This week’s Bookshelf features the latest from Elizabeth Strout, creator of Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, returning with a stand‑alone novel called The Things We Never Say. We’re also reading an ambitious, genre‑bending novel that moves from 1980s gaming culture to far‑future space travel, and Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director, a German novel in translation that explores film, power and propaganda. Joining us to review are Geordie Williamson - critic, publisher and writer; and Robert Forster - ...
May 08, 2026•55 min
In this episode, superstar reviewer Hannah Kent tackles the rugged terrain of a journey that edges towards the Tibetan border in Deepa Anappara's The Last of Earth, and theatre writer Tom Wright ponders extraterrestrial encounters in Amanda Lohrey's new one, Capture. Plus, Kate and Cassie take a look at two titles on the International Booker Prize shortlist, from France and Bulgaria, one follows a not‑very‑successful witch who weeps tears of blood; and the other is the story of a woman in Albani...
May 01, 2026•59 min
This week The Bookshelf leans into the wild as Kate Evans and guests are circled by stories of wolves, wild boar and witches, along with the final year of celebrated poet Sylvia Plath and a sensual story of food and obsession from Japan. Kate is joined by regular guests, the novelist, poet and Professor of Australian literature Tony Birch; and critic Beejay Silcox, who arrives fresh from the U.K. ready to talk literary pilgrimages and bookish souvenirs. Plus, a bonus discussion on this year's St...
Apr 24, 2026•1 hr 8 min
In this episode, Kate and Cassie are joined by celebrated novelist Madeleine Gray and rock icon Tim Rogers for a wide-ranging discussion looking at three works of contemporary fiction: Indian writer Amitav Ghosh’s Ghost Eye, a meditation on reincarnation and climate change; Australian writer and musician Edwina Preston’s Sororicidal, a sharp novel of sisterhood and rivalry; and English stylist Gwendoline Riley’s The Palm House, a disquieting portrait of modern life in London. BOOKS Amitav Ghosh,...
Apr 17, 2026•55 min
Memory, lost conversations and almost-fathers-and sons in Ben Lerner's Transcription; children divided by the throw of a dice, and that's just the start of it, in Steve Toltz's A Rising of the Lights; no such thing as unskilled labour, in Siân Hughes' No Such Thing as Monday, where a woman works as a drycleaner, trying desperately to rid herself of the stains of her childhood; new crime releases, and an Australian in Hollywood is reconsidered. Kate and Cassie with reviewers Michael Robotham and ...
Apr 10, 2026•1 hr 1 min
What does it mean to write using an 'ethical imagination'? Colum McCann onstage with Kate Evans at the 2025 Melbourne Writers Festival, on his novels Twist, Apeirogon, TransAtlantic, Let the Great World Spin and many more; and his work with the social justice storytelling movement, Narrative Four. Presenter/ Producer: Kate Evans Sound Engineers: Simon Branthwaite, Antonia Gauci Acting Arts Editor: Sarah L'Estrange
Apr 03, 2026•55 min
We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.
Apr 03, 2026•55 min
This week The Bookshelf revisits the Trojan War from the ground up in Yann Martel’s Son of Nobody, moves through friendship and loss in Debra Adelaide’s When I Am Sixty‑Four, and dives into queer Sydney in the 1940s with Fiona Kelly McGregor’s The Trap. BOOKS Fiona Kelly McGregor, The Trap, Picador Debra Adelaide, When I Am Sixty-Four, UQP Yann Martel, Son of Nobody, Text GUESTS Tom Wright, theatre writer and adaptor; Artistic Associate, Belvoir Theatre Hannah Kent, novelist, scriptwriter and me...
Apr 03, 2026•55 min
A rich mix of voices and stories in short fiction from acclaimed Native American writer Louise Erdrich; essays and memories from two‑time Miles Franklin Award winner Alex Miller; bleakly funny childhood tales by English author Mark Haddon; and, from Michael Winkler, a surreal and darkly comic story about a man who decides he’d rather be the family dog. BOOKS Michael Winkler, Griefdogg, Text Louise Erdrich, Python’s Kiss: Stories, Corsair Alex Miller, Journey to the End of Time, Allen & Unwin...
Mar 27, 2026•55 min
What if the most talked‑about streaming show of the moment was a mirror reflecting your most private fears and failures? That unnerving question sits at the heart of John Lanchester’s Look What You Made Me Do, a sharp novel about resentment, revenge, money, class and generational unease. Plus: the art of the short story, as Hannah Kent reads and reflects on Lauren Groff’s new collection Brawler; and a woman’s inner life rendered with quiet and devastating precision in Mary Costello’s A Beautiful...
Mar 20, 2026•59 min
A Bookshelf festival special with Kate Evans onstage with writers Jock Serong and Emily Maguire on historical fiction, from the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival.
Mar 13, 2026•55 min
Statues come alive and London is re-imagined in Francis Spufford's Nonesuch, and surprising parallels in two Australian novels of secrets, shame, land and time in M L Stedman's A Far-Flung Life and Eva Hornung's The Minstrels. Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh, Michael Robotham and Roanna Gonsalves - to help you decide what to read next. BOOKS Francis Spufford, Nonesuch, Faber Eva Hornung, The Minstrels, Text M L Stedman, A Far-Flung Life, Penguin GUESTS Michael Robotham, internationally acclaimed cr...
Mar 06, 2026•55 min
In this episode, we travel from the Swiss Alps to the quiet strangeness of Danish suburbia and the fierce edges of American literary drama. We begin with the visceral intensity of Gabriel Tallent’s latest novel, Crux, where characters cling to passion and survival with bloodied fingertips. Claire Thomas reflects on art, ambition, and the lure of towering peaks in On Not Climbing Mountains, and Helle Helle's They, a delicately surreal portrait of mothers, daughters, and the lives lived between si...
Feb 27, 2026•55 min
Emerald Fennell's film adaptation of Wuthering Heights has been marketed as " the greatest love story ever told ", which is not typically the description given to the original novel. What does this adaptation achieve, and what does it sacrifice in the process? The Bookshelf 's Kate Evans and Radio National's Arts Hour 's Sky Kirkham discuss what they felt did and didn't work in this film and, in an expanded podcast extra edition, they also discussed the film adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's Hamn...
Feb 25, 2026•18 min
Kate and Cassie read Kin, the latest novel from Tayari Jones — the acclaimed American novelist behind An American Marriage, a book that resonated with both critics and readers alike. Her work sits alongside a bold mix of stories in this episode, from a vampiric love story to speed‑dating slasher fiction, and South African writer Nadia Davids adds her own unsettling brilliance, taking us into the life of a furious yet outwardly obedient domestic servant in a mysterious house on a hill in Cape Fev...
Feb 20, 2026•55 min
Join Kate and Cassie as they explore new fiction alongside guests: musician Tim Rogers (You Am I) and novelist Madeleine Gray (Green Dot, Chosen Family). Three American novels, each tackling big ideas in very different ways - from the political absurdity and humour of Jess Walter’s So Far Gone, to the mockumentary-style tensions of Patmeena Sabit’s Good People, to the darkly comic moral maze of Jonathan Miles’ Eradication. BOOKS Jess Walter, So Far Gone, Harper Jonathan Miles, Eradication, River...
Feb 13, 2026•55 min
Madeline Cash’s buzzy debut Lost Lambs pairs an off‑kilter storytelling sensibility with a sharp exploration of displacement and identity. George Saunders returns with Vigil, offering his moral curiosity in a novel that probes what it means to pay attention to the world. George Kemp’s Soft Serve delivers a charming and quietly affecting debut about growing up in a small town; and Steven Carroll’s The Afterlife of Harry Playford continues his investigations of history and memory. BOOKS Madeline C...
Feb 06, 2026•54 min
Kate and Cassie read award-winning Australian author Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s bold new novel Bugger, while reviewers Hannah Kent and Tom Wright take on Jennette McCurdy’s provocative new book Half His Age — from the former child actor whose memoir I'm Glad My Mom Died shook readers worldwide — and Nina McConigley’s How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder...does it live up to the name? BOOKS Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Bugger, Hachette Jennette McCurdy, Half His Age, Fourth Estate Nina McConigley, How to...
Jan 30, 2026•54 min
Kate and Cassie are back for a big year of books, beginning with Booker-Prize winner Julian Barnes' Departures, a novel about looking back, facing the future, and coming to the end of life. Plus, regular reviewers Tony Birch and Beejay Silcox join us for discussions on This, My Second Life by British novelist Patrick Charnley, and Iluka, by Australian author Cassie Stroud. BOOKS Julian Barnes, Departure(s), Jonathan Cape Cassie Stroud, Iluka, HQ Books Patrick Charnley, This, My Second Life, Hutc...
Jan 23, 2026•54 min
Novelist and memoirist Maggie O'Farrell in conversation with Kate Evans at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival. Her nine novels include After You'd Gone, the Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, This Must be the Place, Hamnet and the Marriage Portrait . . . and her extraordinary memoir is I Am I Am I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death.
Jan 22, 2026
Kate and Cassie on stage at the 2025 Brisbane Writers Festival with authors Eric Puchner, Toni Jordan, Patrick Holland, and Zeynab Gamieldien, discussing their most recent novels and the books and writers who inspire them. This discussion was recorded in front of a live audience, just ahead of our Top 100 Books of the Century. It was first broadcast on Friday 17 October 2025 GUESTS Eric Puchner, novelist, academic, and short story writer, whose books include the collections Last Day on Earth and...
