Australian writing came into its own in the 1890s, when a strong nationalistic movement
leading up to eventual Federation in 1901 produced writers like Henry Lawson and balladeer
"Banjo" Paterson, who romanticized the bush and glorified the mateship ethos, while outstanding
women writers, like Miles Franklin and Barbara Baynton, gave a feminine slant to the bush tale and
set a trend for a strong female authorship. In the twentieth century Australian novelists in
particular have come to be recognized in the international arena, with Patrick White awarded a
Nobel Prize in 1973 and Peter Carey taking the Booker Prize in 1987.
Travel and General
Society and Culture
History and Politics
Contemporary Fiction
Gillian Mears, The Mint
Lawn.
Australian Classics
Anthologies
Aboriginal Peoples' Writing Faith Bandler, Welour, My Brother. Ruby Langford, Don't Take Your Love to Town.
Specialist and Wildlife Guides Australians are passionate and active travellers, and in every regional centre you'll find local
specialist guides to surfing, diving, cycling and numerous other activities: many of these
are detailed in the text. There are few guides to Australia's wildlife designed for field use,
though ANPWS shops often stock booklets on local flora and fauna. As any visit to a remainder
bookshop will prove, coffee-table works are legion.
Under the progressive Whitlam Labor Government in the 1970s, the Australia Council was
established and its Literature Board struck out strongly to nurture new writing through Writers'
Grants; these days Australian writing is flourishing, with a dedicated Australian readership.
Although many of its most loved authors have not been heard of overseas, you'll be surprised at the
range of home-grown literature available in Australian bookshops, though be prepared to pay more
than you would at home.
We've given the publishers of each book, where available, in Britain (UK), the United States (US),
and where there's no British or US publisher, in Australia (Aus). Obviously most of these
Australian-interest books are more widely available in Australia.
(Picador
UK, Aus; Penguin US). Fictional account of an exploration into Aboriginal nomadism that turns out
to be one of the clearest accounts of this complex subject. A must.
(Penguin UK, US, Aus). Pushy English journalist's travels and observations
around the "ragged square of Australia" in the Eighties.
(Vintage UK;
Pantheon US). Heroic tale of a 27-year-old woman's obsessive journey through western deserts
from Alice Springs to Shark Bay with four camels and a dog.
(Penguin UK). Autobiography of the face behind the many Australian caricatures.
(Penguin UK, Aus). Jacobsen focuses his cutting and ultimately tiresome wit on Australian society.
(Picador UK; Knopf US o/p). James recalls his childhood and early years in Sydney as a cub
journalist.
(Flamingo UK). Ironical roots reversal saga with the author searching out his Tasmanian-Irish
origins.
(Penguin UK, US;
Random House US). Morris revises her former sour opinion in an insightful and informative
account of Australia`s favourite city.
(Macmillan UK o/p; Overlock Press US). Fascinating account suggests Aboriginal
people were masters and not victims of their environment. One of the best books on this subject.
(Penguin UK
o/p; Aus, Bantam US). The trial and witch hunt of Lindy Chamberlain, convicted of murdering the
infant daughter which she maintained was carried off by a dingo. Account of a miscarriage of justice
which delves into the grubbier regions of Australian psyche and the law.
(Viking
UK; Viking Penguin US o/p; Penguin Aus). Hugely popular autobiography of a battler; from
a bush orphanage to Gallipoli, through the Depression, another war and beyond.
(Hodder & Stoughton UK, Aus). Anthology of NT writings from all perspectives and
sources - an excellent literary souvenir for anyone who falls for the charms of Australia's "one
percent" territory.
(Angus & Robertson UK o/p; Angus & Robertson Aus). Although nearly thirty years old,
this seminal analysis of Australian society has yet to be matched and is still often quoted.
Contemporary sequel The Lucky Country Revisited
brings things up to date.
(Sun Aus). Poignant essays by prominent Green
figures. Well-argued viewpoints on Tasmania's key Green issues and their importance on a global
scale.
(Heinemann Aus). Account of the violent 1840s in NSW as colonists and pioneers moving
inland clashed with the Koories (Aborigines).
(Faber & Faber UK; UCP US). Fascinating and original analysis of "discovery" as cultural
imperialism and the metaphysics of exploration.
(Penguin Aus). Condensed version of leading historian`s multi-volumed tome focuses on
dreary successions of political administrations over two centuries, concluding cynically in the "Age
of Ruins".
(Penguin Aus). Scholarly analysis of women's invisible role in Australia's history.
(Fremantle
Arts Press Aus). Account by then Premier`s son of Labor`s double standards and Aboriginal peoples`
resistance to oil exploration on their land near Fitzroy Crossing in the early Eighties.
(Pan
UK, Aus; Vintage US). Minutely detailed epic of the origins of transportation and the brutal
beginnings of white Australia. Dense but accessible.
(Penguin Aus). Less scholarly and more accessible and interesting account than Manning
Clarke's (see above) obligatory text.
(Vintage
UK; Knopf US). Australian-born Pilger challenges Australia's sunny self-image with accounts of
dirty dealings: Aboriginal mistreatment, racist immigration policies, British nuclear
experimentation, Vietnam and the cosy mateship among politicians and industrialists.
