Biography and memoir
The Poet’s Wife by Mandy Sayer
Mandy Sayer’s vivid new memoir, set predominantly in New Orleans, Indiana, and later in Sydney’s Kings Cross, details her volatile ten-year marriage to the Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa. Two memoirs precede this work: Dreamtime Alice, which detailed the…
Report from the Interior by Paul Auster
Who is the ‘You’ that Paul Auster’s memories in Report from the Interior are addressed? Not even addressed, perhaps it is more accurate to say directed, by a giant wagging finger, a bit like Monty Python’s all-crushing foot. Auster’s new…
Moving Among Strangers by Gabrielle Carey
In Moving Among Strangers, Gabrielle Carey intertwines the histories of the reclusive Australian writer Randolph Stow, and that of her acutely reserved mother, Joan, who both grew up in Geraldton, Western Australia. Carey has lived most of her life…
Banana Girl by Michele Lee
In the build-up to her departure for Laos – the homeland of her Hmong parents – Michele Lee wanders through Melbourne’s bars and streets, and the history of her life and relationships. She talks to her dubious teenage self, defending…
My Mother, My Father by Susan Wyndham
A collection of essays by fourteen Australian writers, My Mother, My Father responds to the universal question of how to make sense of the death of a parent. Edited by Sydney Morning Herald literary editor Susan Wyndham, this suite of…
A History of Silence by Lloyd Jones
When I was about 19, I sought refuge one afternoon from what I felt to be the misery of my family home by going to my sister’s house, located on the other side of town in Christchurch, New Zealand. For…
An Appetite for Wonder by Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins is perhaps one of the foremost contributors to the expansion of scientific knowledge and ideas in our time, making his memoir greatly anticipated. An Appetite for Wonder details Dawkins’ life from his birth in the British colony of…
Love & Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere by Poe Ballantine
Poe Ballantine’s new memoir is a fascinating book on many levels. At its bare bones it is a story about failure – personal and professional – and the myriad ways people adapt to this very human condition. Ballantine’s marriage to…
Hanns and Rudolf by Thomas Harding
Thomas Harding’s Hanns and Rudolf tells the story of Hanns Alexander, a German-Jewish refugee who became one of the first Nazi hunters after the war. Alexander’s biggest scalp, Rudolf Höss, Kommandant of Auschwitz, was tried, found guilty and hanged in…
A Spy in the Archives by Sheila Fitzpatrick
A Spy in the Archives, which began life as an essay in the London Review of Books in 2010, is a memoir rich in history as much as detail. Reading this book made me realise my own knowledge of…
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