December 2025, no. 482
Which books refused to loosen their grip on the cultural imagination in 2025? In our December issue, the annual Books of the Year includes nominations from Amanda Lohrey, Esther Anatolitis, Mark McKenna, Yves Rees, Clinton Fernandes, Clare Wright, John Kinsella, Felicity Plunkett, and Geordie Williamson. Nadia Wheatley takes us on a dizzying biographical journey as she uncovers a profound secret in Charmian Clift’s life. Reviewing Kate Wild’s The Red House, Daniel Browning examines the Kumanjayi Walker case, a moment which reveals ‘the fleshy, malignant knot in the corpus of the settler-colonial nation’. Stephen Long offers a sobering analysis of Australia’s resources sector, asking how we can overlook an economic model ‘based on climate catastrophe’. ABR’s inaugural Science Fellow Sara Webb revels in the strange delights of quantum physics in its centenary year. Julie Ewington reviews Tate Modern’s ‘grand survey’ of Australian Indigenous artist Emily Kam Kngwarray, and in fiction James Ley reviews the new Trent Dalton, Julie Janson reviews William J. Byrne’s The Warrumbar, and Geordie Williamson reviews Salman Rushdie’s The Eleventh Hour.
Image Credits: Emily Kam Kngwarray, Ntang Dreaming 1989, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, (irregular) 1224 (h) x 1294 (w) mm, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1989, © Emily Kam Kngwarray/Copyright Agency