Dear Reader, September 2018
In the month that we reveal the brilliantly eclectic shortlist for this year’s Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, it is entirely appropriate that the 2015 recipient of that same prize should be publishing a new novel. Indeed, there could be no better Fiction Book of the Month than Man Out of Time, the new work from Stephanie Bishop. Bishop is a superb writer – one of our best. Bishop has also given us a beautiful glimpse into her craft in a Q&A published on our website which I recommend to you too; quite honestly, I will read absolutely anything she writes.
Plenty of our staff have been anxious to read Sally Rooney’s Normal People, and it has gone down very well. In fact, for a while there it felt like a ‘who loved it more’ competition amongst readers of the advance proofs! I agree: it is great. I also couldn’t get enough of Pretend I’m Dead: believe me, you haven’t read anything like this before. Our reviewers should also convince you entirely of the need to read the new work from Pat Barker, Patrick deWitt, Krissy Kneen, Katherine Collette, Patrick Gale, Andrew Miller and Roberto Saviano.
Also out this month are local notable novels from Greg Fleet, Janet Lee and John Tesarsch; a great-sounding novel from Canadian Claudia Dey, Heartbreaker (recommended by Sheila Heti, Miriam Toews, Lauren Groff and Leslie Feist!); a US debut causing a big stir in the review pages overseas, The Incendiaries, by R.O. Kwon; the satirical Severance by Ming La; John Boyne’s latest, A Ladder to the Sky; the illustrated fable, Sea Prayer, by Khaled Hosseini; and the long-awaited final instalment of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series, called, fittingly, The End. Look out, too, in the middle of the month for major releases from Kate Atkinson, Liane Moriarty, and Sebastian Faulks (you’ll be able to find reviews in our October edition of the Readings Monthly).
With his two bestselling books, Sapiens and Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari has emerged as a public intellectual for our century. His essential new book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, is our Non-fiction Book of the Month. Meanwhile, Patrick Nunn’s The Edge of Memory is another important contribution exploring the authority and complexity of Indigenous knowledges.
This month you can also read about bees (The Honey Factory), living queer (Queerstories), Australia’s housing crisis (No Place Like Home), the West Melbourne swamp (Blue Lake), the increasing urbanisation of Australia (City Life), the connections between astrophysics and the military (Accessory to War), plus memoirs from Percy Rogers, Bill Cunningham, Robin Green, Osher Günsberg, David Attenborough, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Robyn Williams, and Fiona Patten. And if that’s not enough, make way for a brand new book from our favourite celebrity chef, Yotam Ottolenghi: Ottolenghi SIMPLE is out on 6 September.
And finally, dear reader, congratulations to our crime columnist and long-time staffer, Fiona Hardy, who will publish her middle fiction debut with Affirm Press next year; AND to even-longer-time staffer, Sean O’Beirne, whose debut short-story collection will be published by Black Inc. Such great news, you two!
