Undercover

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday November 8, 2008

Susan Wyndham

WINNING STREAK

There's usually at least one Australian author - and often it's Steve Toltz (pictured ) - on British awards shortlists these days. Are the Brits having a new love affair with our literature? Is their own a little thin? Or is Australia having a particularly robust year? Certainly the last. Toltz's novel, A Fraction Of The Whole, which missed out on last month's Man Booker Prize, is selling well here (even better than the Booker winner, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga) and is shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award. The newspaper describes it as having "a strongly individual, distinctive narrative voice ... a rumbustious, funny page-turner that tells the story of Jasper, now behind bars, his father, Martin, and his uncle, the criminal mastermind Terry".

The other contenders for the #10,000 ($23,000) prize - chosen by British reading groups from a longlist - are The Rest Is Noise by The New Yorker's music critic, Alex Ross; Stalin's Children, a historical memoir by Owen Matthews; God's Own Country, a novel by Britain's Ross Raisin; and A Case Of Exploding Mangoes, a satire on megalomania by Pakistan's Mohammed Hanif. A panel of judges including the novelists Roddy Doyle and Kate Mosse will choose the winner.

MAN WITH A NOBEL VISION

The 2008 Nobel laureate for literature, France's Jean-Marie Le Clezio (pictured) remains a mystery to most Australian readers. So we're lucky to have one of the world's English-speaking Le Clezio experts at the University of Melbourne. Jacqueline Dutton will be in Sydney on Wednesday, November 26, at 6.30pm to give a free lecture at the Alliance Francaise Gallery, 301 George Street. Dutton will draw on her interviews with Le Clezio and studies of his work to show how his experience of other cultures has shaped his humanist vision of the world. As she wrote recently in The Age:

"I think Le Clezio's writing ranks among the best in the world. Ever since picking up my first book by him, I have been drawn into his imaginary world of poignant beauty and tragic reality."

AN UNCERTAIN GUEST

Helen Garner is the keynote speaker at the "Creativity and Uncertainty" conference at the Centre for New Writing, University of Technology, Sydney from November 27 to 29. The conference is a rich collection of talks, including Delia Falconer on "the challenge of the post-postmodern" and James Bradley on "depression and creativity" and local and international speakers on the practice and value of creative writing degrees. See www.uts.edu.au for details.

When I asked Garner what she would speak about, she said she hadn't written her lecture yet. "The theme of the conference is uncertainty, a state that I (like all writers) know a lot about, so I hope people will trust me once more if I wing it." She will also give the final Sydney PEN lunchtime reading for the year at Customs House, at 12.45pm on December 2. She will read from (and take questions on) her award-winning novel, The Spare Room.

I love this image (pictured) of Garner, taken by designer Chong Weng Ho for the new paperback cover of her True Stories. It captures the solitude and modesty of writing. But Garner's privacy is not completely breached: we can't see whether she is using a computer, a pen or a nail file.

POLITICS ON THE MIND

The US National Book Critics Circle has released its autumn reading list, with the theme "Which work of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry best captures the realities of American political culture?" Among 70 replies, several people chose All The King's Men, Robert Penn Warren's novel based on the corrupt Louisiana governor Huey Long. Other suggestions were The Years Of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro and, of course, The Audacity Of Hope and Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama. See bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com.

www.smh.com.au/undercover

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

Back to News Index | Back to Home