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Strong governments stand up for little people.

After reading Julio Cortazar's Rayuela (Hopscotch) I wanted to live in exile in Paris.

Donors have pledged $15 million for a makeover of the State Library of NSW, with the aim of transforming the sandstone building into a "global cultural destination".

It was a night of mixed emotions as Georgia Blain won a posthumous Victorian Premier's Literary Award and playwright Leah Purcell took out the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature.

Literary events and news in the Canberra region.

David Astle goes on a search for meanings.

Between the 1970s and `90s the spate of gay-bashings and murders in Sydney was rarely treated seriously by the NSW police, according to Duncan McNab's new book.

Alison Evans' Ida melds far-out physics with late-adolescent pathfinding and ultra-liberal gender politics.

Dark Heart features high-octane action, pitting lone wolf - Jed walker, ex-CIA - against sinister conspiracy.

Luke Rhinehart's aliens in Invasion are cute little polymorphs with a playful streak.

The Golden Legend is a luxuriant, fable-like novel that arms beauty against anger, hope against fear.

If you read this informed and engaging life of Australian war correspondent Chester Wilmot you will find it hard to forget him.

Vladimir Putin is a construct of the people running the Kremlin, according to Mikhail Zygar's book.

The bush emerges from Don Watson's compilation of voices and stories as a complex, moving organism.

It's best known for the Beatles and the zebra crossing outside, but Abbey Road studio has had some of the greats inside during its 80-plus years of recording.

Comfort reading is a ritual, like worry beads or a nice hot cup of cocoa at bedtime. It relies on repetition and familiarity.

When I started work as literary editor of The Sydney Morning Herald in January 1996, one of my first pleasant duties was to attend Sydney Writers' Festival. Back then, as a small offshoot of the Sydney Festival, it wooed about 18,000 sedate book lovers away from more hedonistic entertainment to listen to writers talk in the galleries of the State Library.

In this novel the writer carefully delineates all the elements that underpin such bullying, including the motives of the perpetrators and the susceptibility of their victims.

Five decades on, key questions remain unresolved about the crime for which Ronald Ryan became the last man to be hanged in Australia.

The writer's long-awaited first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, is a unique, technically audacious feat of storytelling.

The work is filled with "themes" that discussion groups will find irresistibly compelling.

The editors of Contemporary Australian Poetry found that there were more poets of greater quality than they had imagined.

Advance for planned presidential memoir is expected to break the $US15 million record set by Bill Clinton.

"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command," wrote George Orwell.