious novel about the anguish of love I vividly remembered is even more compelling, but not about love, rather it is deeply and subtly about power. The new introduction is written by Lauren Groff, who also writes superbly about the intricate braid of love and power in her dazzling novel Matrix (Cornerstone), which reimagines a 12th-century abbess who ruthlessly subverts the power dynamic of her cloistered life, engineering a vast labyrinth to defend the woman-centred world she created. The Labyrinth (Text) by Amanda Lohrey is perfect company for those two novels, a luminous, meditative and richly layered fiction that will long resonate in memory.

Cassandra Pybus’ most recent book is Truganini (A&U).

Favel Parrett

Krissy Kneen’s The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen (Text) is a book close to my heart – as Kneen searches for the life her beloved grandmother led before coming to Australia. Fascinating and powerful. I loved it. The Wingmaker by Mette Jakobsen (Text) is an exquisite book that will be with me forever. I adore Jakobsen’s writing and find her work inspiring. The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature by Sami Bayly (Hachette) is another brilliant encyclopaedia by the talented writer and illustrator. A great book to read with children and learn more about how plant and animal species rely on each other.

Favel Parrett’s most recent book is Wandi (Hachette).

Clare Wright

With All About Yves: Notes on a Transition (A&U), historian Yves Rees makes a stunning debut in the Australian literary scene. Their blend of searing intellect, Millennial insight and instinct for both courage and compassion heralds a new and important critical voice. Alternatively, there is nothing more satisfying than old dogs performing virtuoso tricks, and Helen Garner is in a league of her own with the third (and best) instalment of her diary series. How to End a Story (Text) reads like a thriller, gripping us in the quotidian, real-time horror of her unravelling marriage. It left me breathless. Finally, After Story (UQP) by Larissa Behrendt is a gorgeous, clever novel of mother/daughter love and loss, ambitious in conception and masterful in execution.

Clare Wright’s most recent book is You Daughters of Freedom (Text).

Emily Bitto

This year I was fixated on apocalyptic fiction … hmm, funny that. Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind (Bloomsbury) was a standout, combining clever social commentary with page-turning thrills. I relished Severance by Ling Ma (Text), and adored The Animals in That Country by Australian Arthur C. Clarke award-winning superstar Laura Jean McKay (Scribe). Other Australian faves were Miles Allinson’s wonderful In Moonland (Scribe), Claire Thomas’ The Performance (Hachette), this year’s Stella Prize winner Evie Wyld’s The Bass Rock (Vintage), and Michelle de Kretser’s brilliant Scary Monsters (A&U). I also enjoyed Raven Leilani’s sharp debut, Luster (Picador), and I’m currently reading and absolutely loving Louise Erdrich’s recent The Night Watchman (Hachette).

Emily Bitto’s latest novel is Wild Abandon (A&U).

Victoria Hannan

My attention span favoured short books this year: Natasha Brown’s Assembly (Penguin) gripped me, I greatly admired Rachel Cusk’s Second Place (A&U) and was shattered by Jhumpa Lahiri’s Whereabouts (Bloomsbury). The story of a complex relationship between mother and daughter, Gwendoline Riley’s My Phantoms (A&U) knocked me sideways. Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle (Transworld) is a 600-page adventure novel that spirals its way through time. It’s big-hearted and audacious. I consumed Diana Reid’s sharp Love and Virtue (Ultimo) in one fevered gulp. She is Haunted (A&U), Paige Clarke’s short-story collection about grief and identity, stayed with me long after the last word.

Victoria Hannan is the author of Kokomo (Hachette).

Bri Lee

Lech Blaine’s Quarterly Essay, Top Blokes was a real highlight for me – a hilarious and incredibly illuminating explanation of how identity politics shapes actual politics. Blaine’s memoir, Car Crash (Black Inc.), came out earlier in the year too and is deeply moving. Actually, it’s been a standout year for memoir. I loved The Mother Wound by Amani Haydar (Picador). It tells the story of when Haydar’s father murdered her mother, but it’s also a poetic rumination on the false binaries between “public” and “private” violence, and modern Australia. The other highlight was Black and Blue by Veronica Heritage-Gorrie (Scribe), a memoir of her life growing up and an eye-opening and heartbreaking examination of how messed-up policing is in Australia. For fiction, my highly commended spot goes to Paige Clark for her collection of short stories, She is Haunted (A&U) – they were so fresh and fantastic!

