Cirrus@Austlit

'Holden Sheppard’s Invisible Boys — lately in the news for its TV adaptation on Stan — is an imperfect but extremely entertaining novel that deserves its success. I argue that it is a canonically important work of Australian gay literature, a monument of eroticised and anxious masculinity belonging to a legacy including titles such as Christos Tsiolkas’ Loaded and Barracuda, or Tim Winton’s Breath. I also argue it impeccably instantiates some important gay sexual archetypes, with one major omission.'  (Introduction)

'The genesis of Anam came just over twenty years ago, when I was fifteen and stumbled across an Amnesty International newsletter with a photo of my grandfather on the cover. Reading that newsletter, I discovered that Amnesty had adopted my grandfather, Dao Van, as a prisoner of conscience. At the time of the newsletter, my grandfather had been in prison without charge or trial for four years. It was another six years before he was released.'  (Introduction)