Cirrus@Austlit

'By “The Other Literature of Australia” I mean the writing by and about migrants in Australia as distinct from that which is more generally thought of as distinctively Australian, and that we have in recent years come to call multicultural. To put the subject in context, I will begin by giving you some idea of the changes in Australia’s population and attitudes to migrants since the country’s settlement just over 200 years ago; I will go on to deal with the efforts of the country’s early writers to develop a distinctive Australian literature and the effects of this on migrant writing; I will refer to the recent more visible emergence of migrant writers; and I will elaborate a little on the theme of the migrant being in a sense an exile in Australia, a theme which I will illustrate by quoting from my own writing.'  (Publication abstract)

'A portrait-painter discovers a terrifying side-effect of his talent. A professor of medicine finds himself romantically involved with a dying patient. The lives of two young people are changed forever by a performance of the Mozart Requiem. A self-styled Messiah tries desperately to persuade a writer that he alone can avert a catastrophe about to engulf the city.

'Liberman’s sinewy, intensely evocative and poignant style, unique in Australian letters, takes us deep into particular lives but always with reference to universal issues of fate, free will, and the moral landscapes of good and evil. His post-Holocaust humanism is passionately committed to the power of storytelling, and enters with special power art’s plea for love, compassion, inner freedom, and redemption.

'This collection of some of Liberman’s finest and most characteristic stories draws upon all six of his published volumes of short fiction. It is offered not only as a summation and a tribute, but as a valuable contribution to the diverse field of Australian multicultural writing.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This novella and series of short stories explore the question of what it means to confront life in all its manifestations, to suffer and be human. As a physician and surgeon, Dr Raphael Bloom, encounters a fascinating and complex range of patients who come to him, not only to be healed physically but to grapple with existential problems of memory, disappointment and hope.' (Publication summary)