Bri Lee’s most recent book is Who Gets to be Smart (A&U).

Mick Herron

Much of my reading this year has been spent in the company of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet family, but for contemporary laughter and heartbreak I recommend Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser (Fourth Estate) and Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss (HarperCollins). Jo Lloyd’s debut story collection, The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies (Swift Press) shows remarkable range and depth, and whether nailing the rootless drift of young would-be artists with wit and sympathy or creating fables from history’s lost corners is unfailingly engaging. For more blatantly criminal pleasures, Liam McIlvanney’s The Heretic (HarperCollins), his forthcoming sequel to his prize-winning The Quaker (HarperCollins) is equally big, equally bold, even more impressive.

Mick Herron is author of the Slough House novels (John Murray).

Bernadette Brennan

My standout read this year is Anwen Crawford’s elegy No Document (Giramondo), a sophisticated, moving lament for an individual, and for a world that has lost its way. In non-fiction, Amani Haydar’s The Mother Wound (Picador) is a devastating story of intergenerational trauma and loss narrated with unsentimental intelligence. Three novels: Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This (Bloomsbury) for the truth of its pain and spare style; Michelle de Kretser’s Scary Monsters (A&U) for its riskiness, unashamed intellectualism, and rage against ageism, misogyny and racism; Jennifer Down’s Bodies of Light (Text), which draws the reader into almost unbearable darkness yet holds them secure enough to bear witness to the creation of a resilient self.

Bernadette Brennan’s most recent book is Leaping into Waterfalls (A&U).

Robbie Arnott

A few years ago I read Fever of Animals, by Miles Allinson, and I remember thinking: geez this is good. Geez, I hope he writes another book. So, when his second novel, In Moonland (Scribe), was released this year, I was in a state of serious excitement. I’m pleased to report that it didn’t let me down – it’s an engrossing portrayal of obsession, loyalty and destruction within a family, told in three disparate parts. I loved it. I also loved – and had the wind knocked out of me in a drawn-out manner, kind of like collecting a decent bump from a centre half-back in slow-motion – Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down (Text). It’s a mesmerising chronicle of the sometimes harrowing, ultimately dignified life of one of the most sharply drawn characters I’ve encountered in recent fiction. I’ve not read anything like it. It’s extraordinary.

Robbie Arnott won the Age book of the year for The Rain Heron (Text).

Michelle de Kretser

In Wild Abandon (A&U), my friend Emily Bitto treats readers to the kind of grandly lavish prose that I’d feared gone forever. Her narrative is as thrilling and audacious as her sentences, and both are exquisitely controlled. The result is a wise, sorrowful and mesmerising novel about fatal excess. In Moonland (Scribe) is a beautifully understated exploration of generational disconnect. Miles Allinson’s narrative voice is casual, funny, digressive, modern – one of the joys of this very smart novel. Artist and writer Stephanie Radok conjures literature from the infra-ordinary in Becoming a Bird (Wakefield). She offers details from her daily life in suburban Adelaide, recalls works of art that matter to her and produces an unassuming gem of a book.
Michelle de Kretser’s most recent novel is Scary Monsters (A&U).

Jennifer Down

In the first few months of the year, I read Melissa Manning’s exquisite short-story collection, Smokehouse (UQP), and Rebecca Watson’s Little Scratch (Faber) – a tense, formally inventive debut whose narrator has stayed with me. I read fitfully during lockdown, but there were several books that punctured the torpor: Assembly by Natasha Brown (Hamish Hamilton), which is a masterpiece of economy; Paige Clark’s short fiction collection, She is Haunted (A&U); and Jazz Money’s How to Make a Basket (UQP). Money’s poetry is at once tender and sharp, clear-eyed and lyrical. I know I’ll return to it again and again.

Jennifer Down’s most recent novel is Bodies of Light (Text).

