Markus Zusak’s novel The Book Thief secures second place, while Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe rounds out podium dominated by men
Cloudstreet, Tim Winton’s sprawling Australian family epic, has been voted Australia’s favourite book in a poll run by ABC Radio National.
The broadcaster announced over the weekend the results of a nationwide poll to determine a list of readers’ top 100 Australian books.
Continue reading...Tweet by Sarah Helm, wife of national security adviser Jonathan Powell, ‘does not meet criminal threshold’
No further action will be taken against Sarah Helm, the wife of the prime minister’s national security adviser, after she was accused of supporting the banned protest group Palestine Action.
Helm, a journalist and author who is married to Jonathan Powell, posted on X on Thursday: “God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action.”
Continue reading...Article in Atlantic claims The Blue Fighter was artificially generated, days after it won Caine prize for African writers
The Zimbabwean writer Simbarashe Kundizeza has denied using AI to write a prize-winning short story after an article in the Atlantic said software had flagged it as almost completely AI-generated.
Kundizeza’s story The Blue Fighter was announced as the winner of the prestigious Caine prize for African writers on 6 October. Five days later, The Atlantic published an article by the author and journalist Vauhini Vara titled: “Yet Another Literary prize winner Seems to Be AI.”
Continue reading...Lenora Thaker wins $30,000 prize for ‘a work of state significance’ for The Pearl of Tagai Town, which draws on her family’s history in Cairns-Malay Town
A “stunning” debut novel described as “unambiguously and distinctively Queensland” has won the $30,000 top prize at the Queensland literary awards (QLAs).
Meriam and Wagedagam author Lenora Thaker won the Queensland premier’s award for a work of state significance for her historical novel The Pearl of Tagai Town, which was inspired by her ancestors’ lives in an unmapped shantytown known as Cairns-Malay Town. The town once housed Indigenous Australians, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Malaysian and Sri Lankan residents who had been segregated from the white population; it existed from the late 1800s until the late 1950s.
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Continue reading...Thélyson Orélien had been in the running to win a top literary prize before the AI claim emerged on social media
The organisers of France’s most prestigious literary prize said they had removed a critically acclaimed novel by a Canadian-Haitian writer from the longlist after an anonymous online account claimed the book was “almost entirely” written by AI.
The Académie Goncourt, a Paris-based literary organisation, said on Friday its decision to withdraw Thélyson Orélien’s novel C’était ça ou mourir (It Was That or Die) was “driven by the desire to preserve the integrity of the Goncourt prize and the academy itself, whose central role is to promote and honour literature written by women and men”.
Continue reading...Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin, who were forced to move abroad in 2021, tell of president capable of ‘limitless cruelty’
At 6am on 29 June 2021, the Russian journalist Roman Badanin was woken by a knock on the door of his family’s Moscow apartment. “Come quickly, someone has scratched your car in the courtyard,” a voice shouted from outside. As he opened the door, masked men pushed their way in.
Across the city, a similar raid was happening at the home of Badanin’s colleague Mikhail Rubin. The masked men were officers of the FSB, the Russian intelligence service, instruments of the “climate of fear and violence” that the journalists say Vladimir Putin has imposed on Russia in their forensically detailed biography of the Russian president.
Continue reading...The illustrator and author ‘gave joy to millions of children around the world’, his family says
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The beloved Australian illustrator and author Terry Denton, most famous for his work on the Treehouse series, has died aged 76.
His publisher, Curtis Brown, released a statement on social media saying Denton died surrounded by his family on Monday.
Continue reading...More than 180 writers sign letter renewing calls for information on 12 authors detained incommunicado since 2001 crackdown on free speech by Isaias Afwerki
More than 180 writers have signed a letter to Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki calling for proof of life for 12 writers arrested in 2001.
Nobel laureates Olga Tokarczuk and JM Coetzee join prominent writers including Colm Tóibín, Elif Shafak, Isabel Allende, Ben Okri, Yann Martel, Kamila Shamsie and Tsitsi Dangarembga in signing the letter dated 18 September, marking 25 years since a government crackdown on the independent press. “Within days, Eritrea’s free press and the nation’s independent voices were systematically crushed,” opens the letter.
Continue reading...An outstanding figure in the UK film industry, Thomas was noted for collaborations with directors including Bernardo Bertolucci and David Cronenberg
Jeremy Thomas, the distinguished British producer of films including Sexy Beast, High-Rise and the multi-Oscar-winning The Last Emperor, has died aged 77.
A representative for Thomas said he died on Friday “peacefully, at his country home in Oxfordshire, surrounded by his family and loved ones”.
Continue reading...Ex-secretary of state joins Nancy Pelosi, Jill Biden, Roxane Gay and others in heralding groundbreaking feminist
Gloria Steinem, groundbreaking feminist campaigner, dies aged 92
‘We badly need to raise our boys more like our girls’: Gloria Steinem – a life in quotes
Leading figures from politics, entertainment and wider society led glowing tributes to Gloria Steinem on Thursday, with Hillary Clinton hailing the American feminist icon who died at 92 at home in New York as “one of the architects of the entire structure of women’s equality”.
Clinton, a former US secretary of state, presidential candidate and first lady, was among the first to jump in with praise early on Thursday when she appeared on the CBS Mornings TV show to share her respect and gratitude for Steinem.
