A critical assessment of the shortlist and winner of Australia’s most prestigious literary award, The Miles Franklin Literary Award. Kate and Cassie are joined by guests, scholar and literary biographer (and former judge of the MFLA) Bernadette Brennan; and critic and publisher, Geordie Williamson.

BOOKS

• Brian Castro, Chinese Postman, Giramondo
• Michelle de Kretser, Theory & Practice, Text
• Winnie Dunn, Dirt Poor Islanders, Hachette 
• Julie Janson, Compassion, Magabala Books
• Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13, Allen & Unwin
• Siang Lu, Ghost Cities, UQP (WINNER)

GUESTS

Bernadette Brennan, literary scholar; former judge for the Miles Franklin Literary Award  

Geordie Williamson, chief literary critic, The Australian; publisher, Picador 

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Roi Huberman
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Parties, scandals, sex, love, families, friendship, death – these books have, as they say, all the things. Nell Zink’s Sister Europe moves through one night in Berlin, while Amy Bloom’s I’ll Be Right Here sweeps through 80 years of history, and in James Frey’s Next to Heaven, the beautiful and rich fall apart rather spectacularly.

BOOKS 

Nell Zink, Sister Europe, Penguin Viking 

Amy Bloom, I’ll Be Right Here, Granta 

James Frey, Next to Heaven, Swift 

GUESTS 

Shannon Burns, writer and member of the JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide. His memoir, Childhood, was published in 2022 

Suzanne Leal, writer and literary interviewer. She writes for both adults and children, and her novels include Deceptions, The Watchful Wife and The Teacher’s Secret. Her latest, The Year We Escaped, was published last month

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• James Frey, works
• Raynor Winn, The Salt Path
• Colette, works
• Yuan Yang, Private Revolutions
• Lenora Thaker, The Pearl of Tagai Town
• Peter Grose, A Good Place to Hide
• Pablo Neruda, The Captain's Verses
• Robert Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
• Brian Castro, Chinese Postman

JANE AUSTEN EVENT

Still Turning Heads at 250: Jane Austen’s Enduring Charm

ABC Radio National's The Bookshelf & The Minefield join forces with a literary scholar & the State Library of NSW on Austen the professional. Book your spot here 

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Tegan Nicholls and Emrys Cronin
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Stories of the sea – and a great white whale in Xiaolu Guo's Call Me Ishmaelle; Hungry ghosts and kitchen mishaps in Daria Lavelle's NYC set novel Aftertaste; and the latest Australian crime fiction (of which there is a lot!)

BOOKS 

AUSTRALIAN CRIME FICTION:

•  Mark Brandi, Eden 
• Paul Daley, The Leap 
• Sam Guthrie, The Peak 
• Angie Faye Martin, Melaleuca  
• Michael Robotham, White Crow 
• Tanya Scott, Stillwater 
• Matthew Spencer, Broke Road 

Xiaolu Guo, Call Me Ishmaelle, Chatto & Windus 

Daria Lavelle, Aftertaste, Bloomsbury 

GUESTS 

Mark Dunn, historian whose latest book is The Convict Valley: The Bloody Struggle on Australia's Early Frontier 

Danielle Bagnato, writer and book critic – whose work appears in The Big Issue 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
• Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
• Alice Oseman, Radio Silence
• Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby
• Douglas Stewart, Young Mungo
• Herman Melville, Moby Dick
• Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
• Richard Flanagan, Question 7
• V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
• Catherine Webb, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
• Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman; Vanishing World
• Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Simon Branthwaite and Roi Huberman
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

A panel of international authors discuss the current state of the art of fiction. The latest Booker Prize winner Samantha Harvey, Rumaan Alam, Torrey Peters, and Robbie Arnott find connections in their writing and their bookshelves.

PANELLISTS

• Samantha Harvey, an English writer whose five novels include The Wilderness, Dear Thief, and the 2024 Booker Prize winner, Orbital. Her non-fiction work is The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping
• Rumaan Alam, an American writer whose five novels include Rich and Pretty, Leave the World Behind and Entitlement.
• Torrey Peters, an American writer of novels, short stories and novellas, including her debut novel Detransition, Baby and a new collection, Stag Dance.
• Robbie Arnott, an Australian writer whose novels are Flames, The Rain Heron, Limberlost and Dusk.

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OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
• George Orwell, 1984
• Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
• Melanie Cheng, The Burrow
• Helen Garner, The Children’s Bach
• Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
• Edward St Aubyn, Parallel Lines

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CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans
• Producer, Kate Evans & Salome Lines-Morison
• Sound Engineer, Simon Branthwaite & Timothy Jenkins
• Executive Producer, Rhiannon Brown

The same question is at the heart of three very different international novels on The Bookshelf this week, “What really happened”…

To a WWI soldier who has forgotten his name and identity in The Remembered Soldier by Dutch author Anjet Daanje?

