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  • Vijay Khurana’s The Passenger Seat

    Vijay Khurana’s The Passenger Seat
    Jun 18 2025
    The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Vijay Khurana is a writer and translator from German. He’s joining Andrew with his debut novel, The Passenger Seat, which was shortlisted for the Novel Prize. On the verge of their final year of high school, Adam and Teddy are looking for adventure. On a whim they pack some camping gear and drive north. Teddy isn’t sure whether his girlfriend will miss him, if they’ll even be a couple when he gets back Adam. Well Adam’s plan only points in one direction, and he has no intention of ever returning. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/
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    42 Min.
  • Laura Elvery’s Nightingale

    Laura Elvery’s Nightingale
    Jun 13 2025
    The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Laura Elvery is the author of Trick of the Light and Ordinary Matter, which won the 2021 Steele Rudd Award for a Short Story Collection. Laura’s joining me today with her first novel Nightingale. At ninety years old, Florence Nightingale knows how much she has achieved in her life. All of that still doesn’t compensate for the infirmity she feels. That and the fact her only visitor is Mabel, her housekeeper and nurse. At least the window is open. At her age a knock on the door could as well be a dream, and so it is with some surprise that Florence welcomes into her home a young soldier. A man who says he met Florence in Scutari, a man named Silas Bradley. ⁠Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople⁠ Want more great conversations with Australian authors? ⁠Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week⁠. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Instagram - ⁠https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/⁠ Facebook - ⁠https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/⁠
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    45 Min.
  • Gretchen Shirm's Out of the Woods

    Gretchen Shirm's Out of the Woods
    Jun 9 2025
    The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Gretchen Shirm is the author of Having Cried Wolf, Where the Light Falls and The Crying Room. You’ve met her on Final Draft before and today she joins us with her new novel Out of the Woods. Jess has taken a job in the Hague, working as the secretary to an Australian judge presiding over the trial of a man accused of war crimes. As she struggles to find an equilibrium listening to the horrors committed in war, Jess also struggles within herself to reconcile conflicting feelings about her role as mother and daughter, and what they mean to the people she loves. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/
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    39 Min.
  • Book Club - Vijay Khurana’s The Passenger Seat

    Book Club - Vijay Khurana’s The Passenger Seat
    May 20 2025
    Vijay Khurana is a writer and translator from German. His debut novel, The Passenger Seat, was shortlisted for the Novel Prize. Content warning for mentions of violence. On the verge of their final year of high school, Adam and Teddy are looking for adventure. On a whim they pack some camping gear and drive north. Adam’s got a drivers license and a truck. Teddy has a gun license and on their way out of town the boys stop at a camping goods store and buy a rifle. They’re not sure what they’ll encounter in the wild but they want to be prepared for anything. Teddy’s family don’t seem too fussed by the whole affair and he isn’t sure whether his girlfriend will miss him. It’s no0t that serious and he doubts they’ll even be a couple when he gets back Adam’s dad’s weirdly gotten worse since he stopped drinking. Teddy may be talking about school but Adam’s plan only points in one direction, and he has no intention of ever returning. The Passenger Seat begins with Adam and Teddy egging each other on to jump off the bridge outside their town. In this moment they are exploring the ways they can both push, and rely on each other. A sudden jolt before he is ready and Teddy is furious at Adam as he hurtles towards the water, only to emerge triumphant, laughing at his friend beside him. In this moment neither they, nor the reader suspect what is to come for them. They are simply two boys, or perhaps young men trying to understand their place in the world. Their road trip begins as all road trips begin, full of promise and the expectation that what comes next is unpredictable. We ride alongside Adam and Teddy, sleeping in the cramped tray of the truck and wondering exactly when they plan on washing. The titular passenger seat working as both a metaphor for who is in control, and a reminder of how uncomfortably close we are to the two in their self imposed exile. Now about now I’m going to acknowledge that I’m glossing over some events in the novel. This inflection point changes the journey for Adam and Teddy and forces both the boys and the reader to wonder exactly where the story could possibly go from here. Adam and Teddy’s journey is remarkable simply because it need not be remarkable. Khurana uses the everyman disaffection of the two boys to offer up a perfectly innocuous trip that spirals out of control. At a certain point we are privy to Adam’s gleeful reflection that when people come searching for answers their story will be devastatingly inscrutable. I found The Passenger Seat to be one of those genuinely unputdownable books. Much like the boys trip it takes on its own momentum and refused to let me go as I devoured it in a weekend. If I go too much into themes I run the risk of spoilers but I will say that it engages somewhat topically with the broader social conversation around young men and the forces that compel them in their actions. In this Teddy and Adam’s story is juxtaposed with a vignette of a seemingly minor character in the aftermath of the road trip. The two stories are seemingly disparate but highlight the same sense of control or relinquishing of one’s control that underscores so much of what makes male behaviour unconscionable. The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana is a tremendous novel; timely and urgent. Read it now and I suspect you’ll be ahead of the conversation to come as this book gathers momentum.
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    4 Min.
  • Book Club - Chris Flynn’s Orpheus Nine

