The Bookshelf
The Bookshelf
ABC Australia
New Fiction: Donal Ryan, Emma Cline, Max Easton and Sebastian Barry
54 minutes Posted Sep 11, 2026 at 5:00 am.
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Show notes
We step into Irish bestseller Donal Ryan's world in Where Are the Kings, a tender coming of age story about a boy navigating grief. Inside a fracturing mind in Emma Cline’s Booker Longlisted novel Switzy, read with novelist Madeleine Gray. A chronicle of DIY activism, collectives and autonomous living in Sydney's west in Australian writer Max Easton’s Now, Autonomy, read for us by singer-songwriter Tim Rogers, and a newer world emerges in the wake of the American Civil War in Sebastian Barry’s new novel, The Newer World, read by author Hannah Kent.
BOOKS FEATURED
Donal Ryan, Where Are the Kings, Doubleday
Emma Cline, Switzy, Chatto & Windus
Max Easton, Now, Autonomy, Giramondo
Sebastian Barry, The Newer World, Faber
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through
Meg Howrey, Body Language
Colum McCann, Apeirogon
Melina Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi
Abigal Ulman, Hot Little Hands
Patrick White, The Tree of Man
Heather Rose, The Museum of Modern Love
Elizabeth Jolley, The Well
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