Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is an ABC podcast.
Hello and welcome to The Bookshelf, on air on RN and a podcast for any time you like. I'm Kate Evans.
And I'm Cassie McCullough and we're here with this week a political satire, some short stories and fiction that comes from the past.
Historical novelists Robert Gott and Elizabeth Storrs will be along later in the show with recommendations, pitfalls of research and maybe a suggestion about swashbuckling swordplay.
And we'll also review Zadie Smith's new collection of short stories, Grand Union, with writer Zoya Patel.
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Chapter 2: What are the different approaches to political fiction discussed?
But let's begin with two different approaches to political fiction, with Australian writer Heather Rose's novel Bruny and English literary superstar Ian McEwan's The Cockroach. Now, Cassie, have a listen to this to get us going.
Be nice or come back as a cockroach.
Think twice before being cruel.
Those who are unlawful will be something awful. When the wheel of life revolves, flesh dissolves.
Magnetic Fields and their song Come Back as a Cockroach. You know why we're listening to that. It's because of Ian McEwan's short new novel, The Cockroach. So what's going on, Cassie?
Well, fans of Franz Kafka will know the plotline of The Metamorphosis, which was written in 1915, where a salesman named Gregor Samsa wakes up to find out that he's now a giant insect or some sort of thing which is widely understood to be a cockroach or some such.
But in this novel, one of London's cockroaches who lives in the Westminster district of London, central London, wakes up and instead of being a cockroach, he discovers that he is actually the Prime Minister of Britain.
Wearing pyjamas.
Blue pyjamas. And he's horrified by his lovely slick brown legs being gone and now he's got this big slab of meat that he has to learn to control. And I guess then he makes his way into the cabinet room and slowly realises that many of his colleagues also have had former lives as cockroaches. What do you think Ian McEwan's saying, Kate? LAUGHTER
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Chapter 3: How does Ian McEwan's 'The Cockroach' reflect political satire?
Like it's not going to last very long. But even as I was reading it overnight, it became even more relevant. It's just incredibly on the money because there's an incident in the cockroach where this cockroach prime minister takes advantage of an unfortunate naval incident in the Channel and he uses it to impugn the French Prime Minister.
And just in this last week, we've seen issues around Brexit escalating to a very personal level with other leaders of Europe. So, you know, this is really on the money.
Yeah.
He's pretty restrained, though, in that he describes this cockroach slash prime minister as having brown hair. He doesn't give him a blonde floppy fringe. And I thought in the circumstances that was actually quite restrained.
Well, I guess that's just probably his lawyers going over the thing with an ink pen. But I did like the description of being a cockroach and having this pheromonal form of communication and suddenly the cabinet was able to sense each other's political persuasion and former. Well, what is the collective noun for cockroach, Kate? Well, a parliament, obviously. A cabinet.
A kitchen cabinet of cockroaches.
And he does some quite interesting things when he describes some MPs who he realises aren't actually cockroaches. So although there's such a lot in this book that you can read from here, I imagine if you're somebody who's obsessed with British politics, if you're somebody in England, you would be getting all of those pointers.
And there's an awful lot that we probably miss, even though the whole train wreck that is British politics is... is very well covered at the moment.
They've come up with this idea called the reversal, and that's what they're trying to implement. And it's, it's kind of some weird economic idea, which doesn't really make sense at all, but that's okay because it's absurd, this book. But It's that you pay to work and then when you go and buy things in the shops, the shops pay you to buy it.
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Chapter 4: What is Zadie Smith's 'Grand Union' about?
And it looks like he might be able to get the US on board. But this somewhat mercurial president changes his mind within the phone call. So that's all off.
So what do you reckon, Cassie? Who's this one for? How long will it last?
Oh, look, it gave me a giggle. It's a good dinner party read.
Well, and he's, you know, he's a good writer and it feels as though it is propelled by anger. But because he really knows how to write a story, you zip it along. Anybody who's interested in politics, grab it, give it to your friends as a present.
Yes, and do it quickly because it's got a very short shelf life, I hope.
Ian McEwan's The Cockroach is published by Vintage. Vintage.
I'll come and come back as a cockroach.
Okay, Kate, now you've read another book, which you say is also a political satire, and that's Heather Rose's Bruny. So Heather Rose is a Tasmanian writer. Her other novels include The River Wife and The Museum of Modern Love, which is about the artist Marina Abramovich, which won the Stella Prize and about five other big prizes. So this is her first foray into political satire, strictly, is it?
Yes, and it's, I guess, not what people might expect of her, but she's a writer who writes across a whole lot of different forms. She's written crime and all sorts of things. But the other thing about this book, Cassie, is it was only launched in the last couple of weeks and launched by the Tasmanian Premier, Will Hodgman.
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Chapter 5: What themes are explored in Heather Rose's 'Bruny'?
So she's been living out of the state. She's brought in to investigate what's going on with this bridge being blown up. And what that draws in is political corruption, questions about Labor, the role of the Chinese. There's federal as well as international politics.
And then there's also sort of family politics, of course, because she has... So the brother, John Coleman, is the premier and he's a liberal. The sister is the leader of the Labor opposition, Max, and their dad was a former Labor premier.
Yeah.
So the brother is a turncoat and the father is in the story too, but he is now an old man who's had a series of strokes and he can only speak in Shakespeare quotes.
But is he handy with a bit of dynamite, Kate, or what?
