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Absolutely Revolting

September 2025, no. 479

In the September issue, Zoe Holman writes on life in Iran after the recent twelve-day war, asking whether conflict brought Iranians closer to democracy or further away from it. On its seventieth anniversary, Nathan Hollier looks at the first global conference of postcolonial Asian and African nations, held in the Indonesian city of Bandung in 1955, and Australia’s telling role in it. Kylie Moore-Gilbert finds hope for Israel in her review of The Holy and the Broken by Ittay Flescher. We publish Andra Putnis’s essay ‘The Art and Atrocity of Disaster Scenarios’, highly commended in this year’s Calibre Prize, and there are reviews by Mark McKenna on Jimmy Governor, Ramona Koval on Elizabeth Harrower, and Martin Thomas on Patrick White. Elsewhere, Victoria Grieves Williams examines the ‘trouble of colour’ in family history, Emma Dawson reviews a history of work hours, and former MP Kim Carr asks whether universities are in crisis. We review novels by Han Kang, Patricia Lockwood, Alex Cothren, Sinéad Stubbins, and Tony Tulathimutte, publish poems by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Carl Phillips, Chris Andrews, and Munira Tabassum Ahmed, and interview Brandl & Shlesinger publisher Veronica Sumegi.

September’s cover artwork is by Alice Lindstrom.

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Melissa Mantle reviews ‘Foreign Country’ by Marija Peričić
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Hard-to-see lives
Article Subtitle: Peričić’s Gothic third novel
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What does it mean to have a past you are estranged from? In Australian-Croatian author Marija Peričić’s third novel, Foreign Country, the title recalls the familiar L.P. Hartley line, ‘the past is a foreign country’, and stretches its metaphorical coverage to include the terrain of grief, childhood, the dislocation of immigrating, and even the afterlife.
Book 1 Title: Foreign Country
Book Author: Marija Peričić
Book 1 Biblio: Ultimo, $34.99 pb, 272 pp
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Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781761154218/foreign-country--marija-pericic--2025--9781761154218#rac:jokjjzr6ly9m
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What does it mean to have a past you are estranged from? In Australian-Croatian author Marija Peričić’s third novel, Foreign Country, the title recalls the familiar L.P. Hartley line, ‘the past is a foreign country’, and stretches its metaphorical coverage to include the terrain of grief, childhood, the dislocation of immigrating, and even the afterlife.

Read more: Melissa Mantle reviews ‘Foreign Country’ by Marija Peričić

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Patrick Flanery reviews ‘Pathemata: Or, the story of my mouth’ by Maggie Nelson
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Contents Category: Memoir
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Article Title: Freeing the tongue
Article Subtitle: Poetic prose non-fiction
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At the end of Maggie Nelson’s arresting new book, she offers a disclaimer: ‘This work conjoins dream and reality; all representations of people, places and events should be understood in that spirit.’ By the second page, though, it has already become apparent that while this work is peppered with recognisable biographical details, Pathemata: Or, the story of my mouth operates in new terrain. Here the limits of reality and dream are at times sufficiently porous that one wonders whether a particular passage belongs to the writer’s conscious or unconscious life.
Book 1 Title: Pathemata
Book 1 Subtitle: Or, the story of my mouth
Book Author: Maggie Nelson
Book 1 Biblio: Fern Press, $29.99 hb, 80 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781911717454/pathemata--maggie-nelson--2025--9781911717454#rac:jokjjzr6ly9m
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At the end of Maggie Nelson’s arresting new book, she offers a disclaimer: ‘This work conjoins dream and reality; all representations of people, places and events should be understood in that spirit.’ By the second page, though, it has already become apparent that while this work is peppered with recognisable biographical details, Pathemata: Or, the story of my mouth operates in new terrain. Here the limits of reality and dream are at times sufficiently porous that one wonders whether a particular passage belongs to the writer’s conscious or unconscious life.

