Cirrus@Austlit

'The December issue has arrived and rounds out the year in customary style: a stockingful of reviews, essays, interviews, and our annual ‘Books of the Year’ feature, in which thirty-eight ABR critics highlight their year’s most memorable reads. Paul Muldoon reviews Bruno Latour’s eco-philosophical fable, After Lockdown. While Latour takes inspiration from the termite, Krissy Kneen considers the ways of the dugong in her Calibre Prize-shortlisted essay, a poignant exploration of identity, bodies, and death. In politics, Morag Fraser reviews Judith Brett’s collection of essays and Frank Bongiorno reflects on Noel Pearson’s life in the public eye. The issue looks at fiction by Simone de Beauvoir, the Booker-shortlisted Anuk Arudpragasam, Garry Disher, and Inga Simpson. The literary careers of Gillian Mears and Gerald Murnane are retraced by Brenda Walker and Peter Craven, respectively. Traipsing from Dante’s inferno to China to Western Sydney, the December issue will keep even the most intellectually gluttonous reader sated through the festive season.'   (Publication summary)

'A stunning new collection from one of Australia's finest poets - her most impressive work yet.

'With electrifying boldness and fearlessness of vision, Sarah Holland-Batt confronts what it means to be mortal in an astonishing and deeply humane portrait of a father's Parkinson's Disease, and a daughter forged by grief.

'Opening and closing with startling elegies set in the charged moments before and after a death, and compulsively probing the body's animal endurance and appetites, along with the metamorphoses of long illness, The Jaguar is marked by Holland-Batt's distinctive lyric intensity and linguistic mastery, along with a stark new clarity of voice.

'In this collection Holland-Batt is at her most exacting and uncompromising- these ferociously intelligent, insistent poems refuse to look away, and challenge us to view ruthless witness as a form of love. The Jaguar is a devastating and mesmerising collection by a poet at the height of her powers.' (Publication summary)