Item category 1: Classics

Working on a manuscript version of this book before he died, Albert Camus provides a moving account of his poverty-stricken childhood in Algeria, the love of his silent mother and the remarkable figure of the old schoolteacher who saved him from ignorance.

Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor haunted by an obsession with the great French literary genius, Gustave Flaubert. As Geoffrey investigates the mystery of the stuffed parrot Flaubert borrowed from the Museum of Rouen to help research one of his novels, we learn an enormous amount about the...

This is the true account of Nugi Garimara's mother, Molly, made legendary by the film Rabbit-Proof Fence. In 1931 Molly led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1600-kilometre walk across remote Western Australia. Aged eight, eleven and fourteen, they escaped the confinement of a government instit...

"Scarcely out of print since the early 1870s, For the Term of His Natural Life has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life. The main focus of this great convict novel is the complex interaction between those in power and those who suffer, made meani...

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 f...

What you create can destroy you. One freezing morning, a lone man wandering across the artic ice caps is rescued from starvation by a ship's captain. "Victor Frankenstein's" story is one of ambition, murder and revenge. As a young scientist he pushed moral boundaries in order to cross the final s...