The fires of Black Saturday in 2009 are a significant event in Australia’s history. But, as Peter Stanley writes in some detail in his book, 7 February 2009 sits alongside the other great fires of Ash Wednesday (1983), Black Friday (1939) and Red Tuesday (1898). Black Saturday at Steels Creek reflects on this history through a snapshot of one community that survived the 2009 fires, and continues to live with the aftermath. Stanley writes about the community of Steels Creek (a small area near Yarra Glen in Victoria) before the fires, and then takes the reader through the horrific hours when Steels Creek faced the Black Saturday fires with little or no warning from the authorities. As you might imagine, there are stories of tragedy, triumph and heroism. And at the heart of these stories is the central question: how does a community survive such terror and tragedy? For the most part the answers are positive, though more complex and challenging than you might expect. As a military historian, Stanley is interested in how war affects communities; he believes that fire is a kind of war and therefore has similar implications for a community. This is a terrific account of a terrible day, and of what followed. It is written with compassion and insight by Stanley, who has an eye for the micro (the voices of the people) and the macro (the scale of the fire, the geography of the location). The book also includes maps and photos of the region.
Annelise Balsamo is a freelance reviewer and English teacher. This review first appeared in the Issue 1 2013 of Books+Publishing magazine. View more pre-publication reviews here.
Better than Fiction is a brilliant collection of travel stories, written especially for Lonely Planet, which spans the globe in the tradition of the publisher’s previous anthologies such as Unpacked: Travel Disaster Stories. The list of Australian and international contributing authors is impressive. Among the highlights, Arnold Zable offers a glimpse of China emerging from the Cultural Revolution; M J Hyland writes about her encounters with thieves in Rome; Nikki Gemmell is changed by love and loss in Antarctica; and Marina Lewycka finds a travellers’ oasis in Malawi. In other wonderful stories, Alexander McCall Smith meets Freudian psychoanalysts in Buenos Aires; Joyce Carol Oates writes of an unnerving visit to San Quentin prison in California; Steven Hall tells an odd but beautiful tale of a shark; and Bryce Courtenay bemoans government restrictions on travellers at airports. Also in separate stories, Steven Amsterdam and Sophie Cunningham refer to the psychoactive side-effects of the same anti-malarial drug. The collection is threaded with great warmth, as readers are invited to travel in the company of these famous authors and experience their passions and revelations; it also shows that nonfiction can indeed be as good as, if not better than, fiction.
Benjamin Law embarks on a wild ride through Asia to investigate queer culture in Gaysia. In Indonesia he meets the moneyboys who prostitute themselves to Western men, usually preferring the rich older men. In Thailand he visits the world’s biggest beauty pageant for transsexual women. In China he learns about the gay men who marry lesbians in sham-weddings to please overbearing parents and the unhappy straight women who unwittingly marry gay men. He encounters the comedic-feminine stereotypes of gay men presented on television in Japan. He attends sessions aimed at curing homosexuality, run by religious groups in Malaysia. And among the devastating poverty of Myanmar, he meets the men who are 42 times more likely to contract HIV than anywhere else. Law also attends a queer pride march in India where colonial anti-homosexuality laws were recently overturned. Gaysia is like a Louis Theroux documentary in book form, achieving a similar style of gonzo journalism to Theroux, with the hilarious Law becoming part of the story and experiencing the culture firsthand. Of course, this book will challenge those who find homosexuality confronting, but an unrestrained Law flushes out fragile readers early on with imagery from the poolside of a clothing-optional gay resort in Bali.
This will be Steve Grimwade’s final year as director of the 
Alien Shores is a heartbreaking glimpse into the lives of displaced people who have fled their homes, lost family and friends, and struggled to survive. Long after their ordeal, the scars remain. This collection of literary short stories explores the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers within Australia and the Indian subcontinent. The collection begins with some shocking tales and ends on a heartwarming note. Indian author Amitav Ghosh writes about the 1979 massacre of refugees in Morichjhapi in his short story on the discovery of a late husband’s journal, which expands on the narrative of his powerful 2005 novel The Hungry Tide (HarperPerennial). Arnold Zable writes about the people displaced by burning villages during the Vietnam War and the disturbed US soldiers contemplating desertion. Jamil Ahmad tells of a woman seeking refuge in a military watchtower near a border crossing after she loses her tribe. Abdul Karim Hekut illustrates the cruelty of the bureaucrat. Sharon Rundle turns Australians into refugees in her speculative fiction tale. And Ali Alizadeh turns the Australian refugee activist story on its head. This book reminds us that we are all members of the human family and those who are born elsewhere or with different ideas on life should be treated with as much respect as any of our closer neighbours.
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is the television adaptation of Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher books (A&U), currently screening each Friday night on ABC. Andrew Wrathall spoke to head writer Deb Cox.
Was Kerry Greenwood involved in the screenwriting process?
Eric Knight writes that instead of focussing on the details of a problem with a metaphorical magnifying glass, readers should step back and reframe the issue in order to see the bigger picture and all the complicated, contributing factors that are often overlooked. Knight’s blend of sociology, politics and economics forms the basis for this Freakonomics-style book. By reframing the issue, Knight attempts to untangle such thorny subjects as climate change scepticism, terrorism, the Global Financial Crisis and American immigration. Battling terrorism, argues Knight, is about much more than killing terrorists; it requires a strategy of counterinsurgency tactics to shift local alliances away from terrorists. Knight has worked as a lawyer and studied climate change at Oxford. His political ideology could be described as centrist, but he writes without bias in this well-researched book. Reframe seeks to educate readers by offering a broader understanding of the world and its seemingly irrational people. While Knight is an Australian writer, his book focuses on global rather than specifically Australian problems, but these can be used as a template for local issues. Reframe is written in a positive, fresh voice that is accessible to a wide audience, including those new to politics.