The "New York Times" picks its best 100 books each year. The Australian books on their list this year include:
Fiction & Poetry
The Boat by Nam Le: "In the opening story of Le's first collection, a blocked writer succumbs to the easy temptations of 'ethnic lit.'"
Breath by Tim Winton: "Surfing offers this darkly exhilarating novel's protagonist an escape from a drab Australian town."
Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee: "Coetzee follows the late career of one Señor C, who, like Coetzee himself, is a South African writer transplanted to Australia and the author of a novel titled Waiting for the Barbarians."
His Illegal Self by Peter Carey: "In this enthralling novel, a boy goes underground with a defiant hippie indulging her maternal urge."
Opal Sunset: Selected Poems, 1958-2008 by Clive James: "James, a staunch formalist, is firmly situated in the sociable, plain-spoken tradition that runs from Auden through Larkin."
Non-Fiction
Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer: "With a polemicist's vision and a scholar's patience, Greer sets out to rescue Ann Hathaway from layers of biographical fantasy."
