Cities that are both flooded and on alert for the next storm in James Bradley’s Landfall. The body of a saint, dreamily and weirdly listening to everyone around her in Western Australia, in Josephine Rowe’s Little World. And from Malaysia, Tash Aw's The South, in which a family has left the city to head to a failing orchard, a story of longing, promise, generations, and misunderstandings  

BOOKS 

James Bradley, Landfall, Penguin 

Josephine Rowe, Little World, Black Inc 

Tash Aw, The South, Fourth Estate 

GUESTS 

Tegan Bennett-Daylight, novelist, teacher, and essayist, whose books include Bombora, What Falls Away, and The Details. Her latest, How to Survive 1985, is a YA novel that will be published in May  

Rosa Ellen, producer and presenter with Radio National’s Arts team 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDWilla Cather, worksDavid Szalay, FleshGretchen Shirm, Out of the Woods  Yuko Tsushima, Territory of Light  Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Kappa Kazuo Ishiguro, A Pale View of Hills

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans and Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, Craig Tilmouth and Isabella Tropiano
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Irish writer Niall Williams with Kate Evans at the 2025 Adelaide Writers Week — with a focus on his Faha novels, History of the Rain, This is Happiness and (his latest) Time of the Child.

Williams is also a screenwriter, playwright and travel writer — and his first novel, Four Letters of Love, has just been released as a film.

He also appeared onstage at AWW with Kate and Cassie, for a special edition of the Bookshelf on books, reading, and influences, with English writer Charlotte Mendelsohn and Australian writer Brian Castro.

Families, secrets, mysteries, war...Kate and Cassie read Eric Puchner’s Dream State, an American saga that spans fifty years and is set against the expansive beauty of Montana; mysterious encounters and marital strife between an actor and an art critic in New York in Katie Kitamura’s Audition, and a World War II story set in an apartment block in Brussels in Alice Austen’s 33 Place Brugmann.

BOOKS

Eric Puchner, Dream State, Sceptre

Katie Kitamura, Audition, Fern Press

Alice Austen, 33 Place Brugmann, Bloomsbury

GUESTS

Mark Mordue, music writer, journalist, poet – whose books include Boy on Fire: The Young Nick Cave. He’s also director of the Addi Road Writers Festival – a community festival in Sydney’s Marrickville – coming up on Saturday 17 May

Gretchen Shirm, novelist and literary critic – whose books include Having Cried Wolf, The Crying Room and her latest (published this month), Out of the Woods

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDJohn Irving, The World According to GarpSvetlana Alexievich, worksT.S. Eliot, GerontionLucy Sante, I Heard Her Call My NameHan Kang, We Do Not PartJames Bradley, LandfallClinton Heylin, Behind the Shades RevisitedPatrick Holland, OblivionBret Easton Ellis, Less than Zero

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, John Jacobs + Dylan Prins
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

Cassie McCullagh is on leave this week, so Kate Evans and guests read Lucy Rose’s The Lamb, Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel, and Rachel Morton’s The Sun was Electric Light (with interview extracts from Lucy Rose on body horror and Cumbrian folk traditions, and from Rachel Morton on her move from poetry to prose).

BOOKS 

Rachel Morton, The Sun was Electric Light, UQP 

Lucy Rose, The Lamb, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 

Laila Lalami, The Dream Hotel, Bloomsbury 

GUESTS 

Roanna Gonsalves, writer, academic, teacher of creative writing. Her collection of short stories, The Permanent Resident, was published in India and South Asia as, Sunita De Souza Goes To Sydney

Annie Coulthard has worked in radio and publishing – and is a dedicated reader 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Philip K. Dick, The Minority Report

Franz Kafka, works

Michelle de Krester, Questions of Travel; Theory and Practice

Christopher Isherwood, works

Melanie Cheng, The Burrow

Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre

Elizabeth Jane Howard, We Are For the Dark

Sanya Rushdi, Hospital

Jessie Tu, The Honeyeater

Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13; The Sun Walks Down

Eileen Chong, We Speak of Flowers

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans 
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: Simon Branthwaite
• Executive producer: Rhiannon Brown

Kate and Cassie read three new works of fiction, with the help of two guest reviewers: a novel of ideas, death, love and music, in Australian writer Andrea Goldsmith's The Buried Life; a real train derailment from the 1890s hurtles together rail workers, coffee sellers, anarcho-feminism, art and typewriters in Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue's The Paris Express (read with historical novelist Natasha Lester); and rocknroll choices, career crises and friendship in Australian YA author Claire Zorn's first adult novel, Better Days (read with doco maker and academic, Anna Broinowski).

BOOKS

Andrea Goldsmith, The Buried Life, Transit Lounge

Emma Donoghue, The Paris Express, Picador

Claire Zorn, Better Days, Atlantic Books

GUESTS

Natasha Lester, historical novelist whose books include A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald, The Paris Seamstress and The French Photographer. Her latest novel — her ninth — is The Mademoiselle Alliance, and it was published last week

Anna Broinowski is a documentary maker, memoirist and academic at Sydney College of the Arts. Her books include Datsun Angel: A true-story adventure inside the savage heart of 1980s Australia and Please Explain: The rise and fall and rise again of Pauline Hanson. She also works on the films of North Korea and the impact of deep fakes

Other books mentioned in the discussion:

Sarah Wynne-Williams, Careless People

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep

Cameron Stewart, Why do Horses Run

Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk

Douglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest

CREDITS

•    Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh

•    Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett

•    Sound engineers: Emrys Cronin, Simon Branthwaite

•    Executive producer: Rhiannon Brown

Kate and Cassie discuss bestselling American writer Curtis Sittenfeld’s sharp and observant collection of short stories Show Don’t Tell; You Am I frontman Tim Rogers reads First Name Second Name, an excellent debut from Queensland novelist Steve MinOn, and the ABC’s own Zan Rowe (of Triple J, Double J and Take 5 fame) shares her thoughts on Scottish singer-songwriter (from Belle and Sebastian) Stuart Murdoch’s Nobody’s Empire, a case of life inspiring art.

