ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

This introduction on this page was updated 31/7/20

The list below was last updated 24/9/21

Inspired by the Diversity Bingo game card… but diverging from it because I don’t like to label authors by their skin colour or their disability…

… and also acknowledging that I’m mindful of the problem of identity politics and culture wars.  In the Weekend Australian Geordie Williamson reviews Nam Le’s On David Malouf: Writers on Writers (Black Inc, 2019), and argues that:

A true work of art, irrespective of its author, deserves to be granted oxygen and space—it deserves to be engaged with in a realm beyond the Twitter squabbles that would delimit and proscribe our literary engagement. Yes, Le acknowledges, the history of literature is the history of systematic exclusion of stories by those who do not conform to a narrow range of acceptable voices. But, he continues, to damn those legitimately precious works that have survived despite that exclusionary urge is to disrespect art in toto.  Those works are our lever to raise other voices up.

What Le [of Vietnamese heritage] admires about Malouf [of English/Lebanese heritage] is his low-key determination to celebrate all that is worth preserving in the Western tradition.  He writes that “Malouf owns his Occidentalism, in all its contradictions and culpabilities.”  He sides with the older author in accepting that the barbarism on which Western culture is built should not be used to poison those documents that rise above our collective failings.

“Nothing complex is pure,” Le argues.  “Those who crave purity — who would tell us what may be read, and by whom, and who may write what, and how, would sort us into silos of identity, and then, worst of all, vacate the ‘good’ for the ‘correct’ should, by their own argument ad absurdum, have nothing more to do with the written word.”  (‘A Poetic Prose’ by Geordie Williamson, in Review, Weekend Australian, April 27-28, 2019, p.16-17)

I don’t read to anybody’s agenda, but for those interested in the diversity of Australian writing, this page notes the multicultural heritage of the Australian writers that I’ve read and reviewed here on this blog.  I’m using the word ‘heritage’ loosely: it can mean that the author was born in Australia of immigrant parents, or it can mean that they migrated here or came as refugees.  However I’m not going to trace beyond first generations to, for example, Irish forebears who came to Australia in colonial times.

There is obviously potential to get this wrong, and multicultural heritage isn’t always obvious or straightforward.  I welcome corrections if I’ve made mistakes, but I am deliberately confining myself to information that is already in the public domain.

NB Indigenous authors are indexed on the ANZ LitLovers Indigenous Reading List and you can also find them by searching the Category List in the RHS menu under REVIEWS.

Algeria

Dominique Wilson:

• The Yellow Papers (2014), and
• That Devil’s Madness (2016)

Anglo-Bangladeshi

Lesley Jørgensen:

• Cat and Fiddle (2013)

Armenia

Ashley Kalagian Blunt

• My Name is Revenge, and a reflective essay (2018)

Marcella Polain (Armenian/Irish)

• The Edge of the World (2007)(on my TBR)
• Driving Into the Sun (2019)

Austria

John Tesarch

• The Philanthropist (2010)
• Dinner with the Dissidents (2018)

Caribbean

Maxine Beneba Clarke

• Growing Up African in Australia (2019) (Editor)

Sienna Brown (Jamaica/Canada)

• Master of My Fate (2019)

China

Vivian Bi

• Bright Swallow, Making Choices in Mao’s China, a memoir (2019)
• Dragon’s Gate (2020)

Ouyang Yu:

• Loose, (2008)
• The English Class (2010)
• Billy Sing (2017)

Wong Shee Ping

• The Poison of Polygamy  (first published as a serial in 1909-1910 in the Chinese Times, Melbourne)

Croatia/Germany

Marija Peričić

• The Lost Pages (2017)

Sofija Stevanovic

• Miss Ex-Yugoslavia (2018)

Cuba

Olga Lorenzo:

• The Light on the Water (2016)

Egypt

Maher Abou Elsaoud:

• Cairo Paris Melbourne (2012)

Mohammed Massoud Morsi

• The Palace of Angels (2019)

France/England

Catherine de Saint Phalle

• The Sea and Us (2019)

Germany

Kenneth Arkwright (Jewish)

• Beyond Survival (2018)

Evelyn Juers:

• House of Exile,(2009)

• The Recluse, (2012)

Manfred Jurgensen:

• The Other Wife (2015)

T.G.H. Strehlow

• Journey to Horseshoe Bend (2015)

Glenice Whitting

• Pickle to Pie (2007)

Greece

Michalia Arathimos (Greek-Kiwi)

• Aukati (2017)

