Michaela Kolofsky

And I'm here, of course, with Kate Evans.

And this feels like a very good moment to meet our guests for today.

Oh, lovely.

Thank you.

Here with us on the bookshelf is also writer Christopher Rajah, who lives between Melbourne and Alice Springs.

He's the author of a debut novella, The Burning Elephant, published back in 2015, and a new memoir, which I'm about to ask him about.

Hi, Chris, and welcome to the bookshelf.

Let's speak for a moment about the new memoir just released very recently in the last week called Into the Suburbs, A Migrant Story.

What did you want to explore in that memoir?

It sounds from the title like it's not only a personal story but something kind of larger.

So it's more of a going to than leaving from.

Chris, I know a lot of people have been reading in lockdown, but what's one of the books that has really stood out for you during this time that you've been enjoying?

Thank you, Kate.

Yes, this one is going to be a bit of a challenge to describe, but I think Chris and I can do it.

The Constant Rabbit takes place in a fictional town called Much Hemlock in the middle of the UK.

It's a sleepy-ish little village that likes its traditions and it doesn't like change.

or new neighbours, especially rabbit ones.

It is actually rife with what we call anti-rabbit sentiments.

But when we talk about rabbits in this book, we're not just talking about those small, little, furry, cute things that some of us keep as pets.

We're talking about a time that the book is set in 2020, and there are now 1.2 million rabbits in the UK who were anthropomorphised in something referred to in the book as The Event, which happened in 1965.