BOOKS 

Curtis Sittenfeld, Show Don’t Tell, Doubleday 

Stuart Murdoch, Nobody’s Empire: A Novel, Faber 

Steve MinOn, First Name Second Name, UQP 

GUESTS 

Tim Rogers, lead singer with You Am I and The Hard-Ons, about to launch into a You Am I tour celebrating 30 years of the Hi Fi Way album. Author of Detours

Zan Rowe, Double J’s Music Correspondent and host of Friday Mornings; presenter of Take 5 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

Andrew O'Hagan, Mayflies

Robbie Arnott, Dusk

Hannah Kent, works

Lech Blaine, Australian Gospel

Helen Garner, The Season; Monkey Grip

Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days; Horse

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Jennifer Homans, Mr. B 

Ronald Hugh Morrieson, The Scarecrow

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: Craig Tilmouth, Emrys Cronin
• Executive producer: Rhiannon Brown

This week’s novels takes us to Zanzibar, Budapest and Renaissance Florence with Nobel Prize-winning English-Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Theft; while guest reviewers Tim Ayliffe reads Laurent Binet’s Perspectives; and Siang Lu reads David Szalay’s Flesh.

BOOKS 

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Theft, Bloomsbury 

Laurent Binet, Perspectives (translated from the French by Sam Taylor), Harvill Secker 

David Szalay, Flesh, Jonathan Cape 

GUESTS

Tim Ayliffe, journalist and crime writer – whose John Bailey series include the books The Enemy Within, Killer Traitor Spy, and The Wrong Man

Siang Lu, writes for film and TV and is also the author of the books Ghost Cities and The Whitewash 

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDMichael Connelly, works Leon Uris, worksJohn Le Carre, worksStephen King, worksAndrew O'Hagan, Caledonian Road; MayfliesNick Cave and Swan O'Hagan, Faith, Hope and Carnage Sara Foster, When She Was GoneCamille Booker, The Woman in the WavesNatasha Rai, An Onslaught of LightSteve MinOn, First Name Second Name

This edition of the Bookshelf was recorded on stage at Adelaide Writers' Week on Sunday 2 March – with Irish writer Niall Williams (Time of the Child), English writer Charlotte Mendelson (Wife) and all the way from the Adelaide Hills, Australian writer Brian Castro (Chinese Postman). How and when do they do their best reading, what have books meant to them, what are their influences and touchstones? With a surprising swerve or to into the bath and to the funeral of a beloved author.

BOOKS MENTIONED

Laurence Sterne, works

James Joyce, works, Ulysses

Samuel Beckett, works

P. W. Joyce, English As We Speak It in Ireland

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Bleak House

W.G.Sebald, Rings of Saturn; Austerlitz

Thomas Bernhard, works

Helen Garner, Diaries; The Children's Bach; Monkey Grip  

Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls; Memoir

Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil

Salvatore Satta, The Day of Judgment

Samantha Harvey, Orbital  

Ceridwen Dovey, Only the Astronauts

Louise Glück, works

Anne Carson, works

Jelena Dinic, works

Alistair MacLeod, Ireland and Other Stories

John McGahern, Amongst Women

Percival Everett, James

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall  

James McBride, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

Patrick Lane, There is a Season

Alba de Céspedes, works

Elena Ferrante, works

Four women’s lives intertwined between Africa and the USA in Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count. Plus, secrets and trauma in the South of France  in Australian novelist Diana Reid’s new one, Signs of Damage; and into the Swedish wilderness to observe a group of seven unlikely people in indie musician turned novelist Annika Norlin’s Colony.

BOOKS

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dream Count, Fourth Estate

Diana Reid, Signs of Damage, Ultimo Press

Annika Norlin, Colony, (translated from the Swedish by Alice E. Olsson), Scribe

GUESTS

Peter Polites, Western Sydney writer whose books include the novels Down the Hume and The Pillars, and the memoir-fiction hybrid, God Forgets About the Poor

Stephanie Smee is a translator who works from French into English and whose translations include Hannelore Cayre’s The Godmother, Helene Gaudy’s A World with No Shore and Marie-Helene La Fon’s The Son’s Story

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDChimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun; AmericanaDiana Reid, Love and Virtue; Seeing Other PeopleFiona McGregor, Chemical Palace; IrisJames Parker, Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes: Odes to Being Alive

CREDITS

• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer: Ann Marie Debettencor, Simon Branthwaite
• Executive producer: Rhiannon Brown

Irish writer Colum McCann’s Twist dives deep under the ocean and takes on a charismatic mystery; 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang’s We Do Not Part explores massacres on Jeju Island during (and after) the Korean War, stories actively repressed by both the South Korean and American governments; and Australian novelist Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore takes us to a fictional island between Tasmania and Antarctica, inhabited only by a man and his three children.

BOOKS

Colum McCann, Twist, Bloomsbury 

Han Kang, We Do Not Part (translated from Korean by e. yaewon & Page Aniyah Morris), Hamish Hamilton 

Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore, Penguin Random House 

GUESTS

Beejay Silcox, critic, essayist and regular onstage interviewer of writers. Until last week – Director of the Canberra Writers Festival

Bernadette Brennan, literary scholar and judge, whose books include literary biographies of Australian Helen Garner and Gillian Mears

OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Susannah Clarke, Piranesi

Sarah Manguso, Liars

Alba de Céspedes, No Turning Back

CREDITS

• Presenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullagh
• Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineer, John Jacobs
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown