'It has only been a matter of months since the summer bushfires that savaged Australia’s east coast came to an end and a new crisis of untamed proportions emerged with COVID-19. Back to back, these events set an agenda of survival, upping the ante on human abilities to adapt to new social and environmental relationships, exposing fallibility in the scrabble for effective responses. This biological agent brings with it an unmitigated sense of doom that quickly finds the limits of language. Politicians resort to military metaphors of war and defence; the word ‘pandemic’ bears the weight of centuries before unravelling its new histories; social media conversations mutate in threads of remote companionship and shared convalescence as the silences of grief and mourning slowly spread throughout our systems.' (Introduction)
'Over the years I’ve amassed many books by writers from Vietnam as well as the Việt Kiều diaspora – but I can’t claim these tomes spark joy. I can’t bear to get rid of them yet can’t bear the thought of reading most of them either. The Boat by Nam Le, for example, is one such albatross. When it was first published, and in the years after, I was often asked if I’d read it. My ready response was usually along the lines of no, but I own a copy. Whenever I’ve contemplated cracking the book open I recall it includes a short story called ‘Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice’, which sounds far too much like a word association exercise in intergenerational trauma.' (Introduction)
'The year 1599 was Shakespeare’s annus mirabilis – a year in which, after a relatively barren period, he wrote four masterpieces: Julius Caesar, Henry V, As You Like It, and Hamlet, spanning the First Folio’s three genres of history, comedy and tragedy. The achievement of this period was crowned with the Bard’s longest and most enigmatic play, Hamlet. For me, Hamlet is Shakespeare’s great open poem – the play more than any other that points to the generative power of language. I think of Shakespeare (always writing by candlelight in a small room above the front bar of a London pub) in love with writing, amazed by what he was writing, unable to keep the profusion of his verse within the tidy lines of a plot.' (Introduction)
'Since the publication of my novel The Making of Martin Sparrow in 2018 I have often been asked the question ‘What made you turn to fiction?’ This has turned out, usually, to be a question with a sub-text: ‘What made you, a long-time historian, cross over to the other side?’ But whatever form the question takes, my answer is always the same: ‘That’s easy,’ I say, ‘you get to make things up.’' (Introduction)
