An innovative tradition of First Nations science fiction has emerged around the world in recent decades. While older works in the genre imagined nightmarish scenarios of reverse colonisation featuring invading aliens – think H. G. Wells’ The …

First, They Erased Our Name is a work of autobiography but also testimony, bearing witness to the plight of the Rohingya, a minority Muslim ethnic group in Myanmar. After a long history of persecution, their mass exodus into Bangladesh in 2017 …

Elizabeth Bryer’s From Here On, Monsters is a genuinely exciting debut from an Australian writer. This novel is playful, allegorical and formally ambitious, qualities that lend it a distinctly international flavour, in the way of Peter Carey’s …

The past is fraught territory, particularly when it comes to those territorial pasts marked by trauma. How can such histories be explored without proving overwhelming? It is a question raised at the beginning of Tara June Winch’s new novel, The …

A woman hitchhiking alone through the Australian outback: it is a scenario that has been used as fodder for many horror stories. It is also the scenario of Kathryn Hind’s debut novel, Hitch, which introduces readers to the vulnerable Amelia, …

Why are dystopias more popular than utopias? The growing genre of cli-fi, for instance, is almost universally pessimistic, and the TV phenomenon of The Handmaid’s Tale will continue to air its nightmares in a third series. And why, even when …

Imminence is the title of a newly translated novel from the Argentinian writer Mariana Dimópulos. It is also a word that can allude to, among other things, impending danger or evil. In this tense and deeply unsettling novel, the impending event …

In Mark Brandi’s new novel The Rip, a homeless, young, female drug addict says to the reader: “I don’t think I could ever make you understand what it’s like for me, unless you could be me for a minute.” Of course, this is precisely …

Male writers and critics seem more prone than their female counterparts to making claims about each other’s genius. After revisiting Jennifer Maiden’s work for this review, I feel it’s time to buck that trend. Maiden’s work is idiosyncratic, urgent …