'Bruce Beresford’s Ladies in Black is not just a homage to classical filmmaking and 1950s Sydney, it is also a window into the cultural richness brought by post-World War II refugees. If only it had pushed darker themes further.' (Introduction)
'Of all the titles in Black Inc’s Writers on Writers series, Ceridwen Dovey’s essay on J. M. Coetzee arrives with the most intellectual excitement, as well as the greatest anticipatory unease. This is because Coetzee – two-time winner of the Booker Prize, recipient of the Nobel, the most august literary figure to hold an Australian passport since the death of Patrick White – is also notoriously cool, aloof and reticent about the meaning and nature of his work. How to connect with such a man?' (Introduction)
'Kristina Olsson’s novel about the construction of the Sydney Opera House is an appropriate book to launch Scribner Australia, a new imprint of Simon & Schuster. The book is gorgeously designed, with elegant endpapers, a gleaming dust jacket and stylish layout: a declaration that serious literary fiction is worth being serious about. And it’s appropriate because Olsson’s novel – whatever its flaws – is eloquent about bringing new complex things into the world and about how grand aesthetic enterprises can sometimes catalyse broader change, inspiring great dreams and heightened sophistications.' (Introduction)
