'History is a story about the past told by people who didn’t live there. Historical fiction and scholarly histories and biographies dominate the field, but a fresh approach, the literary nonfiction narrative of reflection, is making its presence felt.' (Introduction)

'Like the biblical story of Christ’s birth, Geraldine Brooks’ Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women begins with a woman refused a room at an inn. In Brooks’ tale, the ‘inn’ is a modern hotel in the Saudi Arabian city of Dhahran in the early 1990s, where the Australian journalist is on assignment for the Wall Street Journal. She is refused a room not because she is pregnant – she isn’t – nor because the hotel is fully booked; rather, it is contrary to the laws of the desert kingdom for a woman to travel without her husband. Only a prostitute would do so, as the male receptionist implies. When the affronted traveller tries to bed down on a sofa behind a plant in the lobby, the police are called.' (Introduction)

'Anna Funder examines the nature of courage in a powerful and moving essay, commemorating the life and work of the "bravest of the brave", murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and other remarkable women who have stood up to totalitarian regimes at unthinkable cost to themselves.

'Australian history is full of images of ingenious settlers battling against the harsh, unforgiving land in order to survive. But is the European notion of 'survival' different from the indigenous one? Aboriginal writer Melissa Lucashenko argues eloquently and passionately that it is.

'Did the notion that "Greed is Good" die out with the 1980s? Perhaps at no other moment in living memory has greed played such a defining - and damning - role. At once clear-eyed and coruscating, Christopher Kremmer contemplates greed from all angles: social, historical, economic and cultural.

'Three brilliant essays written by leading and acclaimed Australian writers, commissioned by Sydney PEN, unflinchingly show us our world as never before.' (Publisher's blurb)