ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

This introduction on this page was updated 13/4/25.

The list below was last updated 21/11/25.  Any errors or omissions please let me know in comments.

I don’t read to anybody’s agenda, but for those interested in the diversity of Australian writing, this page notes the multicultural heritage of the Australian writers that I’ve read and reviewed here on this blog.  I’m using the word ‘heritage’ loosely: it can mean that the author was born in Australia of immigrant parents, or it can mean that they migrated here or came as refugees.  However I’m not going to trace beyond first generations to, for example, Irish forebears who came to Australia in colonial times.

There is obviously potential to get this wrong, and multicultural heritage isn’t always obvious or straightforward.  I welcome corrections if I’ve made mistakes, but I am deliberately confining myself to information that is already in the public domain.

NB Indigenous authors are indexed on the ANZ LitLovers Indigenous Reading List and you can also find them by searching the Category List in the RHS menu under REVIEWS.

Algeria

Dominique Wilson:

• The Yellow Papers (2014)
• That Devil’s Madness (2016)
• Orphan Rock (2022)

Anglo-Bangladeshi

Lesley Jørgensen:

• Cat and Fiddle (2013)

Armenia

Marcella Polain (Armenian/Irish)

• The Edge of the World (2007)
• Driving Into the Sun (2019)

Ashley Kalagian Blunt (Armenia/Canada)

• • My Name is Revenge (2018)

Austria

John Tesarch

• The Philanthropist (2010)
• Dinner with the Dissidents (2018)
• When Jokers Were Kings (2022)

Cambodia

Sovannora Ieng and Greg Hill

• Surviving Year Zero (2014)

Canada/Armenia

Ashley Kalagian Blunt

• My Name is Revenge, and a reflective essay (2018)

Donna Coates

• Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend, Australian Women’s War Fictions (2023) Part 1 and Part 2

Merav Fima

• Late Blossoms (2025)

Caribbean

Maxine Beneba Clarke

• Growing Up African in Australia (2019) (Editor)
• Beautiful Changelings (2025)

Sienna Brown (Jamaica/Canada)

• Master of My Fate (2019)

China

Vivian Bi

• Bright Swallow, Making Choices in Mao’s China, a memoir (2019)
• Dragon’s Gate (2020)

Andrew Kwong

• One Bright Moon (2020)

Emma Pei Yin (Hong Kong Chinese)

• When Sleeping Women Wake (2025)

Ouyang Yu:

• Loose, (2008)
• The English Class (2010)
• Billy Sing (2017)
• All the Rivers Run South (2023)
• The White Cockatoo Flowers (2024),

Wong Shee Ping

• The Poison of Polygamy  (first published as a serial in 1909-1910 in the Chinese Times, Melbourne)

Croatia/Germany

Marija Peričić

• The Lost Pages (2017)
• Foreign Country (2025)

Sofija Stevanovic

• Miss Ex-Yugoslavia (2018)

Cuba

Olga Lorenzo:

• The Light on the Water (2016)

Egypt

Waleed Aly

• Uncivil Wars, by Waleed Aly & Scott Stephens (Quarterly Essay #87)

Maher Abou Elsaoud:

• Cairo Paris Melbourne (2012)

Mohammed Massoud Morsi

• The Palace of Angels (2019)

Finland

Emily Brugman

• The Islands (2022)

France/England

Catherine de Saint Phalle

• The Sea and Us (2019)
• Call Me Marlowe (2023)

Germany

Kenneth Arkwright (Jewish)

• Beyond Survival (2018)

Evelyn Juers:

• House of Exile,(2009)

• The Recluse, (2012)

• The Dancer, a Biography for Philippa Cullen, (2021)

Manfred Jurgensen:

• The Other Wife (2015)

Gretchen Shirm

• Where the Light Falls (2016)
• The Crying Room (2023)
• Out of the Woods (2025)

T.G.H. Strehlow

• Journey to Horseshoe Bend (2015)

Glenice Whitting

• Pickle to Pie (2007)

Greece

John Charalambous (Greek-Cypriot & Anglo-Australian)

• Silent Parts (2006) reissued as An Accidental Soldier in 2013.