To a fortune teller for the elite class in Ben Okri’s Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken-hearted?

When four high achieving American boys entered a cave, and one emerged terribly hurt, In Sameer Pandya’s Our Beautiful Boys?

Keep scrolling for a full list of all books mentioned on this week's program.

BOOKS

• Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier (translated from the Dutch by David McKay), Scribe 
• Ben Okri, Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken-hearted, Apollo 
• Sameer Pandya, Our Beautiful Boys,  Bloomsbury  
•  

GUESTS 

Tom Wright, theatre writer and adapter, and Artistic Associate at Belvoir Street Theatre.

Bronwyn Rivers, researcher and novelist whose debut, The Reunion was released this year. She also has a PhD on the 19th century novel.

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Bronwyn Rivers, The Reunion
• Max Porter, Grief is the Thing With Feathers
• Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock
• Ben Okri, The Famished Road
• William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
• William Shakespeare, As You Like It
• T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
• Ben Okri, The Freedom Artist
• E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
• Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap
• Curzio Malaparte, The Skin
• Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob
• Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
• Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
• Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun
• Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me
• Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
• Kate Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook: A Jackson Brodie Novel

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans & Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans & Salome Lines-Morison
• Sound Engineer, Simon Branthwaite & Tegan Nicholls
• Executive Producer, Rhiannon Brown

What would make a great Australian sporting novel? Our guests discuss translating the love of the game, footy nicknames, and intense team culture in ex-AFL player Brandon Jack’s Pissants.

And making sport of the Melbourne literary scene, Dominic Amarena’s debut novel I Want Everything is a clever, celebratory satire. 

Kate and Cassie also review the 2025 International Booker Prize winner Heart Lamp, a collection of short stories from southern India. 

Meanwhile, back home, The Miles Franklin shortlist has been announced.

Miles Franklin Literary Award Shortlist:

• Brian Castro, Chinese Postman 
• Michelle de Kretser, Theory & Practice
• Winnie Dunn, Dirt Poor Islanders
• Julie Janson, Compassion
• Siang Lu, Ghost Cities
• Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13

BOOKS

• Banu Mushtaq, Heart Lamp: selected stories (translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhashti), Scribe 
• Brandon Jack, Pissants, Summit Books Australia  
• Dominic Amarena, I Want Everything, Summit Books Australia  

GUESTS 

James Button, writer, editor and journalist, whose books include Comeback: The Fall and Rise of Geelong, and Speechless: A Year in my Father's Business, about his time working as a speechwriter for Kevin Rudd and what that taught him about his own father's life, John Button, Minister for Industry in the Hawke and Keating Governments. 

Beejay Silcox, writer, literary critic, and regular interviewer at writers’ festivals. 

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OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• James Button, Comeback: The Fall and Rise of Geelong
• James Button, Speechless: A Year in my Father’s Business
• Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
• Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot
• Brandon Jack, 28
• Leigh Matthews, Accept the Challenge
• Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
• Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
• Helen Garner, The Season
• David Williamson, The Club
• Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters
• Halldór Laxness, Independent People
• George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Middlemarch
• R. F. Kuang, Yellowface
• R. F. Kuang, Katabasis
• Lucas Schaefer, The Slip
• David Remnick, King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero

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CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans & Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans & Salome Lines-Morison
• Sound Engineer, Roi Huberman & Dylan Prins
• Executive Producer, Rhiannon Brown

The latest best-selling novels from Taylor Jenkins-Reid (Atmosphere) and Fredrik Backman (My Friends) explore 1980s astronauts, ambition and romance; and teenage anguish, friendship and art. Emotive and cinematic, how often is popular fiction written for the screen?

Speaking of the screen, screenwriter Thomas Vowles’ debut novel Our New Gods takes us on a twisted psychological thriller through gay saunas, bush doofs, and the grit of Melbourne’s queer scene.

BOOKS

• Thomas Vowles, Our New Gods, UQP
• Fredrik Backman, My Friends (Translated from Swedish by Neil Smith), Simon and Schuster
• Taylor Jenkins-Reid, Atmosphere, Hutchinson Heinemann

(Keep scrolling to see all other books mentioned on the program)

GUESTS

Tegan Bennett-Daylight, author and teacher of creative writing, whose books include the novels Bombora and What Falls Away; the essay collection, The Details; the short story collection, Six Bedrooms; and the Young Adult novels Royals and (her latest) How to Survive 1985. She’s a Bookshelf regular.

Richard Aedy, longtime Radio National colleague (whose programs included The Money and Life Matters); now producing a podcast for the Productivity Commission: The ProdCast; Also a Bookshelf regular.  

