Milan Kundera, the celebrated Czech author best known for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has died, aged 94. His work interrogated totalitarianism and explored ideas – leavened with bleak humour.
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Articles on Literature
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Six of the best books from 2023 to read this summer.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s decision to cancel the publication of her latest novel needs to be understood in the context of a long history of symbolic protest.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author was always willing to experiment with his prose, pacing and narration, crafting an oeuvre that varied wildly in style and structure.
The late American writer was drawn towards death and apocalypse, tet to read his work is also to be exhilarated and enlightened.
For Franz Kafka, writing was a strange way of thinking and being in the world.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author is just one of many artists from Appalachia who are probing the crisis in their work, while taking pains to ensure that it doesn’t define the region and its people.
Generations of Palestinian writers and poets have expressed their feelings of grief and loss.
The ‘divine right of kings’ may sound obsolete, but it has resonances today. Richard II asks what it means to have power, to take power – and what we’re left with when it’s gone.
A strain of sorrow and pessimism underlies all of Vonnegut’s fiction, as well as his graduation speeches. But he also insisted that young people cherish those fleeting moments of joy.
The short stories of modern Iraqi writers Hassan Blasim and Diaa Jubaili show that the 2003 invasion and subsequent war in Iraq are not at the heart of contemporary Iraqi literature.
Without the First Folio, the canon of Shakespeare’s plays would have decisively shifted.
Reading is “sexy”. Maybe it’s because watching someone read exerts a fascination on the beholder, be it St. Ambrose or Marilyn Monroe.
Rereading du Maurier’s story of relentless devastation shows how the writer anticipated some of our most pressing environmental concerns.
There were around 5,000 black Georgians and more black Victorians so black Dickens characters are historically feasible.
The late writer never shied away from hard topics, breaking down walls of silence around topics like disability and rurality in post-war Japan.
Edwina Preston pays tribute to the humble letter: from literary love letters to philosophical lessons to cherished family heirlooms. Letters impart lessons, reveal character – and are a form of art.
An uncompromising writer who wrote about the dark and light of postwar Japan
Franz Kafka was not well known during his lifetime, but his legacy provides a useful and necessary way to confront the current state of global affairs.
Many established poets published lockdown poems offering their perspective on the power of poetry to make sense of the pandemic.
Top contributors
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Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Monash University
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Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Executive Dean (interim) Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
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Lecturer, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney
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Professor, Chair of Australian Literature, The University of Western Australia
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Honorary Fellow of the School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne
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Visiting Fellow, Centre for Cultural and Creative Research, University of Canberra, University of Canberra
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Senior Lecturer, Literature and Gender Studies, Victoria University
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Lecturer in Digital Arts & Humanities, University College Cork
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Emeritus Professor of Australian Literature, University of Sydney
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Professor of English, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, ACU, Australian Catholic University
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Lecturer in Contemporary Literature, La Trobe University
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Professor, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne
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Associate Professor, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, Monash University
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Visiting Professor, University of Technology Sydney
