Cirrus@Austlit

'In 1953 when Pierre Ryckmans, better known to the literary world under his pen name Simon Leys, was 18, he crewed for a time on a fishing trawler in Icelandic waters. Soon afterwards he undertook a solo trip by foot through remote villages in the Congo. Between university studies in art history, philosophy and law in Belgium, he travelled to China and met Zhou Enlai, first premier of the People’s Republic of China.' (Introduction)

'This week’s Christmas stocking filler is Andrew Thompson’s Hair of the Dog to Paint the Town Red (Ulysses Press, 265pp, $19.99). Thompson is an Australian writer who specialises in books that ask questions we may not have thought of, such as What Did We Use Before Toilet Paper? His new one considers the origins of 400 everyday phrases. The first one in the title is a good example, for me. Now, I did know the meaning of “hair of the dog” — from long experience — but I wouldn’t have bet on knowing how the expression started. Ditto for why someone is a fit as a fiddle, or why someone unfit needs to be licked into shape. And why on earth is a bald man a badger? They are hirsute beasts! This is a fun book.' (Introduction)

'Venero Armanno writes with empathy about boys growing up, youths in love, adult men in extended families and lone male sojourners.' (Introduction)

'In some circles, Beverley Farmer is a grand dame of Australian letters. Those who love her cherish her molten narratives, her liquid prose. In her long career she has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, won a NSW Premier’s Award, wrote a collection of essays, three collections of short fiction and three novels, but she remains largely unknown by the mainstream reading public.' (Introduction)

'There is every reason to think Arthur Conan Doyle’s work will last forever. If it is the destiny of the popular writer to speak to the spirit of his age (by telling it diverting yarns that never were on land nor sea), then the stories of supersleuth Sherlock Holmes and his companion and chronicler Dr Watson will continue to mesmerise the mind.' (Introduction)

'Last year Jimmy Barnes published Working Class Boy, the opening instalment of a memoir that proved too long, and too thorny, to be contained in a single volume. That first book, which broke off just as Barnes was joining a nascent Adelaide band called Cold Chisel, was astonishing in several ways. It told the story of a childhood that seemed to have been ripped from the most baroquely grim Dickens novel and transplanted to the suburbs of 1960s Australia. And it found a starkly effective language in which to tell that story: a stripped-back prose, full of jagged stops and starts.' (Introduction)