We were dismayed to see no Australians on the New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century – so, with the help of 50 experts, we created our own, all-Australian list. You can have your say, too!
- Adjunct Lecturer, English and Creative Writing, UNSW Canberra, UNSW
Rachel Cusk’s twelfth novel is strange, compelling and ferociously intelligent. It explores artists, mothers and daughters, and the ‘blankness of spirituality’ on the other side of gender.
When Jane Gleeson-White’s marriage ended two years after her mother died, she lost her voice. Books by women writers like Rachel Cusk, Olivia Laing and Maggie Nelson helped her find it again.
Deborah Levy’s new novel, set in our pandemic-era present, contains the heat and desire of a European summer and the upward struggle of a soul. Jane Gleeson-White says she ‘read it like a thriller’.
Alexis Wright’s latest novel is an elegy and an ode to Aboriginal law and sovereignty: innovative, visionary, and volcanic in its rage.
Half-wild Lyra from Northern Lights was the first female character who felt real to Jane Gleeson-White. Then she met Elena Ferrante’s ‘ferocious, filthy, quicksilver’ Lila, a more complex version.
Pure Colour confirms Sheila Heti as one of the most inventive, searching, scintillating and mind-bending writers working today.
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