(Minerva Aus). Fourth generation Tasmanian's deeply felt account of the near annihilation of
Tasmania's Aboriginal people attempts to reconcile past and future.
(Penguin Aus). Revisionist views of Aboriginal
peoples' history claims that resistance to colonial invasion was considerable and organized.
(UQP US, Aus). Two accounts of
harsh methods used in nineteenth-century Queensland to "disperse" Aboriginal tribes. it suggests
reasons why Aborigines were unable to mount widescale organized resistance.
(NSW University Press US, Aus). Smith painstakingly traces the consequent lives of one ship's
"cargo of women" transported to Sydney; eye-opening and sad.
(Penguin Aus). Stereotypical images of women in Australian society are explored in this
ground-breaking reappraisal of Australian history from a feminist point of view.
(Penguin US, Aus). Richly evocative novel follows an old woman's recollection of her troubled
life as she returns from Britain to her childhood home in Brisbane,
(Penguin Aus). Set in far northern Queensland, traces the history of one rambunctious family from
the 1860s to the 1980s - unlike a conventional saga, each generation is a successive failure.
(Penguin Aus). Satirical story of an Adelaide bouncer's rise to become bodyguard to the Prime
Minister and eventually US celebrities. Wonderful wide-ranging cultural references and
caricatures.
(Pan Aus). Fast and funny adventures of a brawny Queensland hic-turned-bouncer
in Sydney's underworld; it perfectly evokes the Australian idiom.
(UQP
Aus). Powerful novel of the migrant experience from a young woman's point of view, translated
from Italian.
Anything by Booker prize-winning
Carey is a treat but don't neglect his early collection of bizarre short stories The Fat Man in
History (Faber & Faber UK; Vintage US; UQP Aus) or one of his best novels, Bliss
(Faber & Faber UK; Harper & Collins US), a story - between fantasy and reality - of a
Sydney ad executive who drops out to New Age NSW.
(Angus
& Robertson UK, Aus). Tale of a young, blue-eyed Chinese Australian interwoven with that of
his emigrant ancestor; a richly metaphoric tale about a search for identity.
(Unwin
UK). Australia's answer to Raymond Chandler. Corris' hard-boiled novel is set in a glittering yet
seedy Sydney where a soft-centred private eye investigates murder and exploitation in an old
peoples' home.
(Picador Aus). A writer sets out to discover the truth behind Tasmania's final solution.
(Rams
Skull Press Aus). Baffling in places but always entertaining, these are classics of the tall story
genre. His milestone works The Australian Yarn and Fred's Crab have a wider range
of stories and are presented as analyses of Australian yarn-spinning.
(Penguin UK
o/p; US; Aus). Amusing social satire set in the goldfields. An albino Scottish highlander meets his
black counterpart and finds the world of Aboriginal people, like his Celtic society, in conflict with
the materialistic nineteenth century.
(Penguin
Aus). Classic Seventies tale of obsession, love and heroin in inner-city Melbourne.
(Penguin Aus). Loosely based on the life of Bea Miles, the eccentric Sydney bag lady; funny and
tragic, written in Grenville's usual poetic prose.
Novels and short stories by this
WA writer are always original and quirky, playing around with form but never losing their very
black humour; try Woman in a Lampshade (Penguin UK; UQP Aus, short stories set around
Perth, or Miss Peabody's Inheritance, a novel in the form of letters between a writer and
her reader.
(Faber & Faber UK, US). Satirical analysis of power set in the near future. Under fat
President Buchanan, puppet of a huge multinational, the Republic of Australia slips from British
into American hands.
(UQP Aus). First novel of the prolific writer who consistently pushed reality to the edge of
fantasy in her work; it captures the time and place of Adelaide in the 1960s.
(Penguin UK o/p, US). Images of the stars orbiting around and eclipsing each other are like the
complex human relationships central to this story of two Australian sisters who emigrate to London
in the 1950s.
(Virago UK; Bantam US). Modern bedtime stories recounted by the beautiful Charade to her
ageing doctor, moving backwards and forwards through time and space - Boston, Toronto,
Melbourne and a childhood in the rainforest of North Queensland.
(Penguin
Aus). Set in Sydney, a futuristic city where there are no men. For more weird visions try
Woman of the Future or Archimedes and the Seagull.
(Harper & Row Aus). Occasionally hilarious first novel as a thoroughly modern young
woman reflects on the ups and downs of her life after a ten-year affair with a married man is at an
end.
(Penguin UK, US, Aus). Prize-winning novel delves deep into the psyche of
an Aboriginal outlaw, tracing his inexorable descent into murder and crime. Sickening, brutal and
compelling.
(UQP Aus). Collection of short stories with the idiosyncratic characters all sharing a
sense of isolation; poetic slices of life.
(Allen & Unwin Aus). Award-winning first novel by a young writer, set in a
perfectly captured northern New South Wales country town; a love triangle develops into a belated
rite of passage.
(Penguin Aus). Collection of Moorhouse's best short stories.