George Alexander

• Mortal Divide (1997, reissued 2022)

Michalia Arathimos (Greek-Kiwi)

• Aukati (2017)

Katerina Cosgrove (Greek/Irish)

• Bone Ash Sky (2012)

Vrasidas Karalis

• The Glebe Point Blues (2020)

Antigone Kefala, of Greek-Romanian heritage

• Late Journals (2022)

Maria Papas

• Skimming Stones (2021)

Peter Polites

• The Pillars (2019)
• God Forgets about the Poor (2023), on my TBR

Christos Tsiolkas

• The Slap (2009)

Hongkong:

Brian Castro (of Portuguese, Chinese and English parentage):

• Drift, (1994)
• The Bath Fugues (2009)
• Street to Street (2012)
• Blindness and Rage, a Phantasmagoria (2017)
• Chinese Postman (2024)

Melanie Cheng

• Room for a Stranger (2019)

Hungary

Inez Baranay:

• The Edge of Bali, (1992)

Miriam Sved

• A Universe of Sufficient Size (2019)

Iceland

Kári Gíslason

• Saga Land (co-authored with Richard Fidler) 2017
• The Sorrow Stone (2022)

Alan Gould (English and Icelandic ancestry)

• To the Burning City (1991), by Alan Gould.

• The Seaglass Spiral (2012), by Alan Gould

• The Schoonermaster’s Dance (2000), by Alan Gould

• The Poets’ Stairwell (2015), by Alan Gould

India

Suneeta Peres Da Costa (Goa)

• Saudade (2018)

Aashish Kaul:

• The Queen’s Play (2014)
• Bliss Mountain (2025)

Vijay Khurana

• The Passenger Seat (2025)

Bem Le Hunte

• Elephants with Headlights (2020)

Rashida Murphy

• The Historian’s Daughter (2016)

Christopher Raja:

• The Burning Elephant (2015)

Subhash Jaireth:

• After Love (2012)
• Spinoza’s Overcoat, Travels with Writers and Poets (2020)
• Incantations, by Subhash Jaireth (2016)
• Aflame (2021)
• To Silence, Three Autobiographies (2011)

Indonesia

Dewi Anggraeni

• My Pain, My Country (2017)

Lily Yulianti Farid

• Family Room (2010)

Intan Paramaditha

• Apple and Knife (2018), on my TBR
• The Wandering (2017)

Mirandi Riwoe (Chinese Indonesian/Irish)

• The Fish Girl (2017)
• Stone Sky Gold Mountain (2020)
• Sunbirds (2023)

Iran

Shokoofeh Azar

• The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (2017)

Ali Alizadeh

• The Last Days of Jeanne d’Arc (2017)

Banafsheh Serov

• Under a Starless Sky, A Family’s Escape from Iran (2008)

Iraq

Munjed Al Muderis, with Patrick Weaver

• Walking Free (2014)

Ireland 

Katerina Cosgrove (see Greece)

Finegan Kruckemeyer

• The End and Everything Before It (2024)

Mirandi Riwoe (Chinese Indonesian/Irish), see Indonesia

Marcella Polain (see Armenia)

Italy

Venero Armanno:

• Black Mountain (2012)
• Burning Down (2017)

Inez Baranay

• The Edge of Bali (1992)

Rosa Cappiello

• Oh, Lucky Country! (1984)

Enza Gandolfo

• Swimming (2009)
• The Bridge (2018)

Moreno Giovannoni

• The Fireflies of Autumn (2018)

Raffaela Torresan

• Poetry and Ideas, text and images (2015)

Jock Zonfrillo (Scotland/Italy)

• Recipes to Remember (2025)

Korea

Silvia Kwon

• The Return (2014)

Sun Jung

• My Name is Gucci, a dog’s story

Lebanon

Michael Mohammed Ahmad:

• The Tribe (2014)

David Malouf:

• • Harland’s Half Acre (1984)
  • Antipodes (1985)
  • Child’s Play (2007)
  • An Imaginary Life (1978)
  • Dream Stuff (2000)
  • Ransom (2009)

Lithuania

Linda Margolin Royal

• The Star on the Grave (2024)

Macedonia

S.C. Karakaltsas

• A  Perfect Stone (2018)

Malaysia

Micheline Lee:

• The Healing Party (2016)

Shelley Parker-Chan (Chinese-Malaysian)

• She Who Became the Sun (2021)

New Zealand (this one is tricky, this page is for writers who’ve made Australia their home.  Let me know if I’ve got any of these Kiwis wrong).

