AustLit

'Isinglass is a prose narrative written around a beautiful conceit. A meditation on the interdependence of history and fiction, the work is set in the destruction of the Ur-city and of four other cities. All five are called Isinglass, successively of the Waters, Dust, Fire, Sky and the Last. Waves of migration are an essential part of this ficto-prehistory of creation and destruction.' (Introduction)

'Alfred Deakin (1856-1919) was a pivotal figure in Australian political history. He was an architect of Federation and White Australia in 1901 and three times prime minister before he withdrew from public life in 1913. Judith Brett’s important biography, The Enigmatic Mr Deakin (2017), which won the 2018 National Biography Award, is only the third biography of Deakin, following those by Walter Murdoch (1923) and John La Nauze (1965). (Introduction)