Number 3 chiller
Herman Koch is a master storyteller. His two earlier novels, Summer House with Swimming Pool and The Dinner, which spent a year on the New York Times bestseller list and sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide, both delve into the mysteries of the human psyche—not without a biting sense of humour and satirical examination of the way we live now.
Brenda Niall has won the National Biography Award and Clare Wright the Society of Women Writers’ Alice Award.
Text is pleased to announce the publication of the Man Booker longlisted His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet and his debut novel The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau. His Bloody Project has the office abuzz and is being prepared for release as I write. It will be available in Australian and New Zealand bookshops on 29 August! The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau will be published in January.
Tannie Maria baked her way into the hearts and minds of readers last year in her debut crime caper Recipes for Love and Murder. Writing the Love Advice and Recipe Column for the Klein Karoo Gazette she offers comfort and recipes to heal the broken heart. This month she returns—in love herself, but with some excess baggage she needs to work through and a new crime to solve. The Satanic Mechanic is a perfectly delightful read to cosy up with this winter. Read an extract here.
Today, there are more than a million temporary migrants living in Australia. They work, pay tax and abide by our laws, yet they remain unrecognised as citizens.
Emily Booth started at Text more than fifteen years ago—when the budget was ephemeral and images were still glued into printer samples for the trade. Emily has played a key role in the evolution of the company and here she tells us a little about her love of the booky life and her current role as Text’s export manager.
This week we publish the deeply moving novel War and Turpentine. Using the diaries of his grandfather, Stefan Hertmans has written a poetic and enthralling account of an artistic life and how it was forever shaken by the great tragedy of the First World War. Publishers Weekly describes it as ‘a masterly treatise on the interconnections of life, art, memory, and heartbreaking love…Hertmans’s prose, with a deft translation from McKay, works with the same full palette as Urbain Martien’s paintings: vivid, passionate—and in the end, life-affirming.’
My Last Continent by Midge Raymond is an unforgettable novel of love and loss, set against the dramatic landscape of Antarctica. Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect, described it as ‘an original and entirely authentic love story...It recognises that love is seldom simple or exclusive, and that the things that bring us together can also keep us apart.’ He had the opportunity to ask Midge Raymond a few questions.
Our newest Text Classic is two screenplays by Helen Garner: The Last Days of Chez Nous & Two Friends.
Congratulations to Brenda Niall on being awarded the 2016 Australian Literary Society’s Gold Medal for Literature for her biography Mannix. This magnificent work is the first biography to win the medal in the eighty-eight-year history of the ALS award.
Read on for a glimpse behind the scenes of the work of one of our most highly esteemed biographers and her particular challenges and rewards in researching one of Australia’s most prominent historical figures.