Jan 15, 2026•55 min
The Bookshelf's Kate Evans and the Book Show's Claire Nichols joined forces onstage at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival — with a panel of international writers — to talk favourite and influential books from the 21st century, in the lead up to the inaugural Top 100 Books countdown of the twenty-first century. This live broadcast happened in May 2025 — with Emirati poet Afra Atiq, English chronicler of gay lives, Alan Hollinghurst, Argentinian purveyor of all things dark and surprising, Mariana En...
Jan 08, 2026•55 min
Why aren't you reading more poetry? Perhaps you don't know where to begin — in which case, listen here, for a guide. Join Kate Evans, as she is joined by acclaimed author and poet Maxine Beneba Clarke, Stella Prize-winning poet and academic Sarah Holland-Batt, much-loved broadcaster and author Daniel Browning, and best-selling author and journalist Julia Baird to discuss and read some of the poems that have shone brightest for each of them this century, as well as how the art-form has evolved. T...
Jan 01, 2026•55 min
Colm Tóibín onstage at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival with The Bookshelf's Kate Evans — on fiction, fridges, rain, hinges, melodrama, reading, and why he can't write American dialogue so every character he writes has to be Irish (except, of course, when they're Thomas Mann and family). This is a conversation that begins in his hometown of Enniscorthy, site of his novels Nora Webster, The Blackwater Lightship, Brooklyn and Long Island — and the site of his memories and overheard conversations —...
Dec 31, 2025•52 min
In the year of Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, this lively and thought-provoking discussion explores her life, legacy, and literary brilliance — her novels are charming, sure, but also radical, political, witty, and entertaining. Presented in partnership with the State Library of NSW, this event brings together Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh from The Bookshelf, with Scott Stephens from Radio National's The Minefield, and Sophie Gee, English Professor at Princeton, Vice-Chancellor's Fellow in the ...
Dec 25, 2025•55 min
It's Christmas, 1962, and a baby is born . . . and left behind, in Ireland. This all takes place in the fictional town of Faha, a place created by write Niall Williams in his novels History of the Rain, This is Happiness and (his latest, and the one featuring said baby) Time of the Child. Niall Williams spoke to The Bookshelf's Kate Evans onstage at the 2025 Adelaide Writers Week. (A longer version of this discussion was broadcast on Friday 18 April 2025. You can listen to it here: The Bookshelf...
Dec 24, 2025•28 min
Whodunnit, whydunit, and where in time was all of it done — in an historical crime fiction special for our Summer Bookshelf. Kate Evans, onstage at the 2025 BAD Sydney Crime Festival, with novelists Nilima Rao (the story of an Indian police officer in Fiji in the 1910s), Michael Burge (religious communities and Jenolan caves in the 1850s), and Lainie Anderson (women policing Adelaide in the 1910s). This discussion was recorded at the site of one of Australia's oldest lending libraries — the Sydn...
Dec 18, 2025•55 min
Trent Dalton (Gravity Let Me Go, Boy Swallows Universe), Heather Rose (A Great Act of Love, Bruny) and Garry Disher (the Peninsula Crimes and Hirsch series) name some of their favourite books, and the titles may delight and surprise you. Hosted by Kate and Cassie as part of this year's Canberra Writers' Festival. TRENT DALTON'S PICKS Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath HEATHER ROSE'S PICKS Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker ...
Dec 11, 2025•55 min
The best books of 2025 as selected by Cassie McCullagh, Kate Evans and a panel of bookish guests - Jason Steger, Jon Page and Robert Goodman. Keep scrolling for a full list... GUESTS Jason Steger, arts journalist. Former book editor of the Age & SMH, and panellist on ABC TV’s Book Club Jon Page, long time bookseller with Pages and Pages bookshop, former General Manager of Dymocks Sydney – and now, book-buyer for W.H. Smith Robert Goodman, reviewer and literary judge specialising in genre fic...
Dec 04, 2025•54 min
Superstars of the literary and musical world this week: Margaret Atwood’s new memoir; Hannah Kent’s critical readings; Stuart Coupe’s musical knowledge; Bob Dylan . . . OK, well he’s not exactly on the show, but he’s the subject of MUCH literary speculation in a buzzy new release by New Yorker Sam Sussman. Also – the voice of the wind howls, laughs and taunts its subjects, in an inventive piece of writing from Sarah Hall. BOOKS Sam Sussman, Boy from the North Country, Grove Press Sarah Hall, Hel...
Nov 27, 2025•54 min
