How love became the miracle of my mortality
When I tell people the story of my misdiagnosis they are furious, and urge me to sue for malpractice. But I refuse to face the challenges ahead of me filled with bile.
Books
Lucashenko makes prize history
The highest-paying Australian literary prize has selected Melissa Lucashenko’s chronicle of Brisbane’s colonial conflicts as the recipient of its greatest honour.
Five shows to watch this week
A silly, sexy, salacious romp called Rivals is based on Jilly Cooper’s famous book, plus South Korea’s dying breed of haenyeo – women divers.
‘Gas the Jews’ or ‘Where’s the Jews’?: Why John Safran can’t tell us about the Opera House protest
John Safran joined the Palestinian-flag waving crowds gathered at the Sydney Opera House after the October 7 attacks – specifically because police warned Jews to stay away. But he still doesn’t know what was chanted.
The Australian genius who gave the whole world a fever
You might think Saturday Night Fever begins with John Travolta and ‘Stayin’ Alive’, or with Barry Gibb’s right hand. But where it really begins – and ends – is with Robert Stigwood.
Contemplating a trip to Sri Lanka? Read this first
Sri Lanka is a subtropical island which has been a favourite for Australian surfers for years – a ‘pristine, sultry and as yet undeveloped paradise’. But it has a dark underside.
Reading Zoe Foster Blake’s new book is hard work
Even if you buy into the premise that finding the ‘holy grail of [hair] texture’ is worth so much personal and financial risk, too often this book reads as though GenAI has been asked to write a series of annual reports in the guise of chick lit.
Serving the Stasi: a memoir of disturbing family secrets
Imagine growing up in a family in East Germany, in the 1960s and ’70s, in which your father works for the Stasi on secret missions in the West that he will not talk about. Your mother won’t talk about them either. Then the past breaks open.
South Korean author Han Kang wins Nobel
Author Han Kang became on Thursday the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
I’ve met real spies: Slow Horses gets them just right
The MI5 drama Slow Horses brilliantly captures the truth about the British Security Service – it’s full of ordinary, flawed people doing extraordinary things.
Big Ideas find mass appeal beyond the sneering sceptics
It is popular to sneer at Harari et al for their sweep and scope but they help to illuminate our age of big questions.
The closest we will come to understanding the late Queen’s inner world
No one was photographed and filmed more than Queen Elizabeth II, who spent a record-setting 70 years on the British throne. No face was more familiar than hers, yet no one remained less known.
Who is the human, who a monster?
This brilliantly staged Shake and Stir production takes the audience to the heart of a tragic tale of unnatural acts, obsession and madness.
‘Those are the best days of writing’: Michael Connelly is still on the beat
Harry Bosch creator Michael Connelly talks family, podcasts and handing on the baton to a new generation of fictional cops.
Loathing those who love Trump
Dennis Glover’s Repeat makes the case that those who support Trump are wrong. Again.
Inside the criminal state of Russia
The looting of state-owned assets in Russia was just the start of the crime rush.
Breakfast TV ‘wasn’t scaring me in the right way anymore’
Broadcaster Tony Armstrong, 34, on why he left ABC News Breakfast, playing AFL and the biggest myth about hard work.
America’s most poisonous pen
Truman Capote got what he wanted, and it killed him.
How the people of Yirrkala changed the course of Australian democracy
Sixty thousand years. That is how long the Yolngu people believe they have lived on lands they call Yirrkala, in northeast Arnhem Land. Sixty years ago, local tribes were told they did not in fact own that land. So a plan was hatched.
![1990. St Kilda's Tony Lockett with Jimmy Krakouer and son Andrew Krakouer, aged 7. Jim Krakouer. [Sun 18/3/1990]](https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/3b8aba1930a9f52a6cacf26ad9b79814?width=650)
AFL sensation helps kids cope with the pain of a parent in prison
Forget how tough you think you are: going to prison is scary. If that’s true for grown men, imagine how it feels for a child, having to visit their dad in there.
Brothers’ grim toil for peace
Sally Rooney’s new novel Intermezzo displays the maturity and flair of the beloved Irish author
Tim Winton takes a thoughtful look at humanity’s impact on the planet
If Tim Winton’s first novel concerned with climate change, 2013’s Eyrie, was a secular gospel – an account of redemption in a fallen world – then this is the Book of Revelation.
Robbie and Elordi to lead Wuthering Heights film
Australia’s most exportable stars are set to bring the heat to the icy Yorkshire moors in a new film from Saltburn director Emerald Fennell.
Formulaic leftist virtue, righteous heroes still captivate
For all its flaws, Intermezzo is scattered with the little gifts of psychological and emotional observation that are the most cherishable aspects of Rooney’s talent.
Laughing in the face of evil
Malcolm Knox’s novel The First Friend is set in the Soviet Union and its offshoot Georgia in 1938. It may be his best book yet.
How women who take small loans can end up jailed
Microloans were sold as the savior of poor women in developing countries, but all has not gone to plan.
Christian White’s latest novel has a plot twist so good, you’ll think it’s a printing error
The Nowhere Child catapulted Christian White to literary stardom in 2018, followed by The Wife and the Widow and Wild Place. All are nailbiters, but his latest offering should come with a mandatory neck brace.
’I knew this was where I wanted to live my life’
Rock star historian and podcaster William Dalrymple on the 10 days it took for him to fall under the spell of India – and the promise of the subcontinent in the 21st Century.
‘The big lie’: the mounting case to change Mount Kosciuszko’s name
The real-life Kosciuszko never even set foot in Australia, let alone climbed our highest peak. Is it finally time to call it by a name Indigenous people have used for tens of thousands of years?
The king of cosy crime expands his empire
British TV presenter and novelist Richard Osman, of best-selling The Thursday Murder Club fame, has temporarily parked the adventures of retirees for a new series. It’s laugh-out-loud funny.
Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/books/page/7