Cirrus@Austlit

'David Young is a divorced Vietnam veteran, an artist and a gardener. He is trying to come to terms with the trauma of war through his painting. With every brush-stroke he seeks to transform the moments of brutality, the memories of violence that plague his nights and haunt his days. At the same time, he is trying to manage a fractious relationship with his feisty sixteen-year-old daughter, Josie. When a single mum and her son move into the flat next door, further complications enter David’s life. As he tries to find a way forward, Josie enters a downward spiral. David believes his trauma is somehow becoming hers. When his daughter’s life threatens to spin out of control, he must do everything he can to save her …

'A Winter Sowing is a moving exploration of the unspeakable and a compelling story of one man’s quest for redemption through art and love.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'When Alkira Buti was born in 1993 her parents knew little about cri du chat syndrome other than it was a chromosomal abnormality that would render their daughter ‘disabled’. As they searched to understand more about the syndrome and the likely future for their daughter, they learned more about the social treatment of, and attitudes towards, children with disabilities.

'In Alkira, Antonio Buti tells the story of his daughter’s struggle to reach developmental milestones and ‘fit in’; with care and compassion he describes what makes Alkira so unique. It is a story of resilience, determination, heartache and triumph for Alkira and her parents. It is also a love story between mother and daughter, and father and daughter.

'Alkira combines memoir and intellectual inquiry to debate those who query the value of a life lived with disabilities. This book challenges all of us to rethink how we approach disability to move toward a more just and inclusive society for all.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'In both law and literature, Nicholas Hasluck has been a player and a commentator. In this fascinating memoir he uses diaries of his time as a Judge and as Chair of the Literature Board to explore intriguing issues at the start of the new century, from culture wars in Australia to al-Qaeda’s terrorist attack in New York.

'He turns an astute gaze on battles in the courts and everyday struggles and delusions. He watches self-styled intellectual leaders nail their colours to the mast with an air of heroic virtue, though nearly everyone in the room agrees with them.

'In times when history is often misinterpreted, how can we pass on what has been learnt? How can Australians come together to build a better future, rather than denigrating our institutions and shared past? His views are those of a writer with a principled mind and a ready sense of humour.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'COVID-19 has fractured society and dislocated lives, forcing us to work differently, question ingrained assumptions, and appreciate relationships precisely because we’ve been masked and socially distanced. In his new book of poems, Tom Petsinis focuses on the day-to-day experiences of lockdown and isolation to produce a collection of vivid snapshots that draw on memory, home, religion, mathematics, football and funerals. He has crafted poems that are sometimes whimsical, often elegiac, but always immediate and palpable, expressed in a language that speaks to all.

'One of the more disturbing effects of COVID-19’s prolonged lockdown has been the sense of becoming a stranger to one’s own life. The poems in Tom Petsinis’ Isolation overcome this feeling of estrangement by offering, with consoling precision, a rich (sometimes deeply moving and sometimes very funny) collection of observations of this new life of ours – from the new meaning of work, to face masks crafted by a mother/maker, to the poem ‘Wars’ in which the poet’s parents found ‘solace through closeness’ when their country was invaded, while the present invader distances us from family and friends.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Stories from the life journey of one of Australia’s leading artists in ceramics, beginning in a small isolated town in the Snowy Mountains. At university an unexpected inspiration leads to a PhD, followed by travel and adventure; from driving trucks, and flying gliders, to the Smithsonian in Washington, onwards to the deserts and high mountains of Pakistan and immersion in politics, archaeology, and assassination in Israel.

'The emotional ups and downs of teaching in art schools, insights into the practice of the art of ceramics, and the subtleties of isolated rural living complete the storytelling.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'In his long career in the Royal Australian Navy, Guy Griffiths participated in its emergence from Depression-era stricture, pre-World War II, to its reinvention in the 1950s and 60s as a capable middle-power force centred on aircraft carriers in the missile age. In this time, he personally experienced the RAN’s darkest days in the face of the Japanese onslaught and its fi nest hour in the Philippines Campaign of World War II, and its close involvements in the Korean War and then the Vietnam War. He witnessed the realities of war in positions of increasing responsibility.'

'Guy Griffiths: The Life & Times of an Australian Admiral is the authorised biography of Rear Admiral Guy Griffiths AO, DSO, DSC, RAN.

‘From country boy to gold-braided admiral, Guy Griffiths has led a richly-textured life of service to the navy and the nation. As a teenage midshipman he survived the disastrous sinking of the battlecruiser HMS Repulse off Malaya in 1941 and went on to fight at sea with distinction in another two wars: Korea and Vietnam. It is an unmatched record of courage, dedication and achievement. This is the enthralling biography of a remarkable sailor and a genuinely great Australian.’—Mike Carlton AM, bestselling author of Flagship & First Victory

Source : publisher's blurb

'A young woman goes missing…
'On the threshold of World War II, a young woman from a titled family in the south of England disappears, seemingly without trace.