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Taylor Jenkins-Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six
• Holden Sheppard, King of Dirt
• Bret Easton Ellis, The Shards
• Tegan Bennett-Daylight, Royals
• Tegan Bennett-Daylight, How to Survive 1985
• Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove
• Fredrik Backman, Beartown
• Fredrik Backman, Anxious People
• Percival Everett, James
• Samantha Harvey, Orbital
• Ceridwen Dovey, Only The Astronauts
• Taylor Jenkins-Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
• Taylor Jenkins-Reid, Malibu Rising
• Taylor Jenkins-Reid, Carrie Soto is Back: A Novel
• Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time
• Kevin Barry, The Heart in Winter
• Kevin Barry, Night Boat to Tangier
• Sarah Holland-Batt, The Jaguar
• Michelle de Krester, Theory & Practice
• Sharleigh Crittenden, The Un-doing (Published in Island magazine #173)
• Ben Lerner, The Hatred of Poetry
• Ben Lerner, The Topeka School
• Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station
• Ben Lerner, 10:04

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans & Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans & Salome Lines-Morison
• Sound Engineer, John Jacobs & Anne-Marie de Bettencor
• Executive Producer, Rhiannon Brown

A guide to James Joyce from Irish writer Mary Morrissy, ahead of Bloomsday (16 June); New Zealand writer Becky Manawatu continues to explore howls of pain and compassion in her second novel, Kataraina; and magic realism in the boundaries between life and death, and Eastern Europe, in Helen Marshall's The Lady, the Tiger and the Girl Who Loved Death. 

BOOKS

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

Mary Morrissy, Penelope Unbound, Banshee Press

Becky Manawatu, Kataraina, Scribe

Helen Marshall, The Lady, the Tiger and the Girl Who Loved Death, Titan Books

(Keep scrolling for a list of all other books mentioned on the program)

GUESTS

Mary Morrissy, Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist and teacher of creative writing. Her books include Penelope Unbound — a speculative history of the life of Norah Barnacle, wife of James Joyce. She is currently in Australia and taking part in Bloomsday Events

Claire Mabey, NZ children's author, editor and founder of the Verb Wellington readers and writers festival. Her novel, The Raven's Eye Runaways, has just been named as a finalist in the NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults

Robert Goodman, reviewer and literary judge specialising in genre fiction (he's been a judge and organiser for the Ned Kelly Awards for crime fiction since 2008; regularly reviews for the Newtown Review of Books — and is one of the most active members of the ABC Book Club Facebook Group). His website is pilebythebed.com

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Alan Hollinghurst, works
• James Joyce, Dubliners, Ulysses, Finnegan's Wake
• Catherine Chidgey, The Book of Guilt
• Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
• Jennifer Trevelyan, A Beautiful Family
• Francesca Wade, Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars
• Ray Nayler, Where the Axe is Buried
• Luke Arnold, Whisper in the Wind
• Emily Tesh, The Incandescent

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Salome Lines-Morison
• Sound engineers, JOhn Jacobs and Roi Huberman
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Fiction from all over the world, crossing genres, borders and ideas in American crime writer S A Cosby's King of Ashes, a gripping tale of family, smoke, and fire; Irish writer Sean Hewitt’s Open, Heaven, a beautifully woven story about longing, escape and memory; and, first up, The Name of the Sister, the latest from acclaimed Australian literary novelist Gail Jones.

BOOKS 

Gail Jones, The Name of the Sister, Text 

S A Cosby, King of Ashes, Headline 

Seán Hewitt, Open, Heaven, Jonathan Cape 

GUESTS 

Toby Schmitz, actor, playwright and author – whose historical crime novel The Empress Murders has just been released 

Steve MinOn, writer whose debut novel First Name Second Name was published in March of this year 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Alan Hollinghurst, works
• Diana Preston, A Higher Form of Killing
• Martin Amis, Time's Arrow
• Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers
• Dahlia de la Cerda, Reservoir Bitches
• Garth Jones, Black Pills
• Laura Elvery, Nightingale

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Harvey O'Sullivan
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Kate and Cassie read W.A. writer Holden Sheppard's King of Dirt, a vibrant, gay coming-of-age story set in Geraldton. Plus, Australian author Jennifer Mills' new one, Salvage, in which we enter a very well drawn post apocalyptic Mad Max-ish world; and, Florence Knapp's The Names has been named one of the most anticipated fiction releases of the year, a sliding doors story leading to three different versions of one family's life. Does it live up to the hype?

BOOKS

Holden Sheppard, King of Dirt, Pantera Press

Jennifer Mills, Salvage, Picador

Florence Knapp, The Names, Phoenix

GUESTS

Johan Gabrielsson, documentary maker currently working on a film about architecture and modernism

Seth Robinson, writer, producer, and lecturer at the University of Melbourne

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

• Tim Winton, Juice
• James Bradley, Landfall
• Charles Dickens, works
• Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
• Hisham Matar: A Month in Siena; The Return: My Friends
• Asako Yuzuki, Butter
• Dominic Amerena, I Want Everything

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Roi Huberman and Tim Jenkins
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown