Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Keywords: Novels

  • INTERNATIONAL

    The Lord's Resistance Army is alive and well

    • Dorothy Horsfield
    • 26 August 2015
    1 Comment

    For almost twenty years, across the settlements and subsistence farms of Central Africa the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has preyed upon civilian populations with exceptional cruelty, emerging from the bush in small units to commit unspeakable atrocities. These days there is a common assumption that the LRA has been decimated and scattered and that its leader Joseph Kony is in hiding and probably ineffectual. But visiting activist Sister Angelique Namaika insists this optimistic assessment is misguided. 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Painful memories of my schooldays

    • Isabella Fels
    • 27 May 2015
    9 Comments

    It was a place of torture, with great physical and mental pain. I remember being hit at with a hockey stick. I was forced to stoop, in all sorts of ways. All my efforts came to nothing, even when I gave the girls money to buy lollies, and lent them my Sweet Dreams teenage romance novels.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The snob who snubbed Australia's Indigenous imagination

    • Brian Matthews
    • 01 May 2015
    14 Comments

    Mrs Cowling was formidable. Her significant physical presence was accentuated by a commanding mien, impeccable English enunciation, and an impressive depth and breadth of literary reference supporting rock-firm opinions. All these years later, I wonder just how burdened she was in teaching literature to Australian students, which she continued to do into her 80th year, by her husband's notoriety.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    As politicians evoke conflict a century past

    • Various
    • 21 April 2015
    4 Comments

    In airport lounges, off to foreign hells... They come and go like fatigued FIFO workers day and night; partners waiting for their safe return, might be the only show. No protest march, no ticker tape parade.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Atheist Pratchett's Discworld has lessons for Christians

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 16 March 2015
    4 Comments

    'You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world. Otherwise it's just a cage.' When I heard English author Terry Pratchett had died, I immediately jumped online to start looking through some of my favourite quotes from his books. The above, from Witches Abroad, is one of many that have accompanied me over the years.   His 44 Discworld novels could be broadly described as comic fantasy, or fantasy satire, and yet that's really just the starting point for the immense variety of complicated ideas they explored in such a fun, joyous way. Perhaps strangely for someone whose work is so grounded in atheism, Pratchett has had a profound impact on my religious faith. Read more

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Suitcase crammed with affluence

    • Jena Woodhouse
    • 25 November 2014
    8 Comments

    What they thought could not be read in faces pinched with need. They plodded on, a ragged band of hungry, thirsty refugees, hoping for a crust of bread ... Perhaps tomorrow, there'd be grapes and oranges awaiting them; farmers who would pay in kind for harvesting.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Richard Flanagan sorts suffering from virtue

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 21 November 2014
    4 Comments

    Winning the prestigious Man Booker prize has given Richard Flanagan's 2013 novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North precious new shelf life. I've long considered Flanagan an alchemist - giving everyday words an unmistakable verve and turning a phrase until it takes flight. But he's also a proud Tasmanian storyteller who now has the world's ear. 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Navigating the maze of young adulthood

    • Anthony Morris
    • 18 September 2014

    In The Maze Runner, a group of teenage boys find themselves dumped in the middle of a giant maze. Lacking the freedom to do what they like, faced with rules and laws that seem arbitrary while struggling with deep changes on a physical level, teenagers’ personal problems have proven to be ripe material for dystopian novels and films. 

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Not a good time to be Catholic

    • Kevin Donnelly
    • 28 August 2014
    34 Comments

    Growing up in working class Broadmeadows in a Housing Commission estate with a communist father and a Catholic mother – mass on Sunday and the Eureka Youth Movement on Tuesday – taught me first hand about two of the most influential and powerful forces of the 20th century.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    In defence of judges

    • John Ellison Davies
    • 16 July 2014
    18 Comments

    Judge Garry Neilson is in a spot of bother after comparing incest and paedophilia to homosexuality. He is not the first judge to find himself in this situation and he will not be the last. Judges enjoy a life of privilege and status. In their own courtroom they are feudal masters. But when one of them makes a mistake, the media jumps all over them. Politicians rant. The controversy is always out of proportion to the alleged error. 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My father's reign of mathematical precision

    • Nick Gadd
    • 16 July 2014
    14 Comments

    He was a civil engineer. His professional life was a matter of mathematics and rules. Driving over a bridge, he’d quote the equations that ensured it was safe and stable. There were formulae in his domestic life too. Strict rules about stacking the dishwasher. Knives and forks pointed downwards, to avoid careless stabbings.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dickens' song for the poor

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 30 April 2014
    8 Comments

    While Dickens, staunch champion of the poor and of children, reportedly hoped that A Christmas Carol might encourage the restoration of social harmony, his narrative line can also be seen as a convenient plot device. It is a deeply Christian story, not just about Christmas, but about life itself, about actions and their consequences, the need for wrongs to be made right, and the desire for hope and potentiality of renewal.

    READ MORE