An authoritative and comprehensive survey of Australian literary writing, from beginningless time to the present, in all genres. This is an essential reference for anyone interested in Australian literary history.

'Unprecedented in the breadth of what it offers from both the ancient and the recent literature of the country.' - Thomas Keneally. Some of the best, most significant writing produced in Australia over more than two centuries is gathered in this landmark anthology.

In a political system that renders them largely voiceless, Australia's Aboriginal people have used the written word as a powerful tool for over two hundred years. Anthology of Australian Aboriginal Literature presents a rich panorama of Aboriginal culture, history, and life through the writings of some of the great Australian Aboriginal authors. From Bennelong's 1796 letter to contemporary writing, Anita Heiss and Peter Minter have selected works that represent the range and depth of Aboriginal writing in English. Journalism, petitions, and political letters from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are brought together with major works of poetry, prose, and drama from the mid-twentieth century onward. These works voice not only the ongoing suffering of dispossession but the resilience of Australia's Aboriginal people, their hope and joy. Presenting some of the best, most distinctive writing produced in Australia, this groundbreaking anthology will captivate anyone interested in Aboriginal writing and culture.

A groundbreaking collection of work from some of the great Australian Aboriginal writers, the MACQUARIE PEN ANTHOLOGY OF ABORIGINAL LITERATURE offers a rich panorama of over 200 years of Aboriginal culture, history and life. From Bennelong's 1796 letter to contemporary creative writers, Anita Heiss and Peter Minter have selected work that represents the range and depth of Aboriginal writing in English. The anthology includes journalism, petitions and political letters from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as major works that reflect the blossoming of Aboriginal poetry, prose and drama from the mid-twentieth century onwards. Literature has been used as a powerful political tool by Aboriginal people in a political system which renders them largely voiceless. These works chronicle the ongoing suffering of dispossession, but also the resilience of Aboriginal people across the country, and the hope and joy in their lives. With some of the best, most distinctive writing produced in Australia, this anthology is invaluable for anyone interested in Aboriginal writing and culture.

Chi Vu takes the central figure in a traditional Buddhist folktale, a deranged killer who wears his victims’ fingers in a garland around his neck, and turns him into a menacing abbatoir worker who carries bloody chunks of meat home to his lodgings in plastic bags, in this suburban Gothic tale set in 1980s Melbourne, when the flight of Vietnamese refugees to Australia was at its height. The novella gives a compelling insight into the relations formed between refugees who have been displaced from their families or their communities, and lead isolated lives haunted by suspicion and fear. At the same time the novella’s macabre humour and surreal effects point to redemptive possibilities, in demonstrating how these old fears are played out and resolved in their new settings.

A magic pudding who changes from steak and kidney to jam roll and apple dumpling in seconds. A walking, talking dessert that never runs out of pleasing things to eat. A koala bear, named Bunyip Bluegum, A sailor named Bill Barnacle, and Sam Sawnoff the penguin have a wonderful hilarious magical adventure defending the Pudding against thieves who want it for themselves.

Nicholas Jose was Cultural Counsellor at the Australian Embassy in Beijing from 1987 to 1990, at a vital moment in China’s history, and has played an important role in artistic relations between the two countries since then. The title of his new collection of stories refers to an unusual kind of Chinese painting, that tricks the eye into thinking it sees a collage of fragments. Bapo means ‘eight broken’, where eight is a Chinese lucky number and ‘broken’ suggests that luck has run out, though there’s another kind of luck in simply surviving and holding it all together, less glorious maybe, but not so bad in the long run. The stories feature a cast of characters, artists, diplomats, entrepreneurs, refugees, families at the crossroads. They are all held by the past in some way, its hope, idealism, romance, adventure – and aware of its susceptibility to corruption, disappointment or manipulation.