Top Forty Australian Books

The top Australian books chosen by the Australian Society of Authors. Click on the covers or titles to find more information on the books or to order them. See our Australian book page for more Australian books.

1		Cloudstreet by Tim Winton From separate catastrophes two rural families flee to the city and find themselves sharing a great, breathing, shuddering joint called Cloudstreet, where they begin their lives again from scratch. For twenty years they roister and rankle, laugh and curse until the roof over their heads becomes a home for their hearts. Tim Winton's funny, sprawling saga is an epic novel of love and acceptance. Winner of the Miles Franklin and NBC Awards in Australia, Cloudstreet is a celebration of people, places and rhythms which has fuelled imaginations world-wide.
2		The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead Sam and Henny Pollit have too many children, too little money, and too much loathing for each other. As Sam uses the children's adoration to feed his own voracious ego, Henny watches in bleak despair, knowing the bitter reality that lies just below his mad visions. A chilling novel of family life, the relations between parents and children, husbands and wives, The Man Who Loved Children is acknowledged as a contemporary classic.
3		The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson Set in Australia during the gold-mining boom, this remarkable trilogy is one of the classics of Australian literature. Henry Handel Richardson's great literary achievement, comprising the novels Australia Felix, The Way Home and Ultima Thule, weaves together many themes. Richard Mahony, despite finding initial contentment with his wife, Mary, becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his ordered life. His restlessness is not understood by Mary, who has to endure the constant shattering of her security as Richard desperately attempts to free himself; his attempts finally plunge them into poverty. In the figure of Richard Mahony, Richardson captures the soul of the emigrant, ever restless, ever searching for some equilibrium, yet never really able to settle anywhere. Richard's search, though, is also the more universal one for a meaning that will validate and give purpose to his existence.
4		Dirt Music by Tim Winton Set in the wild landscape of Western Australia, this is a novel about the odds of breaking with the past, a love story about people stifled by grief or regret, whose dreams are lost, whose hopes have dried up. It's a journey across landscapes within and without, about the music that sometimes arises from the dust. In prose as haunting and beautiful as its western setting, Dirt Music confirms Tim Winton's status as the pre-eminent Australian novelist of his generation.
5		Voss by Patrick White Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality. From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White's novel is a work of extraordinary power and virtuosity.
6		The Tree of Man by Patrick White Stan Parker, with only a horse and a dog for company, journeys to a remote scrubby patch of land that he has inherited in the Australian hills. When the land is cleared enough for a rudimentary house to be built, Stan brings to the wilderness his new wife Amy. Together they struggle to establish a home for themselves and their growing family. And together, but essentially apart, they face everything from the domestic upheavals of birth and death to natural disasters. In this chronicle of simple lives in joy and sorrow Patrick White creates an evocative monument to human endurance.
7		The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay The Magic Pudding is one of the most popular children's books in Australia. It describes the adventures of three characters - Bunyip Bluegum, the gentlemanly but devious koala bear, and his two raffish friends Sam Sawnoff and Bill Barnacle, as they travel through turn-of-the-century Australia with an infinitely renewable pudding, Albert. A very unusual pudding it is indeed. Whistle three times, turn it round and it's steak-and-kidney if that's what you fancy, or hot jam roll, or delicious apple dumpling. Its manners are appalling, but it tastes so good! And it loves, just loves, to be eaten.
8		An Imaginary Life by David Malouf In the first century A. D. , Publius Ovidius Naso, the most urbane and irreverant poet of imperial Rome, was banished to a remote village on the edge of the Black Sea. From these sparse facts, one of out most distinguished novelists has fashioned an audacious and supremely moving work of fiction. Marooned on the edge of the known world, exiled from his native tongue, Ovid depends on the kindness of barbarians who impate their dead and converse with the spirit world. But then he becomes the guardian of a still more savage creature, a feral child who has grown up among deer. What ensues is a luminous encounter between civilization and nature, as enacted by a poet who once cataloged the treacheries of love and a boy who slowly learns how to give it.
9		Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson Nora Porteous has spent most of her life waiting to escape. Fleeing from her small-town family and then from her stifling marriage to a mean-spirited husband, Nora arrives finally in London where she creates a new life for herself as a successful dressmaker. Now in her seventies, Nora returns to Queensland to settle into her childhood home. But Nora has been away a long time, and the people and events of her past are not at all like she remembered them. And while some things never change, Nora is about to discover just how selective her 'globe of memory' has been. Tirra Lirra by the River is a moving account of one woman's remarkable life, a beautifully written novel which displays the lyrical brevity of Jessica Anderson's award-winning style. Winner of the Miles Franklin Award.