Vrasidas Karalis

• The Glebe Point Blues (2020)

Maria Papas

• Skimming Stones (2021)

Christos Tsiolkas

• • The Slap (2009)

Hongkong:

Brian Castro (of Portuguese, Chinese and English parentage):

• Drift, (1994)
• The Bath Fugues (2009)
• Street to Street (2012)
• Blindness and Rage, a Phantasmagoria (2017)

Melanie Cheng

• Room for a Stranger (2019)

Hungary

Inez Baranay:

• The Edge of Bali, (1992)

Sved, Miriam

• A Universe of Sufficient Size (2019)

Iceland

Kári Gíslason

• Saga Land (co-authored with Richard Fidler) 2017

India

Suneeta Peres Da Costa

• Saudade (2018)

Aashish Kaul:

• The Queen’s Play (2014)

Bem Le Hunte

• Elephants with Headlights (2020)

Rashida Murphy

• The Historian’s Daughter (2016)

Christopher Raja:

• The Burning Elephant (2015)

Subhash Jaireth:

• After Love (2012)
• Spinoza’s Overcoat, Travels with Writers and Poets (2020)
• Incantations, by Subhash Jaireth (2016)
• Aflame (2021)

Indonesia

Dewi Anggraeni

• My Pain, My Country (2017)

Lily Yulianti Farid

• Family Room (2010)

Intan Paramaditha

• Apple and Knife (2018), on my TBR
• The Wandering (2017)

Ireland

• Marcella Polain (see Armenia)

Iran

Shokoofeh Azar

• The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (2017)

Ali Alizadeh

• The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc (2017)

Italy

Venero Armanno:

• Black Mountain (2012)
• Burning Down (2017)

Rosa Cappiello

• Oh, Lucky Country! (1984)

Enza Gandolfo

• Swimming (2009)
• The Bridge (2018)

Moreno Giovannoni

• The Fireflies of Autumn (2018)

Raffaela Torresan

• Poetry and Ideas, text and images (2015)

Korea

Silvia Kwon

• The Return (2014)

Lebanon

Michael Mohammed Ahmad:

• The Tribe (2014)

David Malouf:

• Harland’s Half Acre (1984)
• Antipodes (1985)
• Child’s Play (2007)
• An Imaginary Life (1978)
• Ransom (2009)

Macedonia

S.K. Karakaltsas

• A  Perfect Stone (2018)

Malaysia

Micheline Lee:

• The Healing Party (2016)

New Zealand (this one is tricky, this page is for writers who’ve made Australia their home.  Let me know if I’ve got any of these Kiwis wrong).

Meg Mundell

• Black Glass(2011)
• The Trespassers (2019)
• We are Here, Stories of Home, Place and Belonging (2019) editor

Ian Reid

• The End of Longing (2011)
• The Mind’s Own Place(2015)

Netherlands

Paul Gardner

• The Unsung Family Hero (2020)

Pakistan

Azhar Abidi

• Passarola Rising (2006)

The Philippines

Merlinda Bobis:

• Locust Girl (2015)
• Fish-hair Woman (2013)
• The Kindness of Birds (2021)

Poland (many of these are by Holocaust survivors or their descendants)

Herz Bergner

• Between Sky and Sea (1946)

Anna Rosner Blay

• Sister Sister (1998)

Pinchas Goldhar

• The Collected Stories of Pinchas Goldhar (2016)

Antoni Jach

• Napoleon’s Double (2007)
• Travelling Companions (2021)

Leah Kaminsky:

• The Waiting Room (2015)

Serge Liberman

•  The Storyteller: Selected Stories (2018)

Olga Lorenzo

• The Light on the Water (2016)

Zwi Levin

• A Sack Full of Memories (2019)

Morris Lurie

• Rappaport (2014)
• Hergesheimer in the Present Tense (2014)

Joe Reich

• Ein Stein (2021)

Alex Skovron:

• The Poet (2005)

Sue Smethurst

• The Freedom Circus (2020)

Sara Rena Vidal

• Bella and Chaim (2017)

Romania

Madeleine St John: (St John’s mother was Romanian, but she reinvented herself as pseudo-French once in Australia).

• The Women in Black (1993)
• A Stairway to Paradise (1999)
• The Essence of the Thing (1997)

Russia

Alla Wolf-Tasker

• Three Decades On, Lake House and Daylesford (2018)

Ruthenia

Bram Presser (who explains his grandfather’s birthplace like this: There once stood a village that had been in Poland, then Hungary, then Subcarpathian Ruthenia, then Czechoslovakia, then Slovakia, then Hungary again, then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, then the Ukraine and now cannot be found on any map.

