Cirrus@Austlit

'This issue includes the winning essay in the Calibre Essay Prize. Scott Stephens considers clerical narcissism and brutality, and Patrick Mullins reviews a new profile of Peter Dutton, that former copper with a ‘suspicious instinct’. In her review of James Bradley’s Deep Water, Felicity Plunkett asks why we turn away from disaster’s proximity, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth explores an ‘inflexion point in Indigenous letters’, ex-ambassador Geoff Raby ponders ‘Chairman of everything’ Xi Jinping, and Alice Whitmore reviews the new-old Gabriel García Márquez. Essays from Heather Neilson and Maggie Nolan look at Gore Vidal’s posthumous life and the expansion of Australia’s storytelling database, AustLit. We review novels by Charmian Clift, Melanie Joosten, Liam Pieper, Siang Lu; poetry by David Brooks and Omar Sakr; film, music, memoir and more.' (Publication summary)