Brandl Schlesinger: 9 books

Adrian Newsteads explosive memoir lifts the lid on what Robert Hughes once described as “the last great art movement of the 20th century.” After thirty years sitting round campfires with Aboriginal artists all over Australia, Newstead has produced the definitive expose of “the first great art movement...

On the top shelf in his aunt's dressing room, Damien Freeman discovered a collection of family memorabilia that told a story he had always assumed to be perfectly unexceptional. The Aunt's Mirrors reveals an unexpected story of how an immigrant family from Poland made a new life - whilst continuing...

A rendezvous of history and imagination, of realities and dreams, hopes and disenchantments. The setting is Lodz, Poland, in the years of the author's childhood, when he witnessed the cataclysmic events of the 1930s, imprisoned between walls of ghettos, and finally silenced in Auschwitz.

Navigating between the two worlds of wartime experiences in Europe and new life in Australia, this moving memoir of a Holocaust survivor is imbued with an element of fiction. This deeply personal narrative travels from darkness to hope as the author loses his family at Auschwitz, spends the war in concentration camps, and ultimately emigrates to Australia.

A love story bounded by the extremes of loss and desire, 'The Singing' tells the story of two people who fail each other in the ravages of illness. Years later they remain haunted by what they were unable to hold onto, and struggle to find a way to resolve the past.

The accidental death of MP Norman Cole precipitates a hung parliament allowing a core of extreme right-wing politicians to seize power. Telford, a high-ranking but unworldly public servant, is approached by Cole’s wife who believes her husband was murdered and asks him to investigate on her behalf....

Ester was a four-year-old child during the Holocaust in Poland when she was told that both her parents had been killed. In 'Letter from my Father' Dasia Black (born Ester Hadasa) tells of her struggle as a child to survive the loss of her family, her name and identity.

Relates Karalis' personal recollections of discussions and meetings with Manoly Lascaris, Patrick White's life-partner. In these recollections, Lascaris, an obscure figure in the existing literature on White, appears as a distinct intellectual in his own right, talking about Patrick White, Australia and Greece.

Set in Brisbane during the stultifying 1950s, this account of the betrayal of love throws us into the disordered world of Sookie, a young artist. As she transits warily to the London of the 'swinging' 70s, she comes up against those who would try to steal her very identity. Intelligent, mordantly funny, it is dark comedy with edges.