Cirrus@Austlit

'The Sydney Cove has the mixed distinction of being among the first ships wrecked on Australia’s east coast; it was on its way from Calcutta to Port Jackson in 1797 when it wrecked on an island – now called Preservation Island – in Bass Strait. Seventeen men survived and set off in the ship’s longboat to Port Jackson, on the way to which they wrecked again, this time on the mainland, leaving them few choices but to walk the 600-plus kilometres to Sydney from Ninety Mile Beach. Three survivors – a British merchant, a Scottish merchant and one Indian lascar – made it to Sydney, where, in this fourth novel by Jock Serong, those able to communicate are interrogated by Lieutenant Joshua Grayling, who is tasked with solving the many mysteries their bodies bear. One of them has a broken nose. Another has been speared through both hands.' (Introduction)

'The author of this first novel is a young playwright from Brisbane by way of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The narrator, Isa Alaki, is a young prize-fighter who’s ended up in Brisbane by way of the same place, but there the biographies diverge.' (Introduction)

'The UTS Writers’ Anthology sits on an interesting precipice, one no less interesting because it sits there with such grace and style. On the one hand, it’s the outcome of a learning and teaching project; the yearly editorial committee is composed of UTS students, who spend six months building the anthology from submissions from student writers. On the other hand, it’s published by Xoum, a commercial publisher, now trading as Brio. Hence it puts a learning and teaching product in a commercial space.' (Introduction)

'This memoir is named for the legal premise that “a victim must be accepted for who they are individually, regardless of where their strengths and weaknesses place them on a spectrum of human normality. If you strike a person whose skull happens to be as thin as an eggshell, and they break their head open and die, you can’t claim that they were not a ‘regular’ person. Full criminal liability – and responsibility – cannot be avoided because a victim is ‘weak’.”'  (Introduction)

'This short book, the third in Black Inc’s “Writers on Writers” series, sees Christos Tsiolkas reviving his love of Patrick White. Tsiolkas acknowledges David Marr’s thorough and acclaimed White biography early on – here he’s writing something between a personal–professional appreciation and a critical study.' (Introduction)

'A friend and I recently argued about Only the Animals by Ceridwen Dovey. A collection of stories about the souls of 10 animals caught up in wars of the 20th century, each of the animals also bears a relationship to a famous literary figure, such as Kerouac or Tolstoy, and often the animal has a proclivity for mimicking the author’s voice. I argued that the strength of the book was that anyone could have thought of it, but only Ceridwen Dovey could have pulled it off so well. My friend argued not only that she pulled it off so beautifully, but that it’s a miracle anyone came up with the idea at all.' (Introduction)

'Bottled is the right word for this graphic novel by Chris Gooch, a young and accomplished member of a talented field of comics-makers coming out of Melbourne and debuting on the international stage. You don’t know what kind of book this is until quite a long way in, beyond its intimations of malaise and disaster, but it’s clear from the outset that it’s fizzing with dark juice – you feel like someone’s thrown it at you.' (Introduction)

'If it’s possible to write richly about a very bleak place, Jeremy Chambers has done it in this book about the Australian suburb, a place “not really known for anything: people lived here, but that was all”. Suburbia, Chambers’ second novel after the much-praised The Vintage and the Gleaning, adds another voice to a welcome wave of Australian fiction that re-evaluates family life at the end of the 20th century, a time just close enough to make readers feel rather uncomfortable without quite causing us to look away.' (Introduction)