• A Book of Dirt (2017)

Serbia

A S Patric:

• Black Rock White City (2015)
• Las Vegans for Vegans (2012)
• Atlantic Black (2017)
• The Butcherbird Stories (2018)

Sofija Stefanovich

• Miss Ex-Yugoslavia (2018)

Filip Vukašin

• Modern Marriage (2021) 

Singapore

Simone Lazaroo:

• Lost River, Four Albums (2014);
• The Travel Writer (2006)
• Sustenance (2010)

S.L. Lim

• Real Differences (2019)
• Revenge, Murder in Three Parts (2020)

South Africa

Shelley Davidow

• Shadow Sisters (2018)

Sisonke Msimang

• Always Another Country (2018)
• The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2019)

Ceridwen Dovey

• Blood Kin (2007)
• The Garden of the Fugitives (2018)
• Life After Truth (2020)

Hayley Katzen

• Untethered (2020)

South Sudan

Majok Tulba:

• Beneath the Darkening Sky (2012)

Alaak, Yuot A

• Father of the Lost Boys (2020)

Sri Lanka

Michelle de Kretser:

• Questions of Travel (2012)
• Springtime (2014)
• The Lost Dog (2008)
• The Life to Come (2017)

Rajith Savanadasa:

• Ruins (2016)

Channa Wickremesekera:

• Asylum (2015)

Swaziland

Malla Nunn:

• A Beautiful Place to Die (2008)
• Blessed are the Dead (2012)
• Present Darkness (2013)
• Sugar Town Queens

Anglo Swedish

Kristina Olssen

• The China Garden (2009)
• Shell (2018)

Sweden

Anna Solding:

• The Hum of Concrete (2012)

Tanzania

Eugen Bacon

• Danged Black Thing

Turkey

Alice Melike Ulgezer:

• The Memory of Salt (2012)

United Kingdom

Martin Boyd (born in Switzerland, educated in Australia, but identified as Anglo-Australian and spent most of his line in England)

• When Blackbirds Sing (1962)

Ada Cambridge (England):

• Thirty Years in Australia, (1903)

Ros Collins (Jewish)

• Solly’s Girl (2015)
• Rosa, Memories with Licence 2019

Ernest Favenc

• Tales of the Austral Tropics (1893)

Anna Fienberg

• Escape (2009)

Rodney Hall (England)

• Popeye Never Told You (2010)
• The Second Bridegroom (1991)
• A Stolen Season (2018)

Elizabeth Jolley (England):

• Miss Peabody’s Inheritance (1983)
• For other titles, see the Elizabeth Jolley page in the top menu.

Robert Lukins (Wales)

• The Everlasting Sunday (2018)

Alex Miller (England):

• Coal Creek (2013);
• Autumn Laing (2011)
• Lovesong (2009) 
• Prochownik’s Dream (2005);
• Landscape of Farewell (2007)
• The Passage of Love (2018)
• Max (2020)

Drusilla Modjeska:

• The Mountain (2012),
• Second Half First (2015)

Catherine Helen Spence (Scotland)

• Mr Hogarth’s Will (1865)
• Ever Yours, C H Spence (2005)

Patrick White (England):

• Riders in the Chariot (1961)
• Happy Valley;
• The Eye of the Storm (1973)
• The Twyborn Affair (1979)
• Voss (1957)
• The Solid Mandala (1966)
• The Aunt’s Story (1948)
• A Fringe Of Leaves (1976)
• The Tree of Man (1955)
• The Burnt Ones (1964)

Ukraine

John Hughes

• The Garden of Sorrows (2013)
• No One (2019)
• The Dogs (2021), review to come

USA

Linda Jaivin:

• The Empress Lover (2014)

Joyce Kornblatt

• Mother Tongue (2020)

Eleanor Limprecht (born and raised in the US, Germany and Pakistan but now lives in Sydney, Australia)

• Long Bay (2015)
• The Passengers (2018)

USSR (Ukraine)

Maria Tumarkin

• Traumascapes (2005)

Vietnam

Hoa Pham:

• The Wave (2015)
• The Lady of the Realm (2017)
• The Other Shore (2014)

Nam Le:

• The Boat (2008)

Chi Vu:

• Anguli Ma: A Gothic Tale (2012)

Zimbabwe

Elizabeth Kuiper

• Little Stones (2019)