Continue reading...Grammy award-winning American artist selected as 13th person to submit written work to Oslo-based project
The next manuscript by the American artist Laurie Anderson will remain unseen for 88 years, as she becomes the 13th figure to contribute to the Future Library project.
Anderson joins Margaret Atwood, Han Kang, Ocean Vuong and other prominent authors who have written secret manuscripts, which have been locked away until 2114.
Continue reading...Anthony Seldon’s book alleges Badenoch asked fellow Tory ministers ‘if anyone was interested in changing the captain’
Kemi Badenoch plotted with fellow Conservative cabinet ministers to remove Rishi Sunak as prime minister months before the general election, it has been claimed.
Anthony Seldon, who has written political biographies of every prime minister since John Major, has alleged in a new book that Badenoch, who was business secretary at the time, phoned several other cabinet ministers to ask “if anyone was interested in changing the captain”.
Continue reading...Anthony Seldon’s book alleges Badenoch asked fellow Tory ministers ‘if anyone was interested in changing the captain’
Kemi Badenoch plotted with fellow Conservative cabinet ministers to remove Rishi Sunak as prime minister months before the general election, it has been claimed.
Anthony Seldon, who has written political biographies of every prime minister since John Major, has alleged in a new book that Badenoch, who was business secretary at the time, phoned several other cabinet ministers to ask “if anyone was interested in changing the captain”.
Continue reading...English translation of Élisabeth, the New Wave director’s 1946 book about young lovers in prewar Paris, receives rave reviews as precursor to auteur’s cinematic work
In the dog days of the second world war, 24-year-old Maurice Schérer wrote a tale of young lovers in prewar small-town France. He described lazy August swims in the Marne River east of Paris. He wrote about age-gap affairs and semi-incestuous flirtations. Schérer gallantly used a nom de plume, Gilbert Cordier, to shield his Catholic family from scandal, but he needn’t have bothered as his concerns were unfounded. The finished novel, Élisabeth, barely made a ripple and quickly slipped out of print. Undeterred, Scherer adopted a second pseudonym – Éric Rohmer – and decided to try his luck as a film-maker instead.
Now – eight decades on from its first publication, 16 years on from its author’s death – Élisabeth belatedly returns from the cold. Republished in an English-language translation by Aaron Kerner, Rohmer’s book has been greeted with glowing reviews, hailed as a lost modernist classic and a crucial origin story for the award-winning director of Claire’s Knee, The Green Ray and My Night at Maud’s. “It would be a rewarding, exciting read even if the identity of its author were unfamiliar,” wrote Richard Brody in the New Yorker. The fact that it’s by Rohmer? That’s the icing on the cake.
Continue reading...Bonnier Books will no longer publish UK’s top-selling true crime author following Guardian investigation
The main publisher of the bestselling true crime writer Christopher Berry-Dee has dropped the author after a Guardian investigation into allegations of violence and sexual abuse against him, which he denies. Waterstones has also removed his books from sale.
“We are shocked and appalled by the very serious allegations relating to Christopher Berry-Dee, and our thoughts are with those affected,” said the publisher Bonnier Books in a statement to the Guardian.
Continue reading...Author Adam Johnson criticises Waverley council saying ‘reality is often upsetting’ while Palestinian group says libraries should hold ‘challenging’ books
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A Sydney library has removed a book critical of Israel called How to Sell a Genocide, following a complaint reportedly from a survivor of the Bondi beach terror attack.
Waverley library at Bondi Junction is in the same council area as Bondi beach.
Continue reading...Author Adam Johnson criticises Waverley council saying ‘reality is often upsetting’ while Palestinian group says libraries should hold ‘challenging’ books
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A Sydney library has removed a book critical of Israel called How to Sell a Genocide, following a complaint reportedly from a survivor of the Bondi beach terror attack.
Waverley library at Bondi Junction is in the same council area as Bondi beach.
Continue reading...Author Wendy Jones highlighted the trend in an Instagram post: ‘What is going on here?’
Nine of the 10 bestselling fiction paperbacks in the UK this week have one thing in common: a woman is murdered.
The novels, which appear on this week’s Sunday Times bestseller list, include The Secret of Secrets, The Divorce, The Names, The Family Friend, The Widow, The Impossible Fortune, The Hallmarked Man, My Husband’s Wife and Boleyn Traitor.
Continue reading...Critics say mandating Bible reading for over five million students breaches constitutional separation of church and state
The Texas education board has approved a broad new statewide reading list that, for the first time, will make passages from the Bible required reading for more than 5 million public school students.
Under the new initiative, Bible stories will become mandatory reading for millions of public school students in addition to a more standard collection of books, renewing debate over growing efforts in the US to increase the role of religion in classrooms.
Continue reading...Written in 1947, Kiyoshi Tanimoto’s account of the horrors of the atomic bomb attack will be published in August and is being made into a film
The memoir of a man who survived the horrors of Hiroshima is to be published for the first time this summer after its discovery in a US archive.
The 230-page memoir was written almost 80 years ago by Kiyoshi Tanimoto, who witnessed the city’s destruction after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. He will now be portrayed in a feature film by Takehiro Hira, whose acclaimed roles include the detective in the Netflix Japanese-British drama Giri/Haji. Pre-production begins in November, ahead of the shoot in February 2027.
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