AustLit

'In this week’s ABR podcast, listen to Ronan McDonald discuss one hundred years of James Joyce’s Ulysses, among the most famous books of the twentieth century. McDonald, who is the Gerry Higgins Chair in Irish Studies at Melbourne University, explains that Ulysses is a work with a complex publishing history, even setting aside its censorship record. To mark the Ulysses centenary, Cambridge University Press has republished a splendid facsimile of the original version of Ulysses, raising new questions about the book we thought we knew ' (Production summary)

'On May Day 1955, two years after his death, a colossal memorial to Joseph Stalin was unveiled on a prominent site north of central. Towering above the city and containing 14,000 tons of granite, it was the largest statue of the dictator ever created. Stalin was depicted at the head of a representative group of citizens, dubbed by some as a bread queue. Otakar Švec, a prominent Czech sculptor, had won the commission in 1949. After the work’s stressful gestation, he killed himself shortly before the work was unveiled; there had been constant interference and police surveillance, and his wife committed suicide in 1954.' (Introduction)

'Rayner Hoff, the most significant sculptor to work in Australia between the wars, is most admired for his sculptures in the Anzac war memorials in Sydney and Adelaide. His work was in the classical figurative tradition in which he had trained. While never part of the international avant-garde, he remained modern for his era and adapted to the idiom of art deco. Hoff’s work is known to all Australians through a logo depicting a lion with its paw on a ball, which he designed for Holden in Adelaide in 1927. While his name may be unfamiliar to many people, the Holden lion mascot, instantly recognisable even in its modified form, is still in use today. Now ninety, the Holden insignia is one of the great examples of Australian logo branding; at a time when so many cars are indistinguishable, the mascot is still the easiest way to identify a Holden.' (Introduction)