Michaela Kolowski

Look, we want to talk to you both about the things you've been reading lately.

Angela, tell us what's been keeping you busy.

Toby Martin, can I ask you, what have you been reading lately?

What's sitting on your bedside table keeping you happily awake at night?

This is The Bookshelf on ABC Radio National.

I'm Michaela Kolofsky, here with Kate Evans and guests Toby Martin and Angela Bowne.

The music you've been listening to is by Sydney performer Dang Lan, a poem about saying goodbye.

Quy Mai is a Vietnamese poet and translator who now lives in Jakarta.

Although she had a career in finance and she did postgraduate study in Australia, she worked on a study in Australia on the long-lasting socio-psychological consequences of the Vietnam War.

She's written eight books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, in Vietnamese.

But I believe the one you've both read, she wrote in English.

I just wanted to clarify, so does this book take place over, what's the timeframe in which this book takes place?

I assumed because of her background and that it was set in Vietnam that it might have been focused on, you know, what it was like growing up in Vietnam during the American War or the Vietnam War, depending on how you want to call it.

But what's the timeframe?

talking about things that happened when the Japanese were in Vietnam.

It almost sounds like it's sort of literature filling in the gaps of history, almost.

Does that feel appropriate?

You're listening to The Bookshelf on ABC Radio National.

I'm Michaela Kolofsky, here with Kate Evans and guests Angela Bowne, barrister and also research editor of the Macquarie Dictionary, and performer and lecturer in music at the Conservatorium of Sydney, Toby Martin.

And we're talking fiction from England, Vietnam and now from Australia.