Meg Mundell

• Black Glass(2011)
• The Trespassers (2019)
• We are Here, Stories of Home, Place and Belonging (2019) editor

Ian Reid

• The End of Longing (2011)
• The Mind’s Own Place(2015)

Netherlands

Paul Gardner

• The Unsung Family Hero (2020)

Michael Sala (Netherlands/Greece)

• The Restorer (2017)

Pakistan

Azhar Abidi

• Passarola Rising (2006)

The Philippines

Merlinda Bobis:

• Locust Girl (2015)
• Fish-hair Woman (2013)
• The Kindness of Birds (2021)

Poland (many of these are by Holocaust survivors or their descendants)

Nina Bassat

• Take the Child and Disappear (2021)

Herz Bergner

• Between Sky and Sea (1946)

Anna Rosner Blay

• Sister Sister (1998)

Pinchas Goldhar

• The Collected Stories of Pinchas Goldhar (2016)

Antoni Jach

• Napoleon’s Double (2007)
• Travelling Companions (2021)

Leah Kaminsky:

• The Waiting Room (2015)
• Doll’s Eye (2023), by Leah Kaminsky

Serge Liberman

•  The Storyteller: Selected Stories (2018)

Olga Lorenzo

• The Light on the Water (2016)

Zwi Levin (as told to Joe Reich)

• A Sack Full of Memories (2019)

Morris Lurie

• Rappaport (2014)
• Hergesheimer in the Present Tense (2014)

Joe Reich

• A Sack Full of Memories (2019, as told by Zwi Levin)
• Ein Stein (2021)
• Beyond Berggasse (2023)

Alex Skovron:

• The Poet (2005)

Sue Smethurst

• The Freedom Circus (2020)

Sara Rena Vidal

• Bella and Chaim (2017)

Arnold Zable

• The Watermill (2020)

Romania

Madeleine St John: (St John’s mother was Romanian, but she reinvented herself as pseudo-French once in Australia).

• The Women in Black (1993)
• A Stairway to Paradise (1999)
• The Essence of the Thing (1997)

Antigone Kefala, of Greek-Romanian heritage

• Late Journals (2022)

Russia

Lee Kofman, editor, with Tamar Paluch

• Ruptured, (2025)

Alla Wolf-Tasker

• Three Decades On, Lake House and Daylesford (2018)

Judah Waten

• Alien Son (1952)

Ruthenia

Bram Presser (who explains his grandfather’s birthplace like this: There once stood a village that had been in Poland, then Hungary, then Subcarpathian Ruthenia, then Czechoslovakia, then Slovakia, then Hungary again, then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, then the Ukraine and now cannot be found on any map.

• A Book of Dirt (2017)

Serbia

A S Patric:

• Black Rock White City (2015)
• Las Vegans for Vegans (2012)
• Atlantic Black (2017)
• The Butcherbird Stories (2018)

Sofija Stefanovich

• Miss Ex-Yugoslavia (2018)

Filip Vukašin

• Modern Marriage (2021) 

Singapore

Simone Lazaroo:

• Lost River, Four Albums (2014);
• The Travel Writer (2006)
• Sustenance (2010)

S.L. Lim

• Real Differences (2019)
• Revenge, Murder in Three Parts (2020)

Somalia

Mariam Issa

• A Resilient Life (2012)

South Africa

Brendan Colley

• The Signal Line (2022)

J M Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2003, & became an Australian citizen in 2006

• Life and Times of Michael K (1983)
• Foe (1986)
• The Pole & Other Stories (2023)
• Summertime (on  my TBR).
• The Childhood of Jesus (on my TBR)
• The Master of Petersburg (on my TBR)
• Diary of a Bad Year (on my TBR)

Shelley Davidow

• Shadow Sisters (2018)

Joanne Fedler

• The Whale’s Last Song (2024)

Sisonke Msimang

• Always Another Country (2018)
• The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2019)

Ceridwen Dovey

• Blood Kin (2007)
• The Garden of the Fugitives (2018)
• Life After Truth (2020)

Hayley Katzen

• Untethered (2020)

Sudan

Kgshak Akec

• Hopeless Kingdom

South Sudan

Deng Thiak Adut, with Ben McElvey

• Songs of a War Boy (2016)

Majok Tulba:

• Beneath the Darkening Sky (2012)

Yuot A Alaak

• Father of the Lost Boys (2020)

Sri Lanka

Michelle de Kretser:

• Questions of Travel (2012)
• Springtime (2014)
• The Lost Dog (2008)
• The Life to Come (2017)

Para Paheer, with Alison Corke

• The Power of Good People (2017)

Rajith Savanadasa:

• Ruins (2016)

Channa Wickremesekera:

• Asylum (2015)

Swaziland

Malla Nunn:

