I recently received an email from a reader from Holland who travelled to various parts of Australia a year or so ago, and was so taken with the place she wants to read books by Australian writers.
Normally I'd be fine with this sort of request, sending along my usual set of modern Australian novels as a starting point. But in this case, my correspondent was particularly interested in books that were set in, or reflected, the areas she had visited: Brisbane and Queensland, Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide. And I got to thinking that I don't remember ever coming across a listing of Australian books organised by location. Is anyone aware of such a list?
In reply to the Dutch reader I asked if there were any restrictions on the type of novels she was seeking: modern or historical, genre or literary? And the only indication she gave was that she wasn't overly interested in sf. All other genres were okay, and whether a novel was modern or historical was of little importance. I pointed out that I was reading through a set of Australian classics this year and blogging about it here, and also supplied a few other books she might consider: for Melbourne, Maloney's crime novels, Three Dollars by Elliott Perlman and Helen Garner's books came immediately to mind. That might give her a start, but what else?