Well, you just have to read and find out, because I must say there is an extraordinary twist in the novel that you really don't see coming. And so it works as a political thriller. It works as a story about Tasmania. There's some beautiful descriptions of place, of the quality of stillness of Tasmania, about what it means to be thinking of yourself as a part of this country.
Yeah.
And I can see why people are saying it's not fiction. I mean, if you know anyone from Tasmania, you know that they can be related to the very, you know, the very origins of the colony. So, yeah.
Well, she hasn't been afraid of looking at federal politics either. Can I just give you two examples of some of the minor characters in the book? The Federal Minister for National Protection, name is Aidan Abbott, and his nickname is Aidan Abbott.
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Chapter 6: How do Robert Gott and Elisabeth Storrs define historical fiction?
So I guess that's where the subtitle comes from.
But it wasn't yours. You didn't choose it.
Not mine. And I worry that it's not very inviting. But at the same time, maybe I'll just attract all the misfits, which is also fine.
Well, we love misfits here on the bookshelf. So Indian Fijian parents, and that's a complicated situation, as you say. And so, you know, there's a sense of dislocation in Fiji, but also one that you've experienced here in Australia.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. I didn't realise how complicated the situation in Fiji is until I got a lot older and started trying to understand why when we go to India, we're not really considered Indian.
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Chapter 7: What challenges do historical novelists face in their research?
But then, of course, in Fiji, our presence in Fiji is a result of colonisation and colonial rule, which brought Indians over from Gujarat primarily to be indentured labourers in Fiji. And then we kind of rocked up in Australia in the 90s just before Pauline Hanson had her first go around. And then when I was 10, September 11 happened and my family's Muslim.
So there were a lot of kind of pivotal global events happening that very much reinforced my sense of not belonging because suddenly, you know, my identity became more of a political object than I was necessarily ready to understand. And that's a lot of what I grapple with in the book.
Now, Zoya, I must say that describing a book as a memoir of not belonging actually makes it very inviting and very interesting to me. I mean, I think it's, even if you didn't write it, it's a very good subtitle. But because we're interested on the bookshelf in how reading defines us, are there particular writers who helped you explore those questions of identity and belonging in Australia?
I actually don't think it would have been possible to write the book if it hadn't been for other Australian writers of color paving the way before me, because I think we're told again and again that those kinds of stories of minority lives aren't interesting to a mainstream audience and aren't likely to be picked up by a commercial publisher.
But luckily for me, I had writers like Benjamin Law, his book, The Family Law. obviously does a really great job of talking about that experience of growing up as a migrant in a much more light and funny way than mine, unfortunately. I can't promise the same hijinks. And also Maxime Boniba-Clark was a really big influence on me.
And then at the same time, I was seeing writers from other parts of the world kind of growing in popularity for writing about these types of issues. So Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is someone I referenced in the book. Her book, Americana, was a huge influence.
But I was also really struck by how the Western world was kind of waking up to authors like Chimamanda and really recognising her literary prowess in a way that I think those types of narratives haven't always been accepted into the literary sphere or the mainstream literary sphere in quite the same way.
And she, of course, also wrote Half of a Yellow Sun, which might come up later in the program when we talk about interesting examples of historical fiction, because that's about the Nigerian Civil War, a wonderful novel.
And probably her best one, I would say.
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Chapter 8: What are some notable examples of historical novels mentioned?
And I had actually just returned from visiting New York when I read the collection. And so it really struck me because the way the book made me feel was similar to the way that New York City made me feel, which was quite nice. I think the overarching theme that maybe connects the stories, and this is a bit of a stretch because they're all very, very different,
is that they're just kind of glimpses. They feel like vignettes, as if just as you're starting to get into the rhythm or there's some sense of a pattern or narrative emerging, she'll cut you off. So they all left me wanting a little bit more.
Yes, she's very good at a twist without them being the sort of tricksy twist that some short stories writers use to just sort of shock you. There's a very interesting texture and I started to obsess a bit on the sort of voice that she uses because a number of them take us into the past in a way that's quite compelling. But I started to feel as if it was almost nostalgia with bite, you know.
in a few of them because there's quite an interesting edge and perspective on things. And one example, there's a story called Words and Music and there's a character watching other very marginal people in the streets. Some are homeless, some are living all sorts of lives. There's a man who looks like Abraham Lincoln.
She watches him and she realises he's humming or singing to himself and she says, He, or her character, says, he who sings to himself without earbuds is especially precious to me now, like hearing the song of a bird, long thought extinct. And I thought it was just lovely.
I think there are a lot of moments like that throughout the collection, actually, where it almost breaks the fourth wall and you think... it is Zadie speaking, you can hear her kind of sardonic tone come through. And I think edge is exactly the way to describe it. There's this underlying cynicism in almost all of the stories I felt, even ones with children as protagonists.
And I think the way that she does that is charming. In other books when she does that, I don't find it charming, I find it really frustrating. So there is a balance I think that needs to be met for the reader to not feel as if they're on the other side of the joke.
But I do think she has these moments of just beautiful imagery and real clarity in summing up some phenomenon of the modern day that really it strikes home for me. I found that harder in the book, in the stories rather, that were looking at the past. I found it a little bit harder to connect in the same way.
Ah, now that's interesting. Let's put two of those ideas together. So there's a story called Just Right that is about children. And so you mentioned liking the children, but it appears to be set in about 1959. We get a few markers to that because the Guggenheim Museum is being built and it opened in 1959. Can you remember that story? What's going on there?
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