Literature

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Isabelle Huppert will star in Mary Said What She Said

Adelaide Festival nearly imploded in its lead-up. So, how did things play out?

Chaos engulfed the South Australian capital’s main event before it started. Now, the city is heaving, the sun is shining and there is an air of expectation.

  • Kerrie O'Brien

Latest

No time for rest, got to get the book count up.

Stop counting your books and start actually reading them, you heathens

The raw number of books a person reads doesn’t tell you much about their general level of intelligence.

  • David Free
Gisèle Pelicot says she wanted people to understand who she was, beyond the headlines.

‘I want to look him straight in the eye’: Gisèle Pelicot’s quest for truth

After a decade of unimaginable betrayal, the woman who changed French law wants a confrontation in prison with her former husband to demand answers about his crimes.

  • Philippa Hawker

Writers paid as much as politicians? Once upon a time, it was a possibility

In the early 1970s, there was talk of paying writers a guaranteed minimum income – the same rate as federal backbenchers.

  • Jane Sullivan
Book Reviews 2025

Book Reviews

What’s good, what’s bad, and what’s in between in literature this year? Here we review the latest titles.

There’s a bumper crop of new books to read this month.

The controversial Lionel Shriver returns and a star tells (almost) all: 16 books to read

Candid memoirs and long-awaited returns, there is a bumper crop of new books – including a novel that may be Looking for Alibrandi for a new generation.

  • Jason Steger
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Liza Minnelli says she was ‘humiliated’ by Lady Gaga at the Oscars

The stage and screen legend dishes on drugs, former husband David Gest and even claims she invented Michael Jackson’s moonwalk moves in her unflinching new memoir.

  • Cameron Woodhead
“Wuthering Heights”

What if Emily Brontë were on TikTok? Why Wuthering Heights is the movie for the moment

How does the film depict an abusive hero, who is also a person of colour, in the age of both woke and Donald Trump? Actually, it doesn’t.

  • Jacqueline Maley
Miles Franklin was much more than a bush governess.

The game dames: The bold Australian women who found the world, then brought it home

Were Australian men as well travelled in this era? What made these women so keen?

  • Richard Glover
Dr Melanie Jansen is a paediatric ICU specialist and poet based in Brisbane.

An ICU doctor turned her hand to writing poems. Readers can’t stop crying

Dr Melanie Jansen meets parents on the worst day of their lives. She has found an unusual way of coping with the stress. 

  • Nick Dent