Arnold Zable

Arnold Zable has articulated, exquisitely, the haunted consciousness of the next generation. An astonishing achievement, this is a lyrical, transcendent, luminous work. Romance and terror, light and shadow, replicas and originals, hover side by side, seeking reconciliation, while within me there is a sense of awe and a silent refrain — I am here, at last I am here; and...

Arnold Zable applies his lyrical sensitivity and respect to this collection highlighting human compassion and resilience. Ranging from remote provinces in China and Cambodia to pre- and post-war Yiddish Poland, Kurdish Iraq and Iran, and Indigenous and present-day Melbourne, Arnold Zable's quartet of stories depicts the ebbs and flows of trauma and healing, memory and forgetting, the ancient and the...

A young boy plays the violin for his mother in Melbourne. Nina Simone sings 'Pirate Jenny' in a bar in Berlin. A fisherman plays a flute on the Mekong. And the strains of Paganini resonate in the forests of eastern Poland. From the cabarets of 1940s Baghdad to the streets of war-torn Saigon and the canals and alleyways of present-day...

Xanthe is drawn to Ithaca, the birthplace of her father, Manoli, and her maternal grandfather, Mentor. She is translating Mentor's manuscript, his story of leaving Ithaca and his life in Australia—fleeing the Kalgoorlie riots, working in Melbourne coffee houses with his compatriots, studying in the State Library, and learning to dream his way back to Ithaca and back to his...

Each morning on her way to school, Claudia passes the glassblower’s workshop and admires the animals in the window, especially the winged horses, prancing, galloping, rearing in battle. One day the glassblower calls Claudia inside and gives her a damaged horse. It is beautiful, but its wings are broken, and Claudia sees only its imperfection. When a terrible storm floods...

A moving tribute to the spirit of survival, Arnold Zable's beloved novel Café Scheherazade is now a Text Classic. 'In Acland Street, St Kilda, there stands a cafe called Scheherazade.' Thus begins Arnold Zable's haunting meditation on displacement, and the way the effects of war linger in the minds of its survivors. In this deeply moving book we meet Avram...

The Fighter tells the story of Henry Nissen, a champion boxer from Amess Street in working-class Carlton who rose through the ranks to battle some of the world's best in the 1970s. Today, Henry works on the Melbourne docks, loading and unloading cargo, taking shifts as they come. His true calling, however, lies on the streets. He frequents police stations...

Romek and Zofia are trying to rebuild a life together, liberated from the shadow of the concentration camps. Merle Shanahan tiptoes around the volatile moods of her husband Miles. Mr Giancarlo, the aging patriarch, watches over the lives of his enormous family. Mr Sommers sits in silence on his verandah, smoking his pipe and remembering the Great War. Weintraub the...

The Fig Tree is a book of true stories with an extraordinary scope. It is about family, about home, about the journeys that reveal to us who we are, and the ways in which contemporary tales reflect ancient myths. Arnold Zable writes about the rhythms of life on this Greek island, and the villagers who made the long voyage to...