'An unexpected inheritance…
'In 2016 on the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia, Maddison Browne is a romantic fiction writer who is lucked out in love and scared that her best days as an author are over. When she learns that she is to inherit an antique piano from a woman she’s never heard of, she wonders why and is driven to find out.

'A family secret…
'In England, Maddison unearths a century-old secret that leads her to a family she never knew she had and an entanglement in affairs of state. And she meets someone who might turn her life around.

'The Piano Woman highlights the fragility of family, the price of love, and the importance of traditions that can sometimes save us from ourselves.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Dante Alighieri returns for the year 2000 and meets an Australian journalist in Rome. Initially sceptical, the journalist is gradually convinced that it is really Dante on a year’s leave from the afterlife …'

Source : publication summary

'“To control information is to control everything.”—Gorilla Industries

'Welcome to the future – one that may already be here! A world of slave-like employment, profit over people and consumption at all cost – where technology rules, advertising covers the sky and individual freedom has been handed over to the corporations. A world where the economy is God, community is dead and information has infested every aspect of life from virtual dreams to the non-stop 24-hour (fake) news cycle.

'Meet Johnson, an Information Editor at Gorilla Industries – one of the Trade Bloc’s main media companies – who works unquestioningly for a system that keeps him down. Things begin to change when he hears the rebellious words of a masked reactionary known only as the Renegade. But how far will Johnson be willing to go to alter his life? And what risks will he take to uncover the truth behind everything?

'The Information Editor is the first in a duology consisting of two contrasting visions of the future. This dystopian novel, set in a world of information control, rampant surveillance and unregulated capitalism will be followed shortly by a utopian vision called The Story Teller.'

Source: publication summary

'PLACE: Parramatta Female Factory.
YEAR: 1827.
OCCASION: a riot.

'Newly appointed Matron Ann Gordon interviews the ringleaders, notably one Molly Malone, according to Reverend Marsden a violent criminal. She discovers that Molly, like herself, has left an illegitimate daughter behind; but there’s no time for that now. She has order to restore, and restore in time for the Factory’s Market Day, when single men come looking for a wife. Meanwhile, Molly does time in solitary confinement. No sooner is she released than Ginger Em, the young London housebreaker she has befriended, begs for help escaping…

'Nine years later, the Factory has become known as Gordonsville. Yet Ann Gordon has been dismissed. Time to leave Parramatta. Standing outside the Factory walls, she remembers the women she helped and the woman she couldn’t: Molly Malone. And whatever happened to Ginger Em?' (Publication summary)

'Larundel Psychiatric Hospital was ‘the madhouse on the edge of town’ – until the 1990s, a Melbourne cultural icon shrouded in mystery in the outer suburb of Bundoora.

'What was it really like inside this madhouse? 

'This story takes us into the heart of Larundel through the voices of former inmates and staff, exposing the best and worst aspects of the mental institutions of the times.  It shows the shifts in psychiatric treatments, the social forces at play, and changes driving mental health policy.  It explores what de-institutionalisation and ‘care in the community’ actually meant for those suffering mental illness, as well as for those treating, and caring for them.

'What did we lose with Larundel’s closure in 1999 and the move to acute psychiatric wards in general hospitals? The notion of asylum? Is the more recent notion of ‘recovery’ a hopeful signpost towards a brave new world for mental health? 

'The authors are Sandy Jeffs, a former inmate of Larundel, who became an advocate for her ‘mad’ comrades and is now a poet of distinction; and Margaret Leggatt, sociologist, occupational therapist and activist for the friends and families of mentally ill people. 

'‘A significant and lively contribution to the history of mental health services in Australia, offering vital insights for the progress we must work for.’  – Jack Heath, CEO, SANE Australia'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'As a British soldier who fought against Napoleon, William Buckley served capably and truly but a drunken escapade led to his transportation to a short-lived settlement in Australia, and once there to his daring escape from custody and thirty years of isolation among the First People of the region, who saved and sheltered him.

'Known to his saviours as ‘Murrangurk’, Buckley learnt their language and forgot his own. He lived as they did and would later record invaluably his understanding of their customs and traditions.

'When eventually Europeans returned and conflict between them and the First People flared, Buckley was at the heart of the tumult. He tried to mediate and courageously stopped three massacres, but soon found himself disregarded by the antagonists and dangerously compromised.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Lieutenant John Rosel won a Military Cross for displaying ‘calmness and outstanding leadership’ when his platoon became surrounded at a critical point in the siege of Tobruk. He led the defence of several vital outposts against numerous attacks by the troops of General Rommel. His son Mike has written not only a touching tribute to his father’s war service but also a perceptive and stylish account of the soldiering experience of a generation. 

'A Rat of Tobruk has many fascinating photographs – mainly taken by John Rosel – and is recommended to anyone interested in the Australian soldiers who risked all while making a substantial contribution to Allied victory in World War II.

