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Author: Gillian Bouras

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The Booker Prize and why it matters

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 12 November 2024

    As the Booker Prize winner is announced, the perennial questions resurface: What does winning truly mean for writers — and for readers? As public values shift, literary prizes ignite fierce debate about artistic merit, cultural relevance, and the commercial impact of awards. Can a prize still shape the future of fiction?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The things we leave behind

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 28 October 2024

    We worry about mortgages, family, and work, but a chance encounter with a Ukrainian refugee reveals a different kind of worry—one filled with uncertainty, displacement and fear. In a world that feels increasingly small, sometimes it takes a stranger to remind us of our place in it.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The watcher on the cast-iron balcony

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 09 October 2024

    Australian writer Hal Porter once described himself as a 'watcher,' a quiet observer of life from the verandahs of his youth. Decades later, from a balcony in a Greek village, the same rhythms repeat — family conversations, street vendors, and the steady hum of village life — reminding us how time subtly transforms both what we see and how we see it.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The end of the morning

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 20 September 2024

    The End of the Morning provides a rich reading experience, showing the reader an Australia that has been largely lost. But most readers will have a sense of dissatisfaction: they will want more. An unfinished novel, and an unfinished life.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Neither here nor there

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 21 August 2024

    In an uncertain world, the one certainty is that of change. Much like David Malouf’s idea that we are all exiles, even those of us who never leave home, for this is the effect that the passing of time has: familiar worlds become strange no matter where we are.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The Desert Knows Her Name

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 02 August 2024

    Conforming and belonging to a genre, in this case, ‘post-colonial, outback noir eco-fiction’, does not mean that a novel is not worthy. With rich symbolism and lyrical prose, Hills challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths about Australian history, land ownership, and the inescapable consequences of past actions.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Digital discrimination

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 04 July 2024

    Digital dominance and the disappearance of print newspapers leaves older generations grappling with endless new tech. I still seek the tactile experience of newsprint — a challenge as publications move online. In an increasingly automated world, I’m not alone in reminiscing about the days when personal interactions were the norm.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Poland and the problem of borders

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 06 June 2024

    The Prime Minister of Poland announced a $2.5 billion plan to fortify borders with Russian Kaliningrad and Belarus,  highlighting the ongoing struggle for stability and security in a continent preparing for a future of conflict.  

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The strange case of Australian noir

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 24 May 2024

    What's the appeal in Australian noir crime fiction? The genre has always been popular in Australia, and Australian writers of crime fiction have always had plenty of material to draw on. Led by authors like Garry Disher and Jane Harper, it has experienced something of a renaissance during the last decade.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    In constant repair

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 02 May 2024

    Where would we be without our friends? Good friends sustain us for decades through good times and bad and steer us through periods of change and crisis. One of the many downsides of old age is the loss of friends: they become ill and die. What to do then? How to cope?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Courting: An intimate history of love and the law

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 19 April 2024
    1 Comment

    Love is a creature of its time, and so ideas, attitudes and conduct of affairs of the heart change and evolve as time passes. Courting explores breach of promise cases in Australia from 1788 until the 1970s, and in doing do, documents the development of Australian society from a penal colony to a free and much more individualistic one.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    By the world forgot

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 10 April 2024
    3 Comments

    For the men in these conflicts, there was an expectation they would resume the lives they had left behind as if nothing had happened, as if they had been on an extended business trip. It calls to mind a phrase that has become common in recent years: unexamined trauma.

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