Half-wild Lyra from Northern Lights was the first female character who felt real to Jane Gleeson-White. Then she met Elena Ferrante’s ‘ferocious, filthy, quicksilver’ Lila, a more complex version.
A new biography of Jean Rhys, the Dominican-born author of Wide Sargasso Sea, pays close attention to her origins – but stops short of examining the colonial relations central to her story.
The author of Shuggie Bain returns to the public housing schemes of 1980s working-class Glasgow to explore the redemptive power of secure love and the dangers of dominating masculinity.
UNSW's Galina Lazareva will present at the Jaipur Literature Festival in January after winning four poetry prizes at a Russian poetry festival in the UK.
In teaching us to approach literature with an ear to poetry, Shirley Hazzard reminds us of the endless and important labour of art, writes Brigitta Oubas.