• A Beautiful Place to Die (2008)
• Blessed are the Dead (2012)
• Present Darkness (2013)
• Sugar Town Queens

Anglo Swedish

Kristina Olssen

• The China Garden (2009)
• Shell (2018)

Sweden

Anna Solding:

• The Hum of Concrete (2012)

Tanzania

Eugen Bacon

• Danged Black Thing (2021)
• Serengotti (2023)

Turkey

Alice Melike Ulgezer:

• The Memory of Salt (2012)

Ukraine

John Hughes

• The Garden of Sorrows (2013)
• No One (2019)
• The Dogs (2021)

United Kingdom

Martin Boyd (born in Switzerland, educated in Australia, but identified as Anglo-Australian and spent most of his line in England)

• When Blackbirds Sing (1962)

Paul Burnam

• The Grease Monkey’s Tale (2010)

Ada Cambridge (England):

• Thirty Years in Australia, (1903)

Ros Collins (Jewish)

• Solly’s Girl (2015)
• Rosa, Memories with Licence 2019

Catherine de Saint Phalle (England/France)

• The Sea and Us (2019)
• Call Me Marlowe (2023)

Ernest Favenc

• Tales of the Austral Tropics (1893)

Anna Fienberg

• Escape (2009)

Alan Gould (English and Icelandic ancestry, see Iceland)

Rodney Hall (England)

• Popeye Never Told You (2010)
• The Second Bridegroom (1991, Yandilli Trilogy #1)
• A Stolen Season (2018)
• The Grisly Wife (1993, Yandilli Trilogy #2),
• Silence (2011)
• Vortex (2024)

Elizabeth Jolley (England):

• Miss Peabody’s Inheritance (1983)
• Milk and Honey (1984)
• For other titles, see the Elizabeth Jolley page in the top menu.

Nicholas Jose

• Paper Nautilus (1988)  read by Paul English
• Avenue of Eternal Peace (1989, revised 2008)
• The Custodians (1997)
• Original Face (2005), 
• Black Sheep, Journey to Borroloola (2002)
• The Idealist (2023)

Robert Lukins (Wales)

• The Everlasting Sunday (2018)
• Loveland (2022),
• Somebody Down There Like Me (2025)

Anna Mandoki

• Random Acts of Unkindness (2022)

Alex Miller (England):

• Coal Creek (2013);
• Autumn Laing (2011)
• Lovesong (2009) 
• Prochownik’s Dream (2005);
• Landscape of Farewell (2007)
• The Passage of Love (2018)
• Max (2020)

Drusilla Modjeska:

• The Mountain (2012),
• Second Half First (2015)
• Exiles at Home, Australian Women Writers 1925-1945 (1981), by Drusilla Modjeska

Belinda Probert

• Imaginative Possessive (2021)

Catherine Helen Spence (Scotland)

• Mr Hogarth’s Will (1865)
• Ever Yours, C H Spence (2005)

Patrick White (England):

• Riders in the Chariot (1961)
• Happy Valley;
• The Eye of the Storm (1973)
• The Twyborn Affair (1979)
• Voss (1957)
• The Solid Mandala (1966)
• The Aunt’s Story (1948)
• A Fringe Of Leaves (1976)
• The Tree of Man (1955)
• The Burnt Ones (1964)

Pip Williams

• The Dictionary of Lost Words (2020) 
• The Bookbinder of Jericho (2023)

Jock Zonfrillo (Scotland/Italy)

• Recipes to Remember (2025)

USA

Amy Espeseth

• Sufficient Grace (2012)

Linda Jaivin:

• The Empress Lover (2014)
• The Shortest History of China (2021)

Joyce Kornblatt

• Mother Tongue (2020)

Eleanor Limprecht (born and raised in the US, Germany and Pakistan but now lives in Sydney, Australia)

• Long Bay (2015)
• The Passengers (2018)
• The Coast, by Eleanor Limprecht (2022)

Mary K Pershall

• A Long Way Home (1992)

USSR (Ukraine)

Maria Tumarkin

• Traumascapes (2005)

Vietnam

Hoa Pham:

• The Wave (2015)
• The Lady of the Realm (2017)
• The Other Shore (2014)

Nam Le:

• The Boat (2008)

Chi Vu:

• Anguli Ma: A Gothic Tale (2012)

Zimbabwe

Elizabeth Kuiper

• Little Stones (2019)

Lucy Mushita

• Chinongwa (2008, Australian edition 2023)