Now based in New York, Carey is one of only two authors to have won the Booker Prize twice. He’s a legitimate big-hitter of literature – up there with Rushdie, Roth and McCarthy. His 2001 novel, True History of the Kelly Gang, has no punctuation but it is exceptionally readable as Kelly’s remarkable bushwhacking adventures are given a fresh grainy interpretation. Also don’t miss his 1988 novel, Oscar and Lucinda - the story of an Anglican priest who meets an Australian heiress who owns a glass factory. They place a bet that the priest cannot transport a glass church to a settlement in the back of beyond.
JM Coetzee
He really is a South African but John Maxwell Coetzee lives in Australia and became an Aussie citizen two years ago. "I was attracted by the free and generous spirit of the people, by the beauty of the land itself and - when I first saw Adelaide - by the grace of the city that I now have the honour of calling my home." He won the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature – not bad for a former computer programmer but awards count for little with Coetzee. He did not collect either of his Booker gongs, Life & Times of Michael K in 1983 and Disgrace in 1999, but London is a long away from Adelaide. The Observer newspaper polled literary types in 2006 and named Disgrace one of the ‘greatest novel of the last 25 years.’ Disgrace could win the Best of the Bookers vote.
David Malouf
A Lebanese-Australian author, Malouf is a playwright as well as a novelist. His 1993 novel Remembering Babylon was shortlisted for the Booker Prize – it is a tale of friendship and warfare. He is also well known for his 1982 Fly Away Peter – a book that examines Australia’s racist colonial past. Malouf is also an accomplished poet and short story writer.
Shirley Hazzard
Like so many Australians, Hazzard has travelled and lived around the world. She used to work for the United Nations as a clerk but quit the UN and its mountains of paperwork to become a full-time writer. She picked up a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1980 for her third novel, The Transit of Venus – the story of two sisters who travel to England from Australia in the 1950s in search of a fresh start. Hazzard has also penned two books criticizing the United Nations - Defeat of an Ideal and Countenance of Truth.
Thomas Keneally
Another of Australia’s major literary talents, Keneally won the 1982 Booker Prize with Schindler’s Ark – the moving story of a German entrepreneur who saves countless Jews from the death camps. The movie version was called Schindler’s List. He has written 30 novels as well non-fiction and plays. This guy was churning out novels decades before anyone regarded Australian literature as an international force.
Geraldine Brooks
Brooks, a former Sydney Morning Herald and Wall Street Journal reporter, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for March – a book about the absent father from Little Women. Historical fiction is her specialty and this year People of the Book has earned rave reviews for its story of the Sarajevo Haggadah – a priceless Jewish book rescued from Serb shelling during the Yugoslavian war.
Tim Winton
One of the current flavours of the month for Breath – a book about surfing, recklessness and friendships, Winton has been producing novels since the early 1980s. He also writes plays, non-fiction, children’s fiction and short stories. Winton prefers to keep a low profile but supports environment issues. In Australia, he’s been a literary stalwart for a long time so international acclaim is overdue for this writer.
Helen Garner
A former high school teacher who was sacked for giving an impromptu sex education lesson to her 13-year-old pupils, Garner’s novels address sexual desire and the family. Australian female novelists are outnumbered by their male counterparts so Garner has been a figurehead since the 1970s. Her first novel, Monkey Grip,from 1977, tells the story of a group of people living on welfare in Melbourne.
Michelle de Kretser
Born in Sri Lanka, de Ketser immigrated to Australia when she was 14. She has worked as an editor at Lonely Planet and studied for an MA at the Sorbonne. With just three novels to her name, she is part of the new generation of Aussie novelists. The Lost Dog is picking up international acclaim – she’s the verge of the big time.
Markus Zusak
One of the hottest authors in the young adult genre, Zusak has enjoyed worldwide success with this novel, The Book Thief. The New York Times described it as ”Harry Potter and the Holocaust” as Death himself narrates this World War II-based story.
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