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Writers are often walkers. This might have something to do with the sedentary nature of the occupation. Or it might be because the revitalising combination of movement and sensory experience facilitates deeper reflection.
But walking can also draw a writer into an intimate relation with a place and its history. The late W.G. Sebald, an inveterate literary walker, whose newly translated essays Linda Daley writes about with great knowledge and insight, writes of a character walking through the city, glancing into “one of those quiet courtyards where nothing has changed for decades”, and feeling “the current of time slowing down”.
In this week’s Friday essay, Belinda Castles takes a series of walks with prominent Sydney writers. She reflects on the various ways the city’s physical spaces can be read, drawing out the layers of the past that are always present.
I was impressed by the debut novels of Rhett Davis and Hossein Asgari, so I’m glad be able to feature reviews of both writers’ second books this week. Davis’ new book Arborescence is an ambitious blend of science-fiction, postmodernism and ancient myth.
Asgari’s Only Sound Remains would get my vote as the best debut novel published in Australia in the last few years. In his new novel Desolation, he tackles the imposing themes of war, grief, political radicalisation, and the mediated nature of truth.
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James Ley
Deputy Books + Ideas Editor
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Belinda Castles, University of Sydney
The explosion of urban writing set in the cities and towns of Australia allows us to walk amid history, subcultures and alternative visions of urban places.
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Linda Daley, RMIT University
West Germany’s inability to mourn was deemed a ‘silent catastrophe’ by the late, great W.G. Sebald. His early critical writings appear in a book of the same name.
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Michelle Hamadache, Macquarie University
In Desolation, inexplicable elements, often in the form of coincidence, disrupt and distort causal chains. Dreams and imagination have a subversive role.
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Luke Johnson, University of Wollongong
In his thoughtful new novel about people turning into trees, Rhett Davis puts postmodernism and myth through the figurative woodchipper.
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Janine Schloss, Monash University
In her book The Ferryman, Katia Ariel reveals the story of Ephraim Finch, ‘community ferryman’ of Jewish souls.
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Giselle Bastin, Flinders University
A new cultural history is as much about the princess’s people as the ‘People’s Princess’.
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Amber Gwynne, The University of Queensland
Toni Jordan’s novel Tenderfoot, a bracing, beautiful meditation on childhood, shares crossovers with her own life.
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More great reading
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Sarah Austin, The University of Melbourne
Kristy Marillier’s fierce new ensemble drama, playing at Melbourne Theatre Company, reminds us the personal is political.
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Kirk Dodd, University of Sydney
The Sydney Theatre Company’s newest offering is The Talented Mr. Ripley. Is Australian theatre over-reliant on novel adaptations?
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Konstantine Panegyres, The University of Western Australia
Democracy has been with us since it was founded in Athens in the 6th century BCE. Like some of today’s voters, the ancient Greeks were also divided over its merits.
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Charlotte Rogers, University of Virginia
Writers have mined the region’s turbulent political history to explore how authoritarian rulers bend institutional leaders to their will.
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Auckland University of Technology
Auckland, New Zealand
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The Conversation AU/NZ
New Zealand
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AUT
Auckland CBD, Auckland, New Zealand
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Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
Parkville, Melbourne, Australia
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