Delia Falconer

De flesta svenskar, också de hyggligt belästa, får lätt något panikslaget i blicken om de ombeds nämna en enda australiensisk författare, skriver Jan Arnald i förordet till Australien berättar som är en antologi med ett brett urval av samtidsförfattare från denna ofta förbisedda kontinent. Den aboriginska urbefolkningen har den längsta obrutna kulturhistorien av jordklotets alla folkslag, men ur ett västerländskt perspektiv är den australiensiska litteraturen i stort sätt nyfödd. I denna antologi finns såväl aboriginska som icke-aboriginska författare representerade. På olika sätt förhåller de sig till det australiska; dess samhälle såväl som dess säregna mytologi. Inte minst bearbetar flera av författarna på olika sätt sin egen historia. Först i februari 2008 bad den australiensiska staten officiellt om ursäkt för sin förtryckarpolitik gentemot aboriginerna. Australien berättar fyller en lucka i den bokliga allmänbildningen i Sverige, genom att ge läsare möjligheten att bekanta sig med noveller som sträcker sig från det komiska till det tragiska, från det underhållande till det reflekterande mer sällan än inte på en och samma gång. Australien berättar utkommer i Tranans uppskattade berättarserie, som presenterar framstående novellistik från hela världen, inte sällan av författare som aldrig tidigare kommit ut på svenska. Hittills har tretton volymer utkommit, senast med noveller från Lettland och Egypten.

As I set out from the city’s southern end, the sandstone walls beneath the Central railway line still held the day’s heat … I passed a row of old terraces where feral banana trees had colonised the tiny courtyards behind them, and walked on, past the smell of Thai food, up dirty William Street … The moon rose from the invisible harbour into a sky of such deep royal blue it was almost hard to believe in. The street smelled of low tied. For all its beauty, the city could return in an instant to pulp. And that thought was strangely cheering. Sydney has always been the sexiest and brashest of our cities, but perhaps the most misunderstood. In this new edition of Sydney – part of the classic City Series – Delia Falconer conjures up its sandstone, humidity and jacarandas, its fireworks, glitz and magic. But she discards lazy stereotypes to reveal a complex city: beautiful, violent, half-wild, and at times deeply spiritual. Beginning with her childhood in a decaying ’70s Sydney, caught between a faded Art Deco age and mega development, Falconer intertwines her own stories with the wellsprings of the city’s history and its literary past. Melancholic, moving and funny — Sydney is about its people: mad clergymen, amateur astronomers, Indigenous weather experts, crims and victims, photographers and artists, thinkers and dreamers. Falconer’s Sydney is intensely atmospheric and seductive. Now with a new Afterword in which Falconer ponders the city’s twentyfirst century transformations – might it have become a softer, nicer place? Will it be able to withstand the real presence of climate change? – and her own. Ranges over the history and different moods of Australia’s oldest citySydney was first published in 2010 as part of the classic NewSouth City SeriesEvocative and atmospheric writing, acclaimed as a dazzling literary achievementCombines memoir, history and journalismMajor title in bestselling City Series where leading writers of fiction and non-fiction reflect on their home city now available once moreBilled as ‘travel books where no-one leaves home’Delia Falconer is a bestselling novelist, prize-winning essayist and criticNew edition of an acclaimed classic with a new AfterwordIn new Afterword author reflects on the changes to her own life now that she has children, and the changes to the city, daring to ask if Sydney might be losing its hard edgesGrapples with the reality of climate change, from a long season of drought to a city choking in bushfire smokeMajor advertising and publicity campaigns to support re-release of all the books in the City Series

Georgia, 1898: On what may be the last day of his life, Captain Frederick Benteen -- the man who, in the minds of many Americans, might have saved Custer's Seventh Cavalry from death at Little Bighorn -- receives a letter from an ambitious boy offering to "restore" his reputation. In the years since, Benteen has silently watched as the public canonized Custer for dying and cursed Benteen for surviving. Now, at last, as he begins to put down some account of those two horrific days pinned down on a ridge in Montana, Benteen finds himself haunted by his lost companions: Star-Gazer, Handsome Jack, the gentle bugler De Rudio, and the Choir, a host of misfits who hover at the edges of the action. Benteen struggles to untangle his own story, his own worth, from the grand narrative of history and the "nine tenths nothing" that make up battle. Funny, moving, rich in character and incident, this acclaimed novel avoids the bloody battle scenes and maudlin romance that characterize much fiction about the American-Indian wars in favor of an unsparing and poetic story that explores what it means to be a soldier -- then and now.