'– Dr Mark Johnston, historian, and author of 11 books on Australians’ service in WWII'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'“Barry Hill is a remarkable presence in Australian writing … I think of David Malouf, Judith Wright, and Les Murray as companion voices, for they too are writers of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, and brilliant essayists steeped in European literature who are profoundly interested in Aboriginality …
[He is] a confident Australianist whose writing life has moved decisively towards Asia and the universal in recent years.”
Tom Griffiths
Introduction, Reason and Lovelessness:
Essays, Encounters, Reviews, 1980–2018'

'Since 1990, with Penguin’s publication of Raft, Barry Hill has been acclaimed for his poetry. His Ghosting William Buckley (Heinemann 1993), which won his first Premier’s Award, was described by Overland’s Barrett Reid as a ‘major work’. David Malouf wrote that The Inland Sea (Penguin 2001) was ‘a mixture of intense contemplation and powerful eroticism’. Necessity: Poems 1996–2006 won the ACT Judith Wright Award. Lines for Birds (2011), a collaboration with the artist John Wolseley, was commended for the Prime Minister’s Prize, and described by Nathaniel Tarn as ‘a miraculous gift of a book’. His Naked Clay: Drawing from Lucian Freud (2012), which John Kinsella described as ‘a masterpiece’, was short-listed for the 2013 UK Forward Prize, and prompted Sebastian Smee to declare him ‘a superb poet’ … His Selected Poems was published last year. Kind Fire is his eleventh collection.

'Beloved Historian at Home
For the late Hugh Stretton and Patsy Stretton
He cannot remember a line of his great works
or my name, but most days he locates his toothbrush.
And he can, still, turn to his wife
who finds him there in his well of love.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Set in Fitzroy and spanning the turbulent 1960s, Fitzroy Raw lays bare the experiences of an immigrant boy from the age of six to sixteen. Arriving in Australia from Macedonia, young Nick Mangos finds himself in a complex and challenging world. He must accept a ‘stranger’ as his father, negotiate old customs and hostilities, learn a third language, and come to terms with the realities of his working-class environment.

'Each new formative experience – a dramatic wedding at the Fitzroy Town Hall, the discovery of body parts in the Edinburgh Gardens, an afternoon watching a football game at the Brunswick Street Oval, a life-changing visit to the Fitzroy Library – is registered with freshness and clarity.

'The novel is also a ‘hallowing’ of Fitzroy, as one familiar location after another is given a name, a cast of real and unforgettable characters, and a chain of significant cultural and emotional associations.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Leonie Ryder holds Doctorates in Aviation Psychology and in Food History and is an experienced artist. After many years working with the Royal Australian Air Force, she pursued her long-term interest in gastronomy and wrote Ginger in Australian Food and Medicine before turning to the history of her family and writing My Name Should Be Melano: The Story of My Parish, Burge, Rider and Melano Ancestors. Now she tells her own story.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'But he was lying there beside her, waiting for her answer. A stranger. They were strangers. She turned slowly away from him, towards the window. And against the bright blue sky, she saw the storks flying away in formation, an arrow in the sky. They’d started their long journey at last, back to their other home. They’d dared to dream again. And roam the skies for something they’d loved and lost, perhaps.

'‘Perhaps,’ she said turning back.

'In poetic vignettes set against the fascinating exotics of Australia and France, Chandani Lokugé weaves a haunting and meditative story on the spectral gains and losses of travel, the nature of its transience. Through it, she dignifies with grace and tenderness, our unassuageable yearning, when we have lost everything and even ourselves, to anchor to something, someone, somewhere, and the unexpected moment of our arrival.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'‘I see traces in my past that point to what the world has now become.’

'Like many young Australians in the 1960s Nick Hasluck set sail for London, in his case for a post-graduate law degree, but looking also for new horizons and ways to be a writer. From a seedy room at the International Language Club he explored the ‘Kangaroo Valley’ party scene around Earl’s Court – until he met a girl from the Cotswolds who was to change his life, a romance leading to misadventures in Europe and eventually to a job in Fleet Street.

'Britain was opening up to him in unexpected ways. He recalls combative speakers at the Oxford Union – Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Tariq Ali – and luminaries in other places such as Menzies, Profumo, Field Marshal Slim and the controversial jurists, Hailsham and Denning. Along the way, Hasluck writes skilfully of becoming a lawyer, then a Judge, and also a well-known novelist.

'In this eloquent memoir the mind of the lawyer is constantly enriched by the style of the writer. To a lively storyteller the world beyond the equator is still the miracle it always was.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In this collection acclaimed author, playwright, screenwriter Louis Nowra shows his breathtaking range that takes us from Venice to Lord Howe Island, from the chaos of contemporary Moscow to Sydney high society, from Edwardian London to a mysterious island full of beauty and terror in Far North Queensland. In these highly imaginative stories and novellas, odd balls, society matrons, prime ministers, obsessives, drunks, the vengeful, the innocents and other vivid characters feature in stories that are disturbing, moving and comic. This extraordinary collection is a testament to Nowra’s unique and unsettling vision.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.