With the boisterous energy of direct speech, the novelist Ferdia Lennon takes on both the playfulness and the harsh realism of Euripides.
The post Playing for Time appeared first on The New York Review of Books.
Fiction
As we encounter Shakespeare’s tragedies it becomes terrifyingly clear that we are not in a moral universe of comeuppances and rewarded virtues.
The post No Comfort appeared first on The New York Review of Books.
Australian Opposition leader (yep,really), Peter Dutton, is tipped to announce this week that fictional character Homer Simpson will be his new nuclear advisor in the run up to the next election. ”Homer Simpson brings a lot to the table,” said... Read More ›
John Banville’s first novel, Nightspawn, published more than fifty years ago, is set in Greece, which was then ruled by a military junta. The Irish protagonist, Benjamin White, is asked, “As a visitor, Benjamin, what do you think of the situation here, I mean the political situation?” He shrugs: “I’m not a political animal.” In […]
The post Scenes of the Crime appeared first on The New York Review of Books.
The pharmacist-turned-novelist John O’Grady adopted the pseudonym of Giovanni ‘Nino’ Culotta to write the story of an immigrant Italian journalist who comes to Sydney and writes about the people – and their version of English – he finds there. Nino’s true identity was only revealed two months after publication. It became a hit film in […]
Set in 1942, Jon Cleary’s novel follows a group of Australian soldiers who have just returned from the Middle East and are on leave in Sydney before being sent to New Guinea. Sergeant Jack Savanna, a radio announcer before the war, has met Silver Bendixter at the Anzac Buffet in Hyde Park: living at Darling […]