The headlines and rhetoric about boat people often bury the extraordinary measures that refugees take to leave their homelands, apply for asylum and rebuild their lives. Kooshyar Karimi’s flight from Iran and harrowing fight to keep his family alive as asylum seekers in Turkey offers astonishing insight into the gritty determination needed to survive these traumatic events. He is joined by storyteller and human rights advocate Arnold Zable, who writes extensively and poignantly about the refugee experience – memory and history, displacement and dislocation.
A major Israeli war which scarred a generation and foreshadowed 21st century warfare but almost no one writes about; a sacred biblical text whose pages were pilfered en route from Syria to Israel and remain a mystery. These are the subjects of Matti Friedman’s books: Pumpkinflowers, an unflinching, heart-wrenching personal account of the first Lebanon War, and the award-winning The Aleppo Codex, a real-life, Jewish The Da Vinci Code. Matti talks about his journeys of discovery and reflection, and what it’s like to go viral on Facebook, with Michael Visontay.
Hollywood may have desensitised us to violent crime and portray forensics as par for the course, but back in 1960, the kidnap and ransom of eight-year-old Graeme Thorne shocked the nation and confronted police detectives with circumstances they had never before encountered. Senior Crown Prosecutor and storyteller, Mark Tedeschi, talks to award-winning investigative journalist Linton Besser about writing true crime and corruption, how the investigation of crime and wrong-doing has changed, and the power of the media to be a force for good or fear.
A doctor, a Rabbi and a palliative care nurse talk about the end of life that awaits us all, with SMH literary editor Susan Wyndham, who writes about losing a parent. Breaking down the final taboo, these confronting books and first-hand insights grapple with a highly emotional moment and issue that touches us all but is often swept politely under the carpet. Rethink forever how you spend your time, and how to think and talk about death.
In the spirit of Helen Mirren's film Woman In Gold comes the remarkable story of a woman who fought to reclaim property stolen from her family by the Nazis. Dina Gold grew up listening to her grandmother’s tales of their luxurious life in pre-war Berlin. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Dina set out to reclaim the grand building that had housed the family fur business. Stolen Legacy is the extraordinary true story of Dina’s search and long legal battle to attain justice.
