A child is lost in a nineteenth-century landscape carved out of both thousands of years of history, and more recent expectations and misunderstandings. An entire community rallies to find him – but their pathways diverge, overtake, retrace and obliterate each other. What a story! Novelist Fiona McFarlane speaks about The Sun Walks Down with Kate Evans.
Reading Steve Toltz's Here Goes Nothing and Ashley Goldberg's Abomination, and speaking to Tracey Lien (All That's Left Unsaid) and Sue Orr (Loop Tracks) about the books that have shaped them.
Stories that are tough and joyful, heartbreaking and beautiful, confronting and worth it: Kate Evans speaks with New Zealand writer Becky Manawatu about her novel, Aue; and to American writer Leila Mottley about Nightcrawling
Reading Canadian Métis writer Katherena Vermette's The Strangers, Irish writer Louise Kennedy's Trespasses, and speaking to Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet about Case Study and the bookshelf that made it
What is it about Irish storytelling: that combination of poetry and pain, brutality and a wicked laugh or ten? All that lyrical toughness, and a sense of a history punctuated by a drumbeat of violence, is on display in Audrey Magee's novel, The Colony. A conversation with Kate Evans Other books and writers mentioned in this conversation: Emily Dickinson, works Marcel Proust, works James Joyce, works Colette, works Peig: The autobiography of Peig Sayers William Butler Yeats, works...
Reading Chris Womersley's The Diplomat, Lauren John Joseph's At Certain Points We Touch and Jonathan Bazzi's Fever – with Nigel Featherstone; and talking to Nigerian-English writer Nikki May about her novel Wahala and the bookshelf that shaped her
Two writers who grapple with crime, with very different style and intent, in conversation with Kate Evans. American writer John Darnielle is also a musician (The Mountain Goats), and his books include Wolf in White Van and Universal Harvester. He speaks with Kate about his latest, Devil House. New Zealand crimewriter Charity Norman had an earlier career in England as a barrister, but now prefers fictional mysteries. Her books include After the Fall, The Secrets of Strangers and – the one to whic...
Four novels about islands: reading Emily Brugman's The Islands, Audrey Magee's The Colony and Eliza Henry Jones' Salt and Skin; and speaking to Tom Watson about his novel Metronome
English novelist Patrick Gale specialises in hidden lives, secret stories, and celebrating queer histories. His books include Rough Music, Notes from an Exhibition, and A Place Called Winter: and in his latest and seventeenth novel, Mother's Boy, he fictionalises the life of Cornish poet Charles Causley. He speaks to Kate Evans for a special Summer edition of The Bookshelf
Four writers speak to Kate Evans at the 2022 Melbourne Writers Festival about a particularly significant book, that shaped or defined them in some way: Abbas Nazari, Maya Hodge, Sarah Holland Batt and Chloe Hooper
Bestselling English novelist Philippa Gregory speaks with Kate Evans about the radical politics of the seventeenth century and how best to capture that in fiction.
Kate and Cassie are joined by guests literary editor Jason Steger, books podcaster Dani Vee and crime aficionado Felix Shannon to talk their favourite books of 2022 (and yes, we have indeed listed them all)
Talking cricket in fiction, with a particular focus on Inga Simpson's new novel, Willowman, with RN's sports specialist Warwick Hadfield, historian Marion Stell and journalist and crime writer Michael Brissenden
Reading Philip Salom's Sweeney and the Bicycles, Arinze Ifeakandu's God's Children Are Little Broken Things and Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts with Shakespearean scholar Huw Griffiths and novelist Nova Weetman
Walking the streets and exploring the shadows in 1930s Australia, in Fiona Kelly McGregor's Iris; lost towns and lost souls in Shaun Prescott's Bon and Lesley; and a dreamy not-quite-romance in Yumna Kassab's The Lovers with guests novelist Max Easton and literary studied academic Jodi McAlister
Witnessing a great and terrible event in Gail Jones' Salonika Burning; a life up-ended and re-worked in Alex Miller's A Brief Affair; and careful observations of everyday wonder in Luke Carman's An Ordinary Ecstasy.
Exploring the novels of Pakistani and English writer Kamala Shamsie with Maryam Azam and Sonia Nair, with a particular focus on Best of Friends and Home Fire
A brother and sister walk uneasy paths, and plumb both literal and hallucinatory depths in Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger; worlds and characters explode across both space and time in Cole Haddon's Psalms for the End of the World; and nineteenth-century Australia and its mythologies remade in Fiona McFarlane's The Sun Walks Down. Kate and Cassie are joined by guests rock star Tim Rogers, and critic and memoirist Shannon Burns
An all-American edition of the bookshelf, with new fiction from George Saunders, Barbara Kingsolver and John Irving. Both Charles Dickens and Herman Melville also get a look in. Kate and Cassie are joined by novelist Felicity McLean and literary academic David Ellison
Two wildly different sisters are trying to work out how to live and who to love during a sweaty Sydney summer in Diana Reid's hotly anticipated new novel Seeing Other People. In Chris Flynn's short story collection Here Be Leviathans, stories are told from the perspective of animals including a grizzly bear and a family of platypus, as well as inanimate objects like airline seats and hotel rooms. Plus, Ling Ma's Bliss Montage, a dazzling collection of short stories that include a woman who lives...
in this episode Jonathan Green joins Cassie McCullagh to talk about three hard hitting new works of fiction from Robbie Arnott, Donal Ryan and Michael Bennett.
In this edition of RN's monthly Book Club, we look at Ian McEwan's extraordinary body of work, paying particular attention to his new novel Lessons, a meditation on history and humanity presented through the span of one man's lifetime.
English writer Hilary Mantel has sadly died, aged 70. The Booker prize winning author spoke to Kate Evans for the Big Weekend of Books in 2020.
Three sisters, locked in their lifelong roles, on a roadtrip, in Peggy Frew's Wildflowers; a London underworld full of betrayal and promise, in Kate Atkinson's Shrines of Gaiety (read by Rohan Wilson); and talking to Adrian McKinty about the differences between noir and thrillers.
Reading Tracey Lien's All That's Left Unsaid, Diane Connell's The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird and Clarissa Goenawan's Watersong – Kate Evans and Elizabeth Flynn with guests George Haddad and Mandi McIntosh.
Kate and Cassie with three new novels: grappling with modernism and creativity in Sophie Cunningham's This Devastating Fever; a young woman caged by intrigue and expectations in Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait; and working soldiers bleed across France in Dan Jones' Essex Dogs – with guests Stephen Gapps and Amy Walters
RN's Book Club in a different format to usual: a panel discussion plus a quick reading guide. The big question: Is crime fiction a literature of resistance? Also, a guide to fiction in translation from Korea
A story of three men trying to create a new world, on a craggy island in seventh-century Ireland, in Emma Donoghue's Haven; anxieties about race and migration, in Mohsin Hamid's The Last White Man; and scrappy voices from history, in Selby Wynn Schwartz's fragmentary lesbian colloquy, After Sappho.
Joan of Arc as a capable, scrappy young woman; unmoored on a strange coastline; and trees in both crime fiction and the Australian literary imaginary: reading Scott McCulloch's Basin, Katherine J Chen's Joan (with Prof of Philosophy Karen Green) and crime writer Margaret Hickey's Stone Town on both crime and landscape
Reading Robert Drewe's Nimblefoot, Eliza Henry-Jones' Salt and Skin and Sloane Crosley's Cult Classic with critic and literary judge Susan Wyndham and novelist and funeral director Jackie Bailey