Read more: Patrick Flanery reviews ‘Pathemata: Or, the story of my mouth’ by Maggie Nelson

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Michael Winkler reviews ‘Rejection’ by Tony Tulathimutte
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Funny ha ha
Article Subtitle: Vicious, vigorous fiction
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An irony of this age, when everyone is connected to everyone else, is that loneliness proliferates. Martin Luther’s claim that a lonely man ‘always deduces one thing from the other and thinks everything to the worst’ is exemplified by the miserable spiralling of fervidly online isolates. This is the world of Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection.
Book 1 Title: Rejection
Book Author: Tony Tulathimutte
Book 1 Biblio: Fourth Estate, $36.99 hb, 240 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780008759414/rejection--tony-tulathimutte--2025--9780008759414#rac:jokjjzr6ly9m
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An irony of this age, when everyone is connected to everyone else, is that loneliness proliferates. Martin Luther’s claim that a lonely man ‘always deduces one thing from the other and thinks everything to the worst’ is exemplified by the miserable spiralling of fervidly online isolates. This is the world of Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection.

The US writer’s much-hyped second book (his advance was US$350,000) cements Tulathimutte’s status as a leading chronicler of a particular type of millennial malaise. He pops the zits of the Zeitgeist, probes and provokes, parading the fecklessness of his neurotic, narcissistic characters for our approbation, then turns the tables and makes us, his readers, the patsies. It is dazzling, a lot of the time. It is also profane, brutal, bewildering, depressing.

Read more: Michael Winkler reviews ‘Rejection’ by Tony Tulathimutte

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Martin Thomas reviews ‘On Patrick White’s Dilemmas: A personal essay’ by Vrasidas Karalis
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Contents Category: Literary Studies
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Article Title: A difficult writer
Article Subtitle: Patrick White’s address to the ineffable
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‘Lonely Country’ is the term Arnhem landers use for empty or uncared-for places. Sometimes the custodians have died. In other cases, the land is simply too difficult to get to or inhabit. Whatever the reason, Lonely Country brings sadness. There is no one to burn the bush or manage it; no one to call out to the spirits of the old people who remain on their Country, isolated from the living.
Book 1 Title: On Patrick White’s Dilemmas
Book 1 Subtitle: A personal essay
Book Author: Vrasidas Karalis
Book 1 Biblio: Brandl & Schlesinger, $26.99, 224 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780645235074/on-patrick-whites-dilemmas--vrasidas-karalis--2025--9780645235074#rac:jokjjzr6ly9m
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‘Lonely Country’ is the term Arnhem landers use for empty or uncared-for places. Sometimes the custodians have died. In other cases, the land is simply too difficult to get to or inhabit. Whatever the reason, Lonely Country brings sadness. There is no one to burn the bush or manage it; no one to call out to the spirits of the old people who remain on their Country, isolated from the living.

Read more: Martin Thomas reviews ‘On Patrick White’s Dilemmas: A personal essay’ by Vrasidas Karalis

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Laura Elizabeth Woollett reviews ‘Stinkbug’ by Sinéad Stubbins
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Contents Category: Fiction
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Article Title: Cult of workplace
Article Subtitle: A novel about our broken working lives
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For earlier generations, joining a cult typically signified a rejection of mainstream values – careerism, property ownership, the nuclear family – in favour of spirituality and communal living. Ata time when a mortgage and stable employment are no longer assumed to be within reach of an average thirtysomething in Australia, the workplace arguably becomes a cult, with its own perplexing lingo, rigorous standards for membership, and redefinitions of family.
Book 1 Title: Stinkbug
Book Author: Sinéad Stubbins
Book 1 Biblio: Affirm Press, $34.99 pb, 304 pp
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Book 1 Readings Link: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781923135475/stinkbug--sinead-stubbins--2025--9781923135475#rac:jokjjzr6ly9m
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For earlier generations, joining a cult typically signified a rejection of mainstream values – careerism, property ownership, the nuclear family – in favour of spirituality and communal living. At a time when a mortgage and stable employment are no longer assumed to be within reach of an average thirty-something in Australia, the workplace arguably becomes a cult, with its own perplexing lingo, rigorous standards for membership, and redefinitions of family.

Read more: Laura Elizabeth Woollett reviews ‘Stinkbug’ by Sinéad Stubbins

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