'There are certain books that have the knack of getting under your skin. This is why George Bernard Shaw declared Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit to be a far more “seditious” text than Karl Marx’s Das Capital.

'What he was getting at is the power of books to work on your emotions. The intellect can be too cold an instrument to engender empathy, to bring people who are distant from you into your “circle of concern”. And it is precisely this, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues, that matters for the pursuit of social justice.

'In 2017, the Stella Prize judges have again come up with a shortlist of books that will engage your brain, but also your heart. They illuminate all the aspects of life that make us frail and vulnerable – sickness, dying, inequality – realities that many of us would prefer to ignore.' (Introduction)

'Early in November 2015, Sydney novelist Georgia Blain had a seizure and was taken to hospital for tests. The results were as bad as they could be: glioblastoma, an aggressive and incurable brain tumour. Six days later she had surgery to remove the tumour – ‘the unwelcome guest’, her surgeon called it – but was warned that it would grow back. The prognosis with glioblastoma is always poor: without treatment, the average survival period from the time of diagnosis is three months. With treatment, a year or a little more. Blain died on 9 December 2016, thirteen months after diagnosis and a few days short of her 52nd birthday. (Introduction)

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'Georgia Blain’s final novel, Between a Wolf and a Dog, was published in 2016 and is currently shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize. Sadly, Georgia passed away from a brain tumour in December 2016. To honour her shortlisting and celebrate the novel, Georgia’s friend and fellow writer Tegan Bennett Daylight shares this reflection.' (Introduction)