New Australian Fiction

Most readers in the US know very few Australian writers, but there are lots worth searching out. Peter Carey is probably the most well-known. I really enjoy reading Carey because both the language and plot in his books are amazing. I have recommended Peter Temple’s mystery The Broken Shore to friends, and they have all liked it.

Peter Carey
His Illegal Self
A mother-son relationship is set against the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s and offers a realistic portrait of the era. Don’t you want to know what Australian hippies in the Australian Outback were like?

Theft: a Love Story
Michael "Butcher" Boone is an ex-“really famous" painter, now reduced to living in a remote country house and acting as caretaker for his younger brother, Hugh, who, like Butcher, has a primarily pugilistic relationship with the world. It’s a book about a close sibling relationship and the international art world.

Peter Temple
The Broken Shore
In Temple's beautifully written eighth crime novel, Joe Cashin, a city homicide cop recovering from an injury, returns to the quiet coastal area of South Australia where he grew up. There he investigates the beating death of an elderly millionaire.

Steve Tolz
Fraction of the Whole
Humorous story reflects on the travels of a father and son from the Australian bush to the cafes of bohemian Paris, from the Thai jungle to strip clubs, asylums, labyrinths, and criminal lairs, and from the highs of first love to the lows of failed ambition.

Tim Winton
Breath
Latest book by Australia's favorite author, an extraordinary evocation of an adolescence spent resisting complacency, testing one’s limits against nature, finding like-minded souls, and discovering just how far one breath will take you. Winton is a surfer and a naturalist, and his descriptions of surfing seem almost mystical.