About three-quarters through Acrobat Music: New & Selected Poems, Jill Jones nudges the reader knowingly in the ribs. ‘Difficult Poem’... The post Walking as a<br>Jittery Mortal appeared first on Sydney Review of Books ..read more

Since the 1980s, fiction has become big business. In her review of Dan Sinykin’s wide-ranging study of American publishing, Alice Grundy argues for the importance of the demythologising effects of Sinykin’s institutionalist approach for both literary scholarship and industrial relations. The post Selling Tales, Telling Sales appeared first on Sydney Review of Books ..read more

In her review of Jennifer Croft’s new novel, Alice Whitmore unearths the hidden correspondences between the fungal kingdom and the world of translation. The post The Art of <br>De-Composition appeared first on Sydney Review of Books ..read more

This open letter contains a statement by teachers, researchers, and students connected to literature and creative writing in Australian universities regarding colleagues and peers in Palestine.  The post An open letter regarding Palestine from the literature and creative writing community appeared first on Sydney Review of Books ..read more

What makes sentient machines tick? In a review of Lorraine Daston’s ‘Rules’, Nicholas Heron traces the history of the algorithm, showing that at stake in the age of AI is our very understanding of rationality. The post Critique of Pure Mindlessness appeared first on Sydney Review of Books ..read more

Through a reading of Jane Carey’s historical study, Jessica White tracks the paths made by Australian women through the settler academy in the ardent pursuit of science. The post Prevailing Passions appeared first on Sydney Review of Books ..read more

Mindy Gill parses the influence of George Eliot on Zadie Smith’s most recent novel, The Fraud – a capacious and non-linear work, the pluralistic ambition of which has put critics ‘off-balance’ The post Riotous Subjects  appeared first on Sydney Review of Books ..read more

Drawing on the insights of two new books of literary criticism, Joshua Barnes argues that recent developments, such as the rise of autofiction, should serve to remind us that the novel, fiction, and realism are distinct categories despite their historical convergence. The post Maximally<br> Close Contact appeared first on Sydney Review of Books ..read more

In her final essay, literary scholar Sneja Gunew (1946–2024) explores the affective dimensions of migrant writers’ transit between languages, capping a lifetime’s advocacy for those whose participation in the national culture ‘is grounded in their differences’. We present a lightly edited version of this essay with reflections on Gunew’s life and work by Ivor Indyk and Eda Gunaydin. The post Multilingual Affect  appeared first on Sydney Review of Books ..read more

Lucy Van reviews π.O.’s The Tour, a pugnacious verse chronicle of a poetic caper around the United States. From his dirty t-shirt to his dissatisfactions with American food, π.O.’s emblematic gestures of refusal characterise a volume that, for Van, exposes ‘the orders and disorders of our national poetry’. The post Getting Shirty appeared first on Sydney Review of Books ..read more