The Burial (2012) – Courtney COLLINS
What better way to celebrate Australia Day than by reviewing the promising debut novel from a young Australian writer? The Burial has been sitting on the shelves at work, sadly […]
Tag Archives: first novel
Northern Girls (2004) – SHENG Keyi
Continuing my reading of the Man Asian Literary Prize longlist, I find myself in China. I’m intrigued by this novel, not least because it is printed by Penguin China, the […]
Ru (2009) – Kim THÚY
This novel caught my eye a while ago for a variety of reasons. A Vietnamese-Canadian writer, Kim Thúy originally wrote this novel in French in 2009, though it was translated […]
Past the Shallows (2011) – Favel PARRETT
Favel Parrett’s debut novel was longlisted for the Miles Franklin earlier this year, but I’d been meaning to read it well before that. She was in Canberra several months ago, […]
The Yellow Birds (2012) – Kevin POWERS
Releasing your war novel on 11 September is a risky business. If it’s really good, it will forever be remembered as a sneaky marketing tool to highlight the important message […]
Narcopolis (2012) – Jeet THAYIL
I should start by giving full credit to Mark from Eleutherophobia for pointing me in the direction of Narcopolis. Jeet Thayil is a well-respected Indian poet, whose own history with drug […]
Wulf (2011) – Hamish CLAYTON
I picked this up earlier in the year while I was in New Zealand in a rather excellent independent bookshop called Unity Books. I was looking for some new New […]
The Roving Party (2011) – Rohan WILSON
When Rohan Wilson won the Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award last year for The Roving Party, it heralded a change in the way the award functioned. No longer would we have to […]
Eleven Seasons (2012) – Paul D CARTER
I love that the Vogel winner is now published the day after the winner is announced. There was, I think, a tendency for the news to be announced and then […]
American Dervish (2012) – Ayad AKHTAR
When I wrote a post about what it meant to be Asian, as part of the Man Asian Literary Prize, I lamented the fact that immigrant experiences, and stories of […]