10		My Brother Jack by George Johnston David and Jack Meredith grew up in a patriotic suburban Melbourne household during the First World War, and go on to lead lives that could not be more different. Through the story of the two brothers George Johnston created an enduring exploration of two Australian myths: that of the man who loses his soul as he gains worldly success, and that off the tough, honest, Aussie battler, whose greatest ambition is to serve his country during the war. Acknowledged as one of the true Australian classics, My Brother Jack is a deeply satisfying, complex and moving literary masterpiece.
11		Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey They were improbable dreamers who dared to play the game of love, faith, and chance. Peter Carey has won every major literary award in Australia. Oscar and Lucinda won the Booker Prize in 1988.
12		Remembering Babylon by David Malouf Remembering Babylon tells the tragic and compelling story of Gemmy Fairley, a white man who, after sixteen years with the Aborigines, finds his whiteness as unsettling among the hostilities of a pioneer community as the knowledge he brings with him of the aboriginal world. Short-listed for the 1993 Booker Prize. Winner of the 1996 International Impac Dublin Literary Award.
13		A Fortunate Life by A. B. Facey This is the extraordinary life of an ordinary man. It is the story of Albert Facey, who lived with simple honesty, compassion and courage. A parentless boy who started work at eight on the rough West Australian frontier, he struggled as an itinerant rural worker, survived the gore of Gallipoli, the loss of his farm in the Depression, the death of his son in World War II and that of his beloved wife after 60 devoted years - yet felt that his life was fortunate. Facey's life story, published when he was 87, has inspired many as a play, a television series, and an award-winning book.
14		My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin In this ironically titled and riotous first novel by Miles Franklin, originally published in 1901, Sybylla tells the story if growing up passionate and rebellious in rural NSW, where the most that girls could hope for was to marry or to teach. Sybylla will do neither, but that doesn't stop her from falling in love, and it doesn't make the choices any easier.
15		Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner The story of these seven 'select spirits' has now been enjoyed for a hundred years. Get to know them one by one - especially Judy, the irrepressible heroine who is loved by all. "Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.". Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible - but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule. Step inside and meet them all - dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, "the General". Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.
16		True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey With all the force of his formidable powers as a master novelist, Peter Carey explores the emotional life and times of our most potent legend, Ned Kelly. True History of the Kelly Gang is a breathless adventure, both a lament and a tribute, a boy's defense of his mother and a man's confiding letter to the daughter he will never meet. Winner of the Booker Price for 2001.
17		The Children's Bach by Helen Garner Athena and Dexter lead an enclosed family life, innocent of fashion and bound by duty towards a disturbed child. Their comfortable rut is disrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth, a tough nut from Dexter's past. With her three charming, chaotic hangers-on, she draws the couple out into a world whose casual egotism they had barely dreamed of. How can they get home again?
18		Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White Through the crumbling ruins of the once splendid Xanadu Miss Hare wanders, half-mad, yet seeming less alien among the encroaching wildlife than among the inhabitants of Saraparilla. In the wilderness she stumbles firstly upon a half-caste aborigine and then a Jewish refugee. They each place themselves in the care of a local washerwoman. Existing in a world of pervasive evil, all four have been independently damaged and discarded. Now in one shared vision they find themselves bound together, understanding the possibility of redemption.
19		A History of Australia ( Volumes 1-2), ( Volumes 3-4, ), ( Volumes 5-6.) by Manning Clark Manning Clark's A History of Australia is one of the masterpieces of historical writing in the 20th Century. Passionate and drawn on an epic scale, his vision of the birth of a nation remains a keystone to the understanding of Australia's past. The history of Australia is the story of extremes in close proximity: convicts presided over by enlightened and despotic governors, opportunistic adventurers, moral improvers and messianic dreamers; republicans and Empire loyalists. Clark's Australians are men and women of immense goodwill and deep sinfulness, idealism and brutality. Visionary, exuberant and elegiac, Manning Clark sees Australia's history through the calamitous, violent and unexpectedly heroic lives of her people, in which the process of change is driven by the unceasing conflict between great and generous vision and human frailty. This is a magnificent work of history - compulsively readable, and alive with scholarship and dazzling narrative energy.
20		Collected Poems by Judith Wright This definitive collection represents the impressive poetic achievement of one of Australia's most highly respected and valued poets. Judith Wright's Collected Poems is comprised of her work from 1942 to 1985, and includes her latest three books of poetry, Alive, Fourth Quarter and Phantom Dwelling. It is a fitting tribute to an outstanding poet. Whether she is read for her rich evocation of the Australian land, for the truth, sensitivity and profundity of her meditations on the great themes of love, death and eternity, or for the beauty of her lyric style, Judith Wright is always supremely rewarding.