Considered dense and symbolic -
even visionary - White's novels can be heavy going but try and plough through The Tree of
Man (Penguin UK, US, Aus), Voss, A Fringe of Leaves or The Twyborn
Affair, a contemporary exploration of ambiguous sexuality.
(Picador UK;
Graywolf US; Penguin Aus). Wonderful, faintly magical saga about the mixed fortunes of two
families who end up sharing a house in post-war Perth.
(Angus
& Robertson Aus). A collection of bush stories from the female perspective.
(Currency Press Aus). Story of Captain Starlight, a notorious bushranger and rustler around
the Queensland borders.
(Penguin UK; Harper Collins US; Angus & Robertson Aus). Written in 1870 in
somewhat overblown prose, this romantic tragedy is based on actual events in Tasmania's once
notorious prison settlements.
(Angus & Robertson UK, Aus). Historical novel retells the beginnings of Australia - a
classic favourite.
(Virago UK; Harper Collins US; Angus & Robertson Aus). Novel about a spirited young girl in
turn-of-the- century Victoria who refuses to conform.
(Angus & Robertson Aus). The adventures of two little creatures who live inside gumnuts.
(Angus
& Robertson UK, Aus). Indignant and allegorical saga of the brutal and haphazard settlement of
the land of Capricornia (tropical NT thinly disguised).
(Angus & Robertson UK, Aus). First in a disturbing trilogy recalls the lives of two brothers in
Melbourne's suburbia as their disillusioned parents return from WWII.
(Angus & Robertson Aus). Ballads and poems from one of Australia's best-loved
chroniclers. Superior to "Banjo Paterson" (see below), with whom he is loosely compared.
(Angus & Robertson Aus). Whimsical tale of some very strange men and their grumpy,
flavour-changing and endless pudding.
(Penguin Aus). Gentle account of boyhood and first love in tropical Queensland.
(Angus & Robertson UK, Aus; Harper Collins US). Australia`s most famous bush poet,
author of Waltzing Matilda and The Man from Snowy River, helped romanticize the
bush's mystique.
(Virago UK; Trafalgar US). A girl's experience of a snobby girls' boarding school in
Victoria.
(Virago UK; Harvest US o/p; Penguin Aus). Poor but artistic girl from a large Sydney family
scrounges and saves to head for London and love.
(Penguin Aus). Endearing tale of a young boy growing up in rural WA during WWII.
(Penguin Aus). 130 years of short story writing, from Henry Lawson to Helen
Garner. Ideal interstate bus companion.
(Penguin UK, US, Aus). Brick-sized book with all the best
of Australian women's writing from Elizabeth Macarthur to Germaine Greer.
(Penguin Aus). Poetry has a popular and active appeal down
under. An anthology of this century`s best.
(Wild & Wooley Aus).
Novel by a well-known black activist describes a boy's early life in Queensland, and the tensions of
a racially mixed community.
(Angus
& Robertson Aus). Story about an Aboriginal teen delinquent coming of age in the 1950s. Also,
check out the intriguing Doctor Wooredy's Prescription, for Enduring the Ending of the
World.
(Penguin Aus).
Autobiography of a black woman's courage and humour in the face of tragedy and poverty suggests
battling stoicism is a continental rather than colonial trait.
(Virago UK;
Arcade US; Fremantle Arts Press Aus). Widely acclaimed account of a woman`s discovery of her
black roots.
(UQP
Aus). Story of an Aboriginal family on the edge of town and society.
(Pascoe Aus). Tales of women's lives from the central deserts.
(Fremantle Arts
Press Aus). Stories from the West Kimberley.
(UQP Aus).
Accessible introduction to Aboriginal writing, from legends to modern poetry and prose.
(Jacaranda
Wiley Aus). Collection of verse by an established campaigning poet.
(Penguin US, Aus). Brutal, fast-paced thriller; a modern parable of warring good and evil
mixed with ancient sorcery.
(Five Mile Press Aus). The Bible for outback driving and camping, full of sensible
precautions and handy tips for preparation and repair.
(Angus & Robertson UK, Aus). Excellent photographic record but far
too heavy to cart around. Key Guide to Australian Mammals (Reed Aus) offers a more
portable selection of colour illustrations.
(Thames and Hudson UK, US). Excellent illustrated paperback introduction to all styles of
Aboriginal art.
(UQP Aus). Indispensable and lavish guide to Australia's most famous landforms
and sites. Her Archeology of the Dreamtime (Collins) provides background and evidence on
the development of Aboriginal society.
(David &
Charles UK, Readers Digest Aus). Complete rundown on the Reef, lucid and lavishly illustrated.
Available in coffee-table format and a slighter, edited edition.
(Cordee UK; Mountaineer Books US). Detailed illustrated guide focuses on a
region in each state/territory with gradient profiles and maps plus sections on packing and
maintenance.
(Faber & Faber UK, US). Good introduction to Australian wines and wine makers.
(Weldon Aus). Pocket-sized and easiest to use of the many available guides to Australian birds.
(Angus & Robertson UK, Aus; Harper Collins US). Comprehensive guide to riding the best
of Australia's waves .
(Reed Aus). Classic work on the evolution of Australia's flora and geography.