Read Around Oceania Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Oceania.
Best books from Oceania (404)
141.
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts EN
AustraliaDescription:
Novel based on author's life. Gregory David Roberts committed a series of robberies while addicted to heroin, and in 1980 he escaped over the front wall of Victoria's maximum-security prison, making him one of Australia's most wanted men. His subsequent journey took him to various places including Bombay, where he established a free medical clinic for slum-dwellers and worked as a counterfeiter, smuggler, gunrunner and street soldier for the Bombay mafia. Explores the author's journey from being a wanted criminal in Australia to finding humanity on the wild edge of experience.
142.
Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville EN
Description:
Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence. Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able - despite the cost - to make a life she could call her own.
143.
A Child of Four Women (in: So Many Islands: Stories from the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian, and Pacific Oceans) by Marita Davies EN
Description:
So Many Islands breaks out bold new writing from the distant shores of countries in the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian and Pacific oceans. Here you will find poems about revolution and protest. You will be transported to Marakei, 'the women's island', and join the battle to save a beached whale. Alongside family politics, So Many Islands tackles nuclear testing and climate change – global issues that are close to the heart of these precariously poised communities. Giving voice to their challenges and triumphs, these writers create a vibrant portrait of what it is like to live and love on the... continue
144.
Women and Children by Tony Birch EN
Description:
It's 1965 and Joe Cluny is living in a working-class suburb with his mum, Marion, and sister, Ruby, spending his days trying to avoid trouble with the nuns at the local Catholic primary school. One evening his Aunty Oona appears on the doorstep, distressed and needing somewhere to stay. As his mum and aunty work out what to do, Joe comes to understand the secrets that the women in his family carry, including on their bodies. Yet their pleas for assistance are met with silence and complicity from all sides. Who will help Joe's family at their time of need? Women & Children is a novel about the ... continue
145.
My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier EN
Description:
"Beats The Silence of the Lambs for suspense—it's the kind of book that had me literally gasping aloud as it rattled to its incredible conclusion." —Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling author of Homeland What if the most terrifying person you know is your ten-year-old sister? Seventeen-year-old Aussie Che Taylor loves his younger sister, Rosa. But he’s also certain that she’s a psychopath—clinically, threateningly, dangerously. Recently Rosa has been making trouble, hurting things. Che is the only one who knows; he’s the only one his sister trusts. Rosa is smart, talented, pretty, and ve... continue
146.
Road No Good by Bridget Isichei EN
Description:
What happens when a young New Zealand woman feels the need to escape the online reality that is her life and goes in search of 'real' life experience in poverty-stricken Vanuatu? Bridget Isichei wanted to make a difference in the world; she wanted to help people. However, she didn't know what she was in for when she accepted a two-year volunteer humanitarian post to set up preschools and train women to be teachers in the popular tourist destination of Vanuatu. Instead of cocktails by the sea in a luxury resort, Bridget found herself in Luganville, a shanty town whose inhabitants were still pra... continue
147.
Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy EN
Description:
Against the backdrop of Darwin, that small, tropical hothouse of a port, half-outback, half-oriental, lying at the tip of northern 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. 'I enjoyed Maestro enormously. Besides its thoughtfulness and bright sensuality, it has a playful quality, a love of jest, which appealed to me very much.' Helen Garner, SYDNEY REVIEW On release, MAEStRO was hailed 'a splendid achievement, a wise, deeply felt novel that continues to haunt well after on... continue
148.
The Swan Book by Alexis Wright EN
Description:
The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginals still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change. It follows the life of a mute teenager called Oblivia, the victim of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousands of black swans driven from other parts of the country, to her marriage to Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia, and her elevation to the position of First Lady, confined to a tower in a flooded and lawle... continue
149.
Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson EN
Description:
For fans of Richard Osman and Anthony Horowitz, a fiendishly fun locked room murder mystery from the author of the indie darling Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone --this time set on a train full of mystery writers, agents, editors, and fans. Ernest Cunningham returns in a deliciously witty locked room (train) mystery. When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each o... continue
150.
If Everyone Cared Enough : Her Voice Reclaimed by Margaret Tucker EN
Description:
Margaret Tucker MBE (affectionately known as Aunty Marge) was a significant Aboriginal activist and one of the first Aboriginal women to publish for mainstream audiences. Aunty Marge's 1977 If Everyone Cared was a landmark publication. In that first edition, her tone and draft content were significantly altered to placate white readers who were substantially unfamiliar with Aboriginal cultures and ignorant about the outcomes of settler invasion from a First Nations perspective. Drawing on the handwritten manuscript held in the collections of the National Library of Australia, If Everyone Reall... continue