The World Repair Video Game (2015) is a novel by Australian author David Ireland.
The novel was serialised in five parts then published as a limited edition hardback by Island magazine and has been shortlisted in the Fiction Category of the 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.
This novel is about 42-year-old Kennard Stirling, son of a wealthy family, who has spurned his inheritance in favour of a small town, rural New South Wales coast, where he spends his days helping the elderly and needy members of the community, while in his spare time working on his own hobby: a project to rejuvenate various bush blocks, but fertilised by the murdered remains of itinerants, drifters and economic losers that Stirling has judged not to offer anything to society.
The World Repair Video Game enters the articulate, philosophical, but ultimately unsettling reflections of Kennard Sterling, as he holds modern Australian culture to our gaze.
The Australian's chief literary critic, Geordie Williamson wrote: "In The World Repair Video Game, Ireland has written an impossible novel: one shriven entirely of the social. Yet in doing so he has revealed the illogic that underlies what we call economic rationalism. He has drawn our coming world in a clear and terrible light." [1]
Nicolas Rothwell wrote in The Australian that The World Repair Video Game is "a precise, controlled exercise in horror writing and cryptic social commentary, elegantly written, unremittingly dark. The tale is simply done: we travel in the mind of a monologue-spinning, self-justifying serial killer, a man on a mission to cleanse the fallen world. As always when murder is in the air, the narrative has a disquieting drive, modulated by the serene clarity of Ireland’s prose." [2]
A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. The essay suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to rich gentlemen and ladies. This satirical hyperbole mocked heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as British policy toward the Irish in general.
Anthony Trollope was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, which revolves around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote novels on political, social, and gender issues, and other topical matters.
Colin Henry Wilson was an English writer, philosopher and novelist. He also wrote widely on true crime, mysticism and the paranormal, eventually writing more than a hundred books. Wilson called his philosophy "new existentialism" or "phenomenological existentialism", and maintained his life work was "that of a philosopher, and (his) purpose to create a new and optimistic existentialism".
Richard Miller Flanagan is an Australian writer, "considered by many to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation", according to The Economist. Each of his novels has attracted major praise and received numerous awards and honours. He also has written and directed feature films. He won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, therefore, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes as Aboriginality, mateship, egalitarianism, democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and "the beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.
David McWilliams is an Irish economist, writer, and journalist. He is a faculty member of Trinity College, Dublin business school. McWilliams initially worked as an economist with the Central Bank of Ireland, UBS bank and the Banque Nationale de Paris. Since 1999, he has been a broadcaster, writer, economic commentator and documentary-maker. He has written five books, The Pope's Children, The Generation Game, Follow the Money, The Good Room and Renaissance Nation, writes two weekly economic columns and has made various documentaries.
Collaborative fiction is a form of writing by a group of three or more authors who share creative control of a story.
Alexander McPhee "Alex" Miller is an Australian novelist. Miller is twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He won the overall award for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for The Ancestor Game in 1993. He is twice winner of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Conditions of Faith in 2001 and for Lovesong in 2011. In recognition of his impressive body of work and in particular for his novel Autumn Laing he was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2012.
Jessica Margaret Anderson was an Australian novelist and short story writer. Born in Gayndah, Anderson lived the bulk of her life in Sydney apart from a few years in London. She began her career writing short stories for newspapers and drama scripts for radio, especially adaptations of well-known novels. Embarking on her career as a novelist relatively late in life - her first novel was published when she was 47 - her early novels attracted little attention. She rose to prominence upon the publication of her fourth novel, Tirra Lirra by the River, published in 1978. Although she remains best known for this work, several of her novels have garnered high acclaim, most notably The Impersonators (1980) and Stories from the Warm Zone and Sydney Stories (1987), both of which have won awards. She won the Miles Franklin Literary Award twice, and has been published in Britain and the United States. Jessica Anderson died at Elizabeth Bay, New South Wales in 2010, following a stroke. She was the mother of Australian screenwriter Laura Jones, her only child.
The Vivisector is the eighth published novel by Patrick White. First published in 1970, it details the lifelong creative journey of fictional artist/painter Hurtle Duffield. Named for its sometimes cruel analysis of Duffield and the major figures in his life, the book explores universal themes like the suffering of the artist, the need for truth and the meaning of existence.
David Neil Ireland is an Australian novelist.
The Myst Reader is a collection of three novels based on the Myst series of adventure games. The collection was published in September 2004 and combines three works previously published separately: The Book of Atrus (1995), The Book of Ti'ana (1996), and The Book of D'ni (1997). The novels were each written by British science-fiction writer David Wingrove with assistance from Myst's creators, Rand and Robyn Miller.
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The Australian Prime Minister's Literary Awards (PMLA) were announced at the end of 2007 by the incoming First Rudd Ministry following the 2007 election. They are administered by the Minister for the Arts.
American Rust is American writer Philipp Meyer's debut novel, published in 2009. Set in the 2000s, American Rust takes place in the fictional town of Buell in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, which is in a rural region referred to as "the Valley" of dilapidated steel towns. American Rust focuses on the decline of the American middle class, good-paying manufacturing jobs, and the general sense of economic and social malaise of what has become known as the New Gilded Age. Meyer's novel received rave reviews from book critics; many publications ranked it one of the best novels of 2009.
Nicolas Rothwell is a journalist and the Northern Australia correspondent for The Australian newspaper. He is also an award-winning writer with several works of non-fiction to his name.
The Sense of an Ending is a 2011 novel written by British author Julian Barnes. The book is Barnes's eleventh novel written under his own name and was released on 4 August 2011 in the United Kingdom. The Sense of an Ending is narrated by a retired man named Tony Webster, who recalls how he and his clique met Adrian Finn at school and vowed to remain friends for life. When the past catches up with Tony, he reflects on the paths he and his friends have taken. In October 2011, The Sense of an Ending was awarded the Man Booker Prize. The following month it was nominated in the novels category at the Costa Book Awards.
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