Brett Evans

And I think he wants people to realise it's now that we need to talk about these things, according to him.

Yeah.

It starts off with a quote from an atheist and it finishes up with this martyrdom.

And it's a great novel.

It's really good.

Best novel since Dirt Music, I'd say.

Well, in Australia, I think it's often assumed there's a paucity of political novels.

And by that, people often mean, oh, there's no novels set in Canberra or Macquarie Street.

So they've got a very narrow view of politics.

Probably the best political novel I know of is The Secret River by Kate Grenville, because she's telling this story, which is the beginning of lots of politics in Australia.

If you don't kind of come to grips with what you think about that original connection between black and white Australia, you go off in lots of different directions.

So, yeah, it can be incredibly enlightening and important, but sometimes I think people assume that politics is only something that politicians do.

It's not the connections or the interactions or the conflicts between ordinary people.

Listening to your talk, I was wondering, it sounds like the professor in the book is supposed to be almost a symbol for Germany itself.

Father Germany.

But is it really like that or does she actually create a nuanced picture of a person who's going through whatever...

It doesn't sound like he's going through a crisis, but he's going through an education anyway.

Well, I know you only do fiction on this program of yours, but besides the Tim Winton novel, I've been reading the essays of Don Watson.

He's always a lot of fun to read.

He's probably the best sort of essayist maybe working in the country at the moment.