Anita Heiss

Thanks to some brilliant homegrown authors in 2021, I went on journeys of finding family and self, through memoirs The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen (Text) and Fury by Kathryn Heyman (A&U). I travelled abroad via Larissa Behrendt’s literary tour of England in After Story (UQP), and arrived in New Orleans with Rachael Johns’ How to Mend a Broken Heart (HQ). Susan Johnson’s From Where I Fell (A&U) inspired me as an author. My First Nations non-fiction highlights this year are True Tracks by Terri Janke (UNSW Press) and Fiona Foley’s Biting the Clouds (UQP), and I loved Sea Country, a kids book set on Flinders Island by Aunty Patsy Cameron & Lisa Kennedy (Magabala).

Anita Heiss’ most recent novel is Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (Hachette).

Rumaan Alam

Sometimes I want a fiction that reflects reality, like Alexandra Kleeman’s Something New Under the Sun (Fourth Estate) which is terrifying but also funny, as the world so often seems to me. Sometimes I want a story that predicts the future, as Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (Faber) seems to – conjuring some distant time even as it’s principally concerned with the fundamentals of being a human. Sometimes what I need most is an escape, and this year Anita Brookner’s 1998 work, Visitors (Vintage), provided that – one of the best novels I’ve read in ages.

Rumaan Alam’s most recent novel is Leave the World Behind (Bloomsbury).

Adrian McKinty

The book I enjoyed most in 2021 was Harlem Shuffle (Fleet) by Colson Whitehead. Set at the tail end of the 1950s it’s the story of Ray Carney, a middle-class furniture salesman who gets himself sucked into taking part in a hotel heist against his better judgment. Ray is a complicated, fascinating character half in and out of the underworld, self-conscious in front of his in-laws and wife who grew up on the beautiful brownstone block known as “Strivers Row”. This is an affectionate portrait not just of these characters but also of a jazzy, culturally rich lost era. Ray’s store is on 125th Street, then the prosperous main drag of Harlem close to the famous Cotton Club and Apollo Theatre at a time when Langston Hughes and James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison could be found in bars and cafes and Manhattan’s white elite still followed Duke Ellington’s advice and “took the A Train to Harlem”. The heist itself channels Elmore Leonard at his most fun.

Adrian McKinty’s most recent novel is The Chain (Hachette).

Jock Serong

This is the first year I’ve kept a diary of my reading. It’s brutal and capricious and will never see the light of day. Here are the diary’s 2021 standout releases: Grimmish (Westbourne) by Michael Winkler, a brilliant experimental stroll through pain, boxing and sweary goats. The Believer, Sarah Krasnostein (Text), the nutty given dignity by her sharp, empathetic eye. Truganini, Cassandra Pybus (A&U), essential reading for understanding Tasmania. The Orchard Murders, Robert Gott (Scribe), perfectly executed Melbourne noir. If Not Us, Mark Smith (Text), a climate thriller to hook young readers (with added surfing). Return to Uluru, Mark McKenna (Black Inc.), profoundly moving. Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury), otherworldly, wildly imaginative; and Alexandria by Edmund Richardson (Bloomsbury) – the cycles of Afghan history that keep repeating.

Jock Serong’s most recent novel is The Burning Island (Text).

Alex Miller

Sylvia Martin’s Sky Swimming (UWA) is one of those rare treasures of a book that we come across every now and then and quite often miss because it has not been advertised to us loudly. Intimate, generous, written with modesty and great empathy, it is a gem of a book from the heart of a deeply intelligent writer. Robert MacFarlane and Jennie Orchard edited The Gifts of Reading (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), which is an inspired collection of essays by 23 of the world’s greatest writers and the perfect gift for an avid reader. The brilliant essays by Alice Pung and Pico Iyer alone make this book worth buying. A wonderful addition to the essays themselves is a list from each writer of half a dozen of their favourite books. The reader need never again be at a loss for where to find a good book. Tony Birch’s Dark As Last Night (UQP) is the richly evocative and deeply empathetic new collection by Australia’s greatest short-story writer. It gave me all the satisfaction I hope for as a reader. Birch is more at home with his material than any other modern writer I know.

Alex Miller’s most recent book is Max (A&U).

