The Australian Face single work   review  
Issue Details: First known date: 2013... 2013 The Australian Face
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Ten years ago, David Marr stirred the pot with his Colin Simpson Lecture by claiming that ‘few Australian novels … address in worldly, adult ways the country and the time in which we live.’ As Sophie Cunningham among others pointed out at the time, plenty of Australian writers had, in fact, been doing this throughout the 1990s. But Marr’s speech expressed a specific view of what writing about contemporary Australia should be like. He wanted a literature of the mainstream – of ordinary life in Australia’s suburbs. The kinds of novels Cunningham and others had been publishing were about daily life in Australia, but they were about sex and poverty, unemployment and drug use. Christos Tsiolkas’ first novel, Loaded(1995), was among them. Ever since, Tsiolkas has been raising questions about what the Australian mainstream is, or might look like.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

First known date: 2013
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Sydney Review of Books November 2013 7000160 2013 periodical issue 2013
    Note: 29/11/2013
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Australian Face : Essays from the Sydney Review of Books James Ley (editor), Catriona Menzies-Pike (editor), Artarmon : Sydney Review of Books Giramondo Publishing , 2017 12141177 2017 anthology essay

    'The Sydney Review of Books is Australia’s leading space for longform literary criticism. Now celebrating five years online, the SRB has published more than five hundred essays by almost two hundred writers. To mark this occasion, The Australian Face collects some of the best essays published in the SRB on Australian fiction, poetry and non-fiction. The essays in this anthology are contributions to the ongoing argument about the condition and purpose and evolving shape of Australian literature. They reflect the ways in which discussions about the state of the literary culture are constantly reaching beyond themselves to consider wider cultural and political issues.

    'The Sydney Review of Books was established in 2013 out of frustration at the diminishing public space for Australian criticism on literature. There’s even less space for literature in our newspapers and broadcast media now. The Sydney Review of Books, however, is thriving, as the essays in The Australian Face show. Here, you’ll read essays on well-known figures such as Christos Tsiolkas, Alexis Wright, Michelle de Kretser and Helen Garner, alongside considerations of the work of writers who less frequently receive mainstream attention, such as Lesbia Harford and Moya Costello.' (Publication summary)

    Artarmon : Sydney Review of Books Giramondo Publishing , 2017
    pg. 48-56
Last amended 30 May 2019 07:11:10
http://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/the-australian-face/ The Australian Facesmall AustLit logo Sydney Review of Books
48-56 The Australian Facesmall AustLit logo
Review of:
  • Barracuda Christos Tsiolkas 2013 single work novel
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X