21		The Harp in the South by Ruth Park The saga of the Darcy family has its beginnings in the dusty outback. After the turmoil of courtship, Hughie and Mumma move to the inner-city slums of Sydney. There grow the bittersweet first and last loves of their daughter Roie, who becomes a woman too quickly amid the brothels, the razor gangs and the tenements. Ruth Park is a classic storyteller. She writes of the Darcy family, their vitality and humour, and brings to life a community where, despite the odds, life is always exuberant and full of promise..
22		Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy Against the backdrop of Darwin - that small, tropical hothouse of a port, half-outback, half-oriental, lying at the tip of North Australia - a young and newly arrived southerner encounters the 'maestro', a Viennese refugee with a shadowed past. The occasion is a piano lesson, the first of many...
23		Patrick White: A Life by David Marr "An excellent biography...matching Patrick White's outspokenness and privacy with his own perception and sympathy." - Michael Holroyd.
24		Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs Generations of children have thrilled to The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie undoubtedly Australia's best-loved children's book. May Gibbs' enchanting bush world, peopled with gumnut heroes and heroines, solid friends like Mr Lizard and Mrs Bear and of course, the villainous Banksia men, has played an important a part in the imaginative background of Australian children.
25		The Vivisector by Patrick White Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.Hurtle Duffield is incapable of loving anything except what he paints. The men and women who court him during his long life are, above all, the victims of his art. He is the vivisector, dissecting their weaknesses with cruel precision: his sister's deformity, a grocer's moonlight indiscretion and the passionate illusions of his mistress, Hero Pavloussi. Only the egocentric adolescent he sees as his spiritual child elicits from him a deeper, more treacherous emotion.
26		Capricornia by Xavier Herbert "Although that northern part of the Continent of Australia which is called Capricornia was pioneered long after the southern parts its unofficial early history was even more bloody than that of the others. One probable reason for this is that the pioneers had already had experience in subduing Aborigines in the South and hence were impatient of wasting time with people who knew they were determined to take no immigrants." And so Capricornia opens with a sweep as vast as the territory it covers. First published to controversy and acclaim in 1938, the novel brings to life a cast of memorable characters in an epic stretching fifty years.
27		Coonardoo by Katharine Susannah Prichard A tough, uncompromising novel about the difficult love between a white man and a black woman. Coonardoo is the moving story of a young Aboriginal woman trained from childhood to be the housekeeper at Wytaliba station and, as such, destined to look after its owner, Hugh Watt. The love between Coonardoo and Hugh, which so shocked its readers when the book was first published in 1929, is never acknowledged and so, degraded and twisted in on itself, destroys not only Coonardoo, but also a community which was once peaceful. Introduced by Drusilla Modjeska, this frank and daring novel set on the edge of the desert still raises difficult questions about the history of contact between black and white, and its representation in Australian writing.
28		Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse A contemporary romantic Australian masterpiece, Grand Days tells of the moral and sexual awakening of an idealistic young Australian woman working in the diplomatic corps in Europe in the aftermath of World War I. On a train from Paris to Geneva, Edith Campbell Berry meets Major Ambrose Westwood in the dining car, and allows him to kiss her passionately. Their early intimacy binds them together once they reach Geneva and their posts at the newly created League of Nations. There, a heady idealism prevails over Edith and her young colleagues, and nothing seems beyond their grasp, certainly not world peace. The exuberance of the times carries over into Geneva nights: Edith is drawn into a glamorous and dangerous underworld where, coaxed by Ambrose, she becomes more and more sexually adventurous. Vivid, funny and wise, full of shocks of revelation and recognition, Grand Days is a dazzling evocation of a golden bygone era and an unerring portrait of a woman of her times - as well as a stunning novel which speaks vividly to readers today.
29		My Place by Sally Morgan My Place begins with Sally Morgan tracing the experiences of her own life, growing up in suburban Perth in the fifties and sixties. Through the memories and images of her childhood and adolescence, vague hints and echoes beging to emerge, hidden knowledge is uncovered, and a fascinating story unfolds - a mystery of identity, complete with clues and suggested solutions. Sally Morgan's My Place is a deeply moving account of a search for truth, into which a whole family is gradually drawn; finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.
30		One Hundred Poems by Kenneth Slessor One of Australia's finest poets, Kenneth Slessor would be outstanding in any company. His brilliance of technique gives an impression of unconscious mastery in poems that are always arresting in conception and illuminating in image. Slessor was born in 1901 in Orange, New South Wales. He was educated in Sydney and became a journalist in his late teens. Most of his life was spent in Sydney, which he grew to love, and the city's harbour, streets and people appear in a number of his poems. He died in 1971.
31		The Riders by Tim Winton Fred Scully can't wait to see his wife and daughter. He's got a new life for them all worked out. He's sweated on this reunion. The doors at the airport hiss open. Scully's life falls apart...
