Nicholas Birns (ed.), Antipodes

A polyphony of voices in Antipodes offers readers a textured view of literature from Australia and New Zealand. Contributors to this biannual journal are Australianists from all over the world. This globalisation is perhaps best evidenced by the inclusion of critics from Portugal, Slovenia, Lebanon, and Austria, writing incisively about Gail Jones, Indigenous poetry, Australian Lebanese writers, and German translations of Aboriginal literature. Stephen Mansfield’s melismatic double feature on fathers and masculinity in John Hughes’s The Idea of Home (2004) is a highlight, but his interview with Hughes suffers from being conducted via email, while Jean-François Vernay’s interview with Sallie Muirden is a fascinating and unconstrained discussion of writing. Mark Larrimore’s essay on teaching ‘Aboriginal Australian Religion in an American Liberal Arts College’ is another example of the way Antipodes offers more than standard critiques on literature.