Wondering how to fill your days without the pressure of study, or assignments or deadlines? Not to fret, we’ve got you covered with our essential summer reading list.
The Island Will Sink. Briohny Doyle
This thrilling sci fi climate change themed novel is a cracking read. The debut novel by Melbourne based writer Briohny Doyle, documenting the journey of narrator - filmmaker Max, it tells the story of vanishing island Pitcairn, threatened by ever rising seas. Boundaries blur and things become not what they seem as both Max’s and Pitcairn’s futures become ever uncertain.
Ghost Empire Richard Fidler
Richard Fidler and his son Joe made a journey to Istanbul. Fired by Richard's passion for the rich history of the dazzling Byzantine Empire - centred around the legendary Constantinople - we are swept into some of the most extraordinary tales in history. The clash of civilizations, the fall of empires, the rise of Christianity, revenge, lust, murder. Turbulent stories from the past are brought vividly to life at the same time as a father navigates the unfolding changes in his relationship with his son
The Narrow Road to the Deep North Richard Flanagan
Winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2015, this is a novel of the cruelty of war, and tenuousness of life and the impossibility of love.August, 1943. In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma death railway, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.
This savagely beautiful novel is a story about the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.
The Course of Love Alain de Botton
Twenty years after his bestselling debut Essays in Love, internationally acclaimed author Alain de Botton returns to fiction with a brilliant new novel about modern relationships What does it mean to live happily ever after? At dinner parties and over coffee, Rabih and Kirsten's friends always ask them the same question: How did you meet? The answer comes easily - it's a happy story, one they both love to tell.But there is a second part to this story, the answer to a question their friends never ask: what happened next?.is the story of modern relationships and how to survive them. Playful, wise and profoundly moving, The Course of Love is essential reading for anyone who's either in a relationship or who wants to be.
Barkskin Annie Proulx
One of the greatest American writers' Independent From Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize---winning author of The Shipping News and "Brokeback Mountain," comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world's forests. Proulx's inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid - in their greed, lust, vengefulness, or their simple compassion and hope - that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a magnificent marriage of history and imagination.
Black Rock, White City AS Patric
Black Rock White City is a novel about the damages of war, the limits of choice, and the hope of love. During a hot Melbourne summer Jovan's cleaning work at a bayside hospital is disrupted by acts of graffiti and violence becoming increasingly malevolent. For Jovan the mysterious words that must be cleaned away dislodge the poetry of the past. White City is an essential story of Australia's suburbs now, of displacement and immediate threat, and the unexpected responses of two refugees as they try to reclaim their dreams. It is a breathtaking roar of energy that explores the immigrant experience with ferocity, beauty and humour.