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Keywords: Memoir

  • AUSTRALIA

    The fraught search for identity

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 June 2024

    The wonder of Khin Myint's Fragile Creature: A Memoir lies in his calm and magnanimous reflection on his experiences and in his attempt to understand those who treated him poorly. It also provides a lens for reflecting on the dynamic at work in public debates that touch identity.

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2023: The Empty Honour Board

    • Michele Gierck
    • 11 January 2024

    In his latest book, The Empty Honour Board: A School Memoir, Martin Flanagan reckons with the legacy of abuse in the Catholic Church by looking back at his experiences at boarding school in Tasmania. In an interview with Michele Gierck for Eureka Street, Martin talks about the process of uncovering what happened all those years ago. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Who loves longer? In conversation with Richard Flanagan

    • Michael McGirr
    • 01 December 2023
    2 Comments

    Flanagan’s new book, Question 7, a beautiful and profound reading experience. It is a deeply personal memoir, a net woven from many threads. It traces the fine lines that link stories across time and around the world.

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  • RELIGION

    The Empty Honour Board: In Conversation with Martin Flanagan

    • Michele Gierck
    • 18 August 2023
    5 Comments

    In his latest book, The Empty Honour Board: A School Memoir, Martin Flanagan reckons with the legacy of abuse in the Catholic Church by looking back at his experiences at boarding school in Tasmania. In an interview with Michele Gierck for Eureka Street, Martin talks about the process of uncovering what happened all those years ago. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    We don't know ourselves: A personal history of Ireland

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 07 July 2023
    1 Comment

    Comparing perspectives from different generations of Irish writers, Fintan O'Toole explores the weight of Ireland's 'lovely past', its unaddressed traumas, and their impact on the present. Addressing themes of change, politics, and religion, his narrative offers an unflinching exploration of the Emerald Isle's history.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bridging histories: In conversation with Tony Birch

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 23 June 2023
    1 Comment

    Renowned author and academic Tony Birch is known for his insightful and compelling narrative explorations into societal issues like marginalisation, Aboriginal identity and racial struggles. In conversation with Paul Mitchell, Birch discusses his work, the unique intersection of academia and creative writing, and the profound impact of historical dispossession.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The thing with feathers

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 29 September 2022
    5 Comments

    Humans depend greatly on hope. In a recent interview, Tova Friedman discusses her book The Daughter of Auschwitz, the memoir of the part of her childhood spent in the eponymous and notorious concentration camp. Can someone who has seen first hand the depths of human depravity be at all hopeful about the future?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The book corner: Telltale

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 02 September 2022
    1 Comment

    Australian cultural icon and erstwhile publisher Hilary McPhee calls Telltale ‘a rare thing, an ingenious memoir,’ and she is right. It is interesting and reassuring to note that books about reading and recollections of reading habits seem to be proliferating. Perhaps such writing is a defence measure against worrying developments like universities in England, for example, axing their English Literature courses.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A living memoir of my father

    • David Ishaya Osu
    • 15 December 2020
    2 Comments

    I have stared at this photograph of me and Dad for more than five months. The picture was found in Mum’s drawer. After some calculations and contemplations, Mum said I was three years old in the photo. How much can I remember from age three? How far back in time can I go? What I could only do was stare, imagine, and ask questions.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Secret trials in the Australian 'police state'

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 26 November 2019
    15 Comments

    It sounds like a police state effort. An author makes an attempt to assist a pseudonymously named prisoner publish a memoir. The effort is scotched by the authorities. The police spring into action raiding the cell of that prisoner, and that of his brother. All take place without the knowledge of the Australia media or public.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Echoes of Auschwitz in Manus memoir

    • Brian Matthews
    • 27 March 2019
    6 Comments

    Like Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi in his works, Behrouz Boochani's No Friend but the Mountains exemplifies among many other things 'the possibilities of human decency' despite the Manus prison's squalor. Like George Orwell in another time and place, he is buoyed by hope in irrepressible nature.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Portrait of a killer at school

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 27 June 2018

    My Friend Dahmer, based on the memoir by John Backderf about his teenage friendship with the soon-to-be killer, is a complex character study of which Dahmer's troubled home life, repressed homosexuality, abuse of alcohol, and experiences of bullying and social alienation are motley features rather than defining characteristics.

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