The best books of 2024 as selected by Cassie McCullagh, Kate Evans, Jason Steger, Lev Grossman and Michaela Kalowski. Keep scrolling for a full (and somewhat idiosyncratic) list. GUESTS Jason Steger, literary journalist. Former literary editor at the Age and SMH; and regular guest on ABC TV's Tuesday Book Club. Lev Grossman, bestselling American novelist and journalist — whose books include The Magicians trilogy and (his latest), The Bright Sword (an Arthurian tale). Michaela Kalowski, literary interviewer and the curator of Radio National's Big Weekend of Books BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS (listed ac ..read more

What do Kate and Cassie make of Will Self’s Elaine, a portrait of a frustrated fifties housewife, based on his mother's own diaries. Plus, The City and its Uncertain Walls, the much anticipated new novel by Haruki Murakami with a dreamy library in a parallel universe at its centre; and Rosalia Aguilar Solace’s The Great Library of Tomorrow, another novel set in an alternate world that pays tribute to libraries. BOOKS Will Self, Elaine, Grove Press Haruki Murakami, The City and its Uncertain Walls (translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel), Harvill Secker Rosalia Aguilar Solace, The Great ..read more

A peripatetic hotel, a paddle steamer of dreams and a dastardly law firm, in Jock Serong’s Cherrywood; one of the 20th century’s top 10 all-star ‘leading’ murderers, and what it might mean to be close to him, in Malcolm Knox’s The First Friend; and spies, caves, lies and Neanderthals in Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake.  BOOKS  Malcolm Knox, The First Friend, Allen & Unwin  Jock Serong, Cherrywood, Fourth Estate  Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake, Jonathan Cape  GUESTS  Roanna Gonsalves, creative writing academic, writer whose books include the short story collectio ..read more

What does the 2024 Miles Franklin shortlist tell us about our shared imagination? Bernadette Brennan and Geordie Williamson join Kate and Cassie to examine the winner, Alexis Wright's epic novel Praiseworthy, and all the finalists for Australia’s most prestigious literary prize. BOOKS WINNER: Alexis Wright, Praiseworthy (Giramondo) REST OF SHORTLIST: Hossein Asgari, Only Sound Remains (Puncher & Wattmann)Jen Craig, Wall (Puncher & Wattmann)André Dao, Anam (Hamish Hamilton)Gregory Day, The Bell of the World (Transit Lounge)Sanya Rushdi, Hospital, (Giramondo) GUESTS Bernadette Brennan, l ..read more

Cassie and Jonathan Green look at Until August, the lost novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and guest reviewers Hannah Kent and Roanna Gonsalves discuss powerful new fiction out of Iceland and the UK ..read more

Melanie Saward joins Kate for a genre-filled reading recommendation discussion of romance, the pseudonymous crime fiction of Australian author George Johnston (with Derham Groves), and historical fiction of the Hundred Years War with Dan Jones. What will you read over Summer ..read more

A focus on literature in translation with special guests Bora Chung and Anton Hur, both of whom are South Korean authors and translators, who translate each others' work, and write outside the system of state-sanctioned literature. Anton translates from Korean into English; Bora translates Russian and Polish works into Korean. In this episode, they describe each others' work, discuss translation, give recommendations, and respond to fellow South Korean writer Han Kang's Nobel Prize in literature. We also meet Chinese podcaster and translator Yu Shi, who has translated Margaret Atwood and Jeane ..read more

Derided, disparaged and cursed to the heavens, book critics are depicted as literature’s grand villains – as frustrated creators and gleeful wreckers. But what do critics really do? And why are they necessary for a healthy literary ecosystem? James Jiang, Beejay Silcox and Christos Tsiolkas join Kate and Cassie as part of a panel discussion at Canberra Writers' Festival - five Aussie critics - making the case for criticism ..read more

Niall Williams’ Time of the Child might just be the big ‘feel-good book of the year’—but there’s more to it than that. This is a beautifully written Irish story, full of ordinary lives described in painfully funny detail. Also, Scottish writer Ali Smith and her too-real-to-be-allegorical Gliff; and in Alan Moore's The Great When, we're presented with a hallucinatory vision of an alternative London, anchored in post-World War ll realism. BOOKS Ali Smith, Gliff, Hamish Hamilton Alan Moore, The Great When, Bloomsbury Niall Williams, Time of the Child, Bloomsbury GUESTS Garth Nix, sci-fi and fanta ..read more

The Dressmaker’s backstory, a universe of stars to expand our ideas about nature writing, and fragments and tricks galore: Kate and Cassie read Inga Simpson’s The Thinning, Brian Castro’s Chinese Postman and Rosalie Ham’s Molly with guests Ella Jeffery and Amanda HampsonBOOKSInga Simpson, The Thinning, HachetteBrian Castro, Chinese Postman, GiramondoRosalie Ham, Molly, PicadorGUESTSDr Ella Jeffery, poet and lecturer in Creative Writing at Griffith University, Qld; ABC Radio National ‘Top 5 Arts’ candidate; currently examining insecure housing as a theme in 21st-century literatureAmanda Hampson ..read more