Sydney Review of Books

#NEWonSRB: Joan Fleming reviews two books that embrace the discomfort occasioned by reckonings with colonial monuments. While challenges to commemorative art are often characterised as destructive, Fleming highlights the creative aspect of these reframings.buff.ly/OIheCMc

#NEWonSRB: Is there no escaping the oppressive apparatus of the capitalist heteropatriarchy? Reviewing Anna Poletti’s hello, world?, Jenny Hedley traces the characters’ hopeful forays into BDSM – their attempt to deprogram themselves and glitch the machine.buff.ly/Nkulzud

#NEWonSRB: Science fiction has a history of harnessing pop music and psychedelic elements to envision radical alternatives to the status quo. James Macaronas observes that Jordan Prosser’s Big Time taps into this legacy but falls short of going all the way.buff.ly/KyTVvA4

#NEWonSRB: The Näku Dhäruk Petitions were the first native title documents recognised in Australian parliament. Monique Grbec reads Clare Wright’s historical account of the Petitions through the balance and reciprocity in the Yolŋu phrase, ‘bala ga’ lili’. buff.ly/bwuwFo7

#NEWonSRB: The SRB talks to Nathalie Nguyen about the changing historiography of the Vietnam War, with greater recognition of Vietnamese-language sources and the role of South Vietnam, and the personal stakes of this history for the Vietnamese diaspora. buff.ly/4ya4BJu

#NEWonSRB: To mark the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon and the arrival of Indochinese refugees in Australia, Kim Huynh and Vivian Pham exchange emails about the bonds of gratitude, the persistence of joy, and a new Vietnamese Australian aesthetic. buff.ly/rR5YUNl

#NEWonSRB: Tracey Lien’s protagonist in All That’s Left Unsaid is determined to uncover the truth about her brother’s death. In her review, @farzedraki finds parallels between this forensic quest & Lien’s own mission to faithfully depict 1990s Cabramatta. buff.ly/uFczfcO

"For the life of Faith" – my review essay for @SydReviewBooks about women's lives in 20th-century Australian Catholicism: sydneyreviewofbooks.com/reviews/for-th…

#NEWonSRB: Miles Pattenden (@Sisto_Sesto) reviews two biographies of Catholic women – a former member of Sydney's Protestant elite and an Armadale order of nuns. What did they give up for the Church? And what did they have to gain? buff.ly/npktNr5

#NEWonSRB: How do we talk about psychosis with sensitivity and without sanitisation? What role does language play in mental health? Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn confronts these questions in her review of Elfy Scott’s book about her mother’s schizophrenia. buff.ly/joW6H9K

A fine, in-depth review of 'Raging Grace: Australian Writers Speak Out On Disability' (Jackson, Ottaway, Shying) by Erin Scudder at @SydReviewBooks! Read it here: bit.ly/3R4XSHe Add 'Raging Grace' to your bookshelf now: puncherandwattmann.com/product/raging…

@mxcreant is an essayist and critic in Naarm/Melbourne, via Kaurna Yerta/Adelaide and Singapore. She is the editor at Liminal, reviews editor at Meanjin, and the author of the critically acclaimed debut essay collection, Peripathetic: Notes on ‘(Un)belonging’. (7/7)

Thomas Moran is a writer and researcher who has recently completed a PhD at Monash University on the death of cinema. Thomas is interested in the relationship between politics and aesthetics, Australian literary history and modernist poetry. (6/7)

It's our great pleasure to introduce the recipients of the 2025 Frank Moorhouse Reading Room Residency! We were delighted to receive many applications – a testament to the strength of Frank Moorhouse’s legacy, among other things. (1/7) buff.ly/WeOWjws

#NEWonSRB: Reviewing an anthology of collaborations between writers and artists with disability, Erin Scudder surveys forms of ‘capacious solidarity’ and linguistic inventiveness at the nexus between art and medicine, creative and therapeutic practice. buff.ly/9oNhw8U

'To Fowler, football is less a game than a responsibility, a cultural artefact to be maintained and protected at all costs.' Read @SydReviewBooks reading on football fandom, including THE FOOTBALL WAR by Xavier Fowler here: bit.ly/3QT3HaJ