Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Australia is an improbable country. Fundamentally -- naturally -- nowhere else is like it. Superficially -- suburbanly -- it could be one stop farther down a long extension of the London Underground or the New York subway.
This special 352-page issue of Granta is devoted to Australia, as it was and is, in new fiction, reportage, memoir, and photography. With poetry by Les Murray, fiction by Frank Moorhouse and Tim Winton, and essays by Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally, Paul Toohey, and Peter Conrad.
Synopsis
Is Australia a remote chunk of the northern, western world or a part of Asia? Is it a new version of the USA with European manners ("the new California"), or a second-hand version of Europe with American ones? How does it accommodate the fate of its original human inhabitants, or propose a decent future for them? Why is its head of state still the British queen? In Australia, two universal, modern problems are vividly posed. Who are we? What shall we become?