‘My favourite book of the year so far’: the best Australian books out in May

Safe Haven by Shankari Chandran

Fiction, Ultimo Press, $34.99

Given the opening pages of Safe Haven, I’d expected it to wear its politics more aggressively, but actually, Shankari Chandran is more subversive than that: using many of the trappings of a more conventional crime novel as a kind of Trojan horse that sneaks the novel’s politics into the reader’s subconscious.

There’s a bit of wish fulfilment in the novel – perhaps something we could all use right now – but it’s also unflinchingly critical towards Australia’s asylum seeker policies. I suspect I’ll be reflecting on Fina, Lucky, and the small community of Hastings for some time. – Bec Kavanagh

Ghost Cities by Siang Lu

Fiction, UQP, $32.99

Australian literature got an energising kick up the backside when Siang Lu’s debut The Whitewash – a thrilling inventive oral history of a fictional Hollywood blockbuster with an Asian lead – was released four years ago. His follow-up is just as spirited.

We meet Xiang Lu, a young man who is fired from Sydney’s Chinese consulate when it is revealed he can’t speak Chinese. When his story goes viral, a film director called Baby Bao sees an opportunity for publicity and summons Xiang to Port Man Tou, an abandoned city where Baby is making a film. This is a novel about language and censorship, reality and simulation, books and film – and my favourite book of the year so far. – Sian Cain

Ela! Ela! by Ella Mittas

Cookbook, Murdoch Books, $39.99

The venerated Mediterranean diet has a champion in Melbourne-based chef and writer Ella Mittas. Drawing on her Anglo-Greek heritage and the restaurant kitchens of Istanbul, Alaçatı and Crete, the simple yet sumptuous recipes in Ela! Ela! (“Come! Come!” in Greek) place vegetables at the centre – although favourites such as baked snapper, moussaka and chicken pilaf are not ignored.

Alongside recipes are lively essays about her experience working in small, traditional eateries in Turkey and Greece, where slow food took on a whole new meaning (on windy days, chips could take 40 minutes to cook on an open fire) and language barriers caused friction with surly kitchen colleagues whose idiosyncrasies rival the cast of The Bear. – Janine Israel

Only the Astronauts by Ceridwen Dovey

Short stories, Penguin, $34.99

Only The Animals saw Ceridwen Dovey tell stories from the perspectives of animals. This “sequel-of-sorts” is a bolder and madder venture again. This time her first-person narrators are inanimate objects which have been launched into outer space.

One story has a girl emailing chunks of her freshly written screenplay to her grandmother, who is actually, it turns out, a tampon salvaged by astronaut Sally Ride. In short, aspects of this collection really shouldn’t work – but in Dovey’s sure hands, they do. She is a writer of preternatural intelligence and imagination, and here she deftly marries the playful and the profound. – Adele Dumont

Peripathetic by Cher Tan

Essays, NewSouth, $34.99

Cher Tan’s debut collection of essays is rambunctious, feisty, intellectually fierce and incredibly funny – she has a knack for deadpan one-liners that are devastating in effect. Tan writes about the early collaborative internet, about DIY culture and punk, about her employment in a series of “shit jobs” – and above all else, what it means to carve out an existence and a sense of a self on the margins and as an outsider.

There’s great joy in these essays, as well as anger; they are fast-paced and full of collisions of ideas, and animated always by Tan’s distinctive voice and energetic style. – Fiona Wright

12 Rules for Strife by Jeff Sparrow and Sam Wallman

Politics/comic, Scribe, $29.99

This impressively succinct guide to political struggle would make an excellent primer for anyone interested in understanding much of what is happening around the world right now – labour struggles, campaigns for LGBTQ+ rights and the power of mass protest, as seen in the pro-Palestinian camps forming on university campuses across the globe.

Wallman’s use of punchy colours and intricate illustration adds dynamic energy to Sparrow’s distillation of political theory. As a twist on both the title and format of Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, the short chapters include ideas such as 5. “Liberation can’t be delegated” and 8. “Reject Smug Politics”. – SC

All The Beautiful Things You Love by Jonathan Seidler

Fiction, Pan Macmillan, $34.99

Jonathan Seidler started out submitting album reviews to a free weekly I once edited; his debut, It’s A Shame About Ray, was as much about the illness that tore through his family as it was his love of Linkin Park (no judgment!); and his follow-up, a sweet and funny romcom, is threaded through with artists, records and festivals.

Young London couple Elly and Enzo have broken up, and Elly is distracting herself by selling everything they shared online. The story is structured around the items (a Sopranos box set they bonded over; a wagon destined for Glastonbury; a rare vinyl pressing of Jessie Ware’s Valentine) – a clever way to tell us a tender, well-observed love story, and to introduce a delightful galaxy of hopeful buyers too. – Steph Harmon

A Very Secret Trade by Cassandra Pybus

History, Allen & Unwin, $34.99

This is a fascinating history of a disturbing chapter in Australia’s story: the global trade in Tasmanian Aboriginal remains. Following a strand of research for her 2020 book Truganini, a biography of one of the last people of solely Aboriginal Tasmanian descent, Pybus began tracing a network of Tasmanian colonists who sent human remains to European collectors and curators, who believed Tasmania’s Aboriginal population was a unique race that, in the face of possible extinction, should be preserved in their museums and research institutions.

Pybus is a brilliant storyteller – this is a book for history buffs as well as anyone who wants to better understand the darkest sides of Australia’s past. – SC