The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past; it keeps coming back as different novels, and writers do things differently there. Nazi Germany remains history’s prime hothouse from which to procure blooms for fiction’s bouquet. All those darkly perfumed spikes – drama and tragedy intrinsic, memory within recall.
David Whish-Wilson’s début novel opens in Berlin, 1934. Our hero is th ... (read more)
W.H. Chong
W.H. Chong is Art Director of Text Publishing and writes the Culture Mulcher blog for Crikey.
The coffin sat on a chrome trolley at the front of the pews. In the end we only need a box six feet by two, and how small it looks ... the imagination falters.
Helen Garner, in her eulogy for Diana Gribble, delivered at Christ Church, South Yarra, spoke of finding out what ‘publishers’ were like. In 1976 she pedalled over to the new McPhee Gribble offices in Jolimont bearing the manuscript of ... (read more)