University of Queensland Press $19.95 pb, 240 pp, 9780702254048
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Julie Koh's first full-length short story collection, Portable Curiosities, is an electrifying satire on Anglo-Australian hegemony and the underbelly of the Australian Dream. In twelve stories populated with ghostly lizard boys, 3D yellow people who step out of the cinema screen like the Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and girls who grow cat ears and tails, Koh provides an existential context for the social effects of consumerism, sexism, misogyny, and racism.
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