Literary Studies
London Was Full of Rooms edited by Tully Barnett et al.
Poetry and Philosophy from Homer to Rousseau: Romantic souls, realist lives by Simon Haines
Old Myths: Modern empires: power, language and identity in J.M. Coetzee’s work by Michela Canepari-Labib
To Exercise Our Talents: The democratization of writing in Britain by Christopher Hilliard
Windchimes: Asia in Australian Poetry edited by Noel Rowe and Vivian Smith
Early last year, Phillip Adams interviewed the British author Pat Barker on his radio programme, Late Night Live. Pat Barker is a novelist who has journeyed into history, most famously in her Regeneration trilogy about World War I, where she fictionalises real, historical individuals. Adams asked her: ‘Which is better at getting at the truth? Fiction or history?’ Her answer was: ‘Oh, fiction every time.’ Barker is a novelist for whom violence and the fear of violence has been a recurrent, powerful theme. She argued that fiction allowed her to ‘slow down’ the horror so that she and her readers could think about it as it happened. In real life she felt that violence was often so swift and shocking that all one could do was recoil. Fiction gave her freedoms that helped her to convey truth.
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