Read along with the 2016 Sydney Writers' Festival
The Sydney Writer’s Festival kicked off last night and once again, the program features an amazing list of artists. To celebrate their international line-up, here’s a list of ten books to read to help you get into the festival spirit.
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Set across three decades, A Brief History of Seven Killings explores the turbulent world of Jamaican gangs and politics. James combines brilliant storytelling with his unrivaled skills of characterization and meticulous eye for detail to forge a novel of dazzling ambition and scope. This novel was the winner of last year’s Man Booker Prize.
Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch (translated by Sam Garrett)
When a medical procedure goes horribly wrong and famous actor Ralph Meier winds up dead, Doctor Marc Schlosser needs to come up with some answers. After all, reputation is everything in this business. Featuring the razor-sharp humour and acute psychological insight that made The Dinner an international phenomenon, Summer House with Swimming Pool is a controversial, thought-provoking novel that showcases Herman Koch at his finest.
The Bricks that Built the Houses by Kate Tempest
Young Londoners Becky, Harry and Leon are leaving town in a fourth-hand Ford Cortina with a suitcase full of money. They are running from jealous boyfriends, dead-end jobs, violent maniacs and disgruntled drug dealers, in the hope of escaping the restless tedium of life in south-east London – the place they have always called home. As the story moves back in time, to before they had to leave, we see them torn between confidence and self-loathing, between loneliness and desire, between desperate ambition and the terrifying prospect of getting nothing done.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There’s Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realise, is Jude himself.
Purity by Jonathan Franzen
Young Pip Tyler doesn’t know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she’s saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she’s squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother – her only family – is hazardous. But she doesn’t have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she’ll ever have a normal life. Then, a glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with The Sunlight Project, an organization that traffics in all the secrets of the world.
My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem
In this memoir, Gloria Steinem – social activist, writer, lecturer, itinerant feminist organiser and transformational leader – shares her reflections and stories from a life on the road. Along the way, she offers portraits of other amazing women and collaborators she has met while criss-crossing America.
The Gap of Time: The Winter’s Tale Retold by Jeanette Winterson
Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale tells the story of a king whose jealousy results in the banishment of his baby daughter and the death of his beautiful wife. Later, they are reunited through a series of extraordinary events. In The Gap of Time, the astonishing Jeanette Winterson reimagines this same story – now set in a London post the 2008 financial crisis, and a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
When Rachel sees something shocking out the window on her daily commute, she’s unable to keep it to herself and goes straight to the police. But Rachel’s not the most reliable witness. She’s an alcoholic, prone to blackouts and ill-advised phone calls, and just the other night, she woke up with blood on her hands… The Girl on the Train was the break-out crime read of last year, and is soon to be released as a film starring Emily Blunt.
The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick
Writer, feminist and critic Vivian Gornick loves to walk – to absorb the drama, humor, and humanity of the New York City streets, to see ‘the fifty different ways people struggle to remain human’. The Odd Woman and the City is her ode to these streets. Gornick uses Gotham as both her mirror and muse as she examines her fiercely independent life, and explores the interplay between the city and self.
And the Weak Suffer What They Must? by Yanis Varoufakis
In this dramatic narrative of Europe’s economic rise and spectacular fall, former finance minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis demonstrates that the origins of the collapse go far deeper than our leaders are prepared to admit – and that we have done nothing so far to fix them. Varoufakis draws on the personal experience of his own negotiations with the eurozone’s financiers and offers concrete policies and alternatives.