Tim Flannery

High on the list of enjoyable reads this year has been Jonathan Balcombe’s Super Fly (Penguin). What an astonishing paean to the almost endless variety of one of the most hated groups of insects on Earth. Written with astonishing compassion, and with a surprise on every page. And I’ve finally finished my leisurely long re-read of Tacitus’ The Annals (Penguin), which has become almost an annual fixture in my calendar. With each reading I get ever more out of this miraculous survival. And then there’s been Scott Ludlam’s breathtaking Full Circle (Black Inc.). Dense, passionate, and vital, it really deserves to be book of the year. As I internalise the reformation of politics it proposes, I feel that I’m reaching out towards a most satisfying and achievable future.

Tim Flannery’s most recent book is The Climate Cure (Text).

Sebastian Barry

The magus of Irish fiction to my mind is Claire-Louise Bennett, her magic manifesting again in Checkout 19 (Jonathan Cape). But there is also Colm Toibin in a very different register of alchemy in The Magician (Picador), where he reincarnates Thomas Mann. Two other books that took the palm for me this year: A Very Strange Man: A Memoir of Aidan Higgins, who was every young writer’s hero in the ’70s (or this one anyhow), by Alannah Hopkin (New Island Books), and the just plain celestial The Promise, by Damon Galgut (Vintage).

Sebastian Barry’s most recent novel is A Thousand Moons (Faber).

Tony Birch

Evelyn Araluen’s poetry collection, Dropbear (UQP), is my book of the year. With subtlety and an occasional razor, Araluen interrogates colonial violence, conveys love of Country and family, and critiques the form itself, which has too often misrepresented Aboriginal people.

Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle (Fleet) is a page turner in the tradition of the crime genre. It is also a story of place and family, recreating New York’s Harlem of the 1960s with dazzle. Reading Nic Low’s Uprising (Text) during lockdown was a blessing and a curse. Walking through the Southern Alps of New Zealand with Low, being introduced to Maori culture and language was a journey of the heart while being restricted to a five-kilometre radius around my home.

Tony Birch’s most recent book is Dark as Last Night (UQP).

Meg Mason

This year, I’ve been on an Ann Patchett jag, reading everything of hers I hadn’t already, finishing with her new essay collection, These Precious Days (Bloomsbury), which came out last month. But – I just discovered – Patchett has narrated the audiobook, and since there is something so added about listening to an author read her own work, I absolutely intend to do it over again in that format. The other thing is Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Crossroads (Fourth Estate), which heft-wise is almost on a par with Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light (Fourth Estate), so ought to last me all summer.

Meg Mason’s most recent novel is Sorrow and Bliss (HarperCollins).

Maxine Beneba Clarke

This year, strapped for time, and in the search for meaning, I’ve gravitated toward poetry. Omar Musa’s latest collection, Killernova (Penguin), released right at the end of this year, is a unique hybrid creature – a beautifully designed, stunning combination of woodcuts and poetry that explores the poet and artist’s Bornean roots. Jazz Money, a poet of Wiradjuri heritage, offered the David Unaipon award-winning collection How to Make a Basket (UQP), a powerful and accomplished debut. Eileen Chong’s A Thousand Crimson Blooms (UQP) is a nuanced, tender volume of deceptively complex and disarmingly emotive verse that is at once deeply personal and universal. Another interesting and eclectic publication was Everything All at Once: Fiction and Poetry from 30 of Australia’s Best Writers Under 30. This anthology is compiled from the winning entries of the 2021 Ultimo Prize. A breathtaking standout is Gavin Yuan Gao’s poem Covid. This volume is an exquisite gift for the young writer, and a necessary read for those interested in what the future of Australian literature has to offer.

Maxine Beneba Clarke’s most recent book is How Decent People Behave (Hachette).

Delia Falconer

The highlight of my reading year was Eleanor Hogan’s Into The Loneliness (NewSouth), the delicately handled story of the friendship between writers Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates. Hogan’s ability to balance the women’s deeply problematic relationships with Indigenous Australians with the ways they were ahead of their times, while parsing their tricky relationship, makes this a complex and moving book; not least because Hogan reflects so insightfully on her own solo quest to ask the Indigenous people of the Ooldea Mission their memories of Bates. I also admired Ben Ehrenreich’s Desert Notebooks (Counterpoint). His “road map for the end of time” is an exhilarating mix of road trip, philosophy and nature writing.

Delia Falconer’s most recent book is Signs and Wonders (Scribner).

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