32		Such is Life by Joseph Furphy Joseph Furphy - or Tom Collins, to use his pseudonym - was the bullock driver who wrote Such is Life in the 1890s. As a novel of the bush and the outback it is a tour de force of originality and genius. Its characters are unforgettable, but as a work of philosophy is just as interesting. Furphy is among the wittiest and most learned writers in the English language.
33		Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden Hell isn't only a place for the damned, sometimes it's a place where the saved take refuge. Seven teenagers take a trip to Hell. And seven come back. To Hell. the most powerful novel ever written for young Australians. Get Ready. This is Real. This is True. What Will You Do Tomorrow? John Marsden is one of the new breed of Australia's writers for young people: lively, fresh, provocative. Many young readers actually turn off the TV and leave their computer games to go and read John's books. And, for a number of them, they are the first books they voluntarily read.
34		The Eye of the Storm by Patrick White Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the Sydney suburb of Centennial Park, three nurses, a housekeeper and a solicitor attend to Elizabeth Hunter as her son and daughter convene at her deathbed. But, in death as in life, Elizabeth remains a destructive force on those who surround here. The Eye of the Storm is a savage exploration of family relationships - and the sharp undercurrents of love and hate, comedy and tragedy, which define them.
35		Fly Away Peter by David Malouf For three very different people brought together by their love for birds, life on the Queensland coast in 1914 is the timeless and idyllic world of sandpipers, ibises and kingfishers. In another hemisphere civilization rushes headlong into a brutal conflict. Life there is lived from moment to moment. Inevitably, the two young men -sanctuary owner and employee - are drawn to the war, and into the mud and horror of the trenches of Armentieres. Alone on the beach, their friend Imogen, the middle-aged wildlife photographer, must acknowledge for all three of them that the past cannot be held.
36		For Love Alone by Christina Stead Against a background of two cities - Sydney, thick with genteel sweat; and London, grim, dark and depressed - For Love Alone tells the story of Teresa Hawkins, high minded, passionate and independent, who knows only one commandment: Thou Shalt Love. Obsessed by love and a sense of her own destiny, Teresa turns her back on Sydney and its suburban horizons, and sets off on her 'grand, perilous journey'. Following the self-seeking and contemptuous Jonathon Crow, whom Stead gives to us here in an unforgettable portrait of misogyny, Teresa arrives in London to a world in which she does indeed seem fated to belong. There she meets James Quick and discovers another form of love, and her own power as a woman.
37		For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke The grim story of life in an Australian penal colony. Told with great force, For The Term Of His Natural Life is a narrative of great suffering - of whips, chains and man's inhumanity. There is no attempt to soften the truth of degradation and dark cruelty in convict Australia. And yet the novel is filled with life and peopled with vivid characters. Rufus Dawes, condemned to transportation for a crime he did not commit, is one of the most unforgettable characters of Australian literature. This is perhaps Australia's most significant and most famous 19th-century colonial novel and it has found success both in Australia and abroad - it has been translated into German, Dutch, Swedish and Russian. It was serialised from 1870 to 1872 and published as a work for the first time in Australia in 1874.
38		The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville Douglas Cheeseman is the kind of divorced middle-aged man you'd never glance at twice, although he can tell you more than you'd ever want to know about bridges. Harley Savage, big, plain and uncompromising, knows she's a danger to herself and anyone else who tries to get too close. Why else would she have gone through three husbands? And for Karakarook, a dying country town that used to think it had a big future, tourists are its last desperate hope. The Bent Bridge is what brings them all together. Some of the townspeople think the tourists will love it, and Harley agrees. But Douglas Cheeseman is in Karakarook to tear it down, and, well, it seems that things are about to become complicated. Winner of the 2001 Orange Prize for Fiction.
39		Illywhacker by Peter Carey "The finest and funniest picaresque novel yet written in Australia." - Peter Pierce, National Times. Winner of Age book of the Year Award, NBC Award for Australian Literature, Victorian Premier's Award, FAW Barbara Ramsden Award. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
40		Power Without Glory by Frank Hardy When first published, Frank Hardy's famous and controversial novel about one man's ruthless rise from his working class origins caused a furore that has been unmatched in Australian history. This is the story of Melbourne's sordid beginnings; of corruption, greed, brutality and fear. And of John West - unscrupulous in his methods and obsessive and unrelenting in his quest for wealth and political power. In the highly explosive atmosphere aroused by the Communist Party Dissolution Act of 1950, a sensational uproar erupted over Power Without Glory when Frank Hardy was jailed and charged with criminal libel. The book behind Australia's all-time popular TV dramatisation, the issues surrounding this novel and its defence are, even today, still unresolved.