    Book Club - Chris Flynn’s Orpheus Nine
    May 13 2025
    If I’ve learned anything in my time covering Australian writing it’s to never underestimate Chris Flynn. Chris is the award winning author of Mammoth - the story of a loquacious fossil, The Glass Kingdom - a drug fueled romp through outback Australia and perhaps the strangest of all Here Be Leviathans - a collection of Monkey’s, Platypuses and Sabretooth Tigers working well outside their pay grade. Chris is back with his new novel Orpheus Nine and he’s going to hold up the mirror once again whether we’re ready or not… And just a quick content warning that this narrative talks about death and pandemics, just in case you don’t want to hear about that… On a Saturday morning in the small coastal town of Gattan, families are gathered for the local under tens footy when it happens. One moment all eyes are on the action of the game, the next, confusion reigns as all the players, bar one stand stock still, frozen on the pitch. Next comes the eerie chorus from the players; a line in Latin from King Lear, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport” before all dropping dead. The horror inflicted on Gattan is repeated all over the world. Scientists are helpless to explain why children aged nine are dying when they reach their ninth birthday. In Gattan families are struggling to understand the tragedy and it quickly threatens community cohesion. Families of the dead are known as Orpheans and are pariahs in their own town. Meanwhile the families of ten year olds are regarded with suspicion, while those families of eight year olds desperately search for a way out. On its surface Orpheus Nine looks like a book about the pandemic. It certainly references Covid-19, even if it’s to show how much worse the Orpheus Nine crisis is becoming. Through the novel we see something of the calamity that could have been. More than the global terror that often felt so far removed from our everyday lives, Orpheus Nine shows us how we suffered at the personal and community level. By focussing in on the fictional town of Gattan, Flynn shows us the cost of the tragedy across the town. How the deaths were only the beginning as mistrust quickly spread and families and friends come to question their loyalties. The novel shows us the roots of the mistrust that festers when everything goes wrong and challenges the notion that banding together is protective, when people can be so quick to turn on each other and declare you now an outsider. There’s also something of a mystery at the heart of the novel. This isn’t the promised answer that we all secretly hope might save us in these impossible situations. Rather Orpheus Nine shows us how futile our situation is in the face of enormous threats. Or at least how futile things are when our best bet is just to continue with the same petty complaints we’ve always held.
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    5 Min.
  • Jane Caro's The Lyrebird

    Jane Caro's The Lyrebird
    May 9 2025
    The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/
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    48 Min.
  • Book Club - Ann Dombroski’s After the Great Storm

    Book Club - Ann Dombroski’s After the Great Storm
    May 7 2025
    Ann Dombroski’s prize-winning short fiction has appeared in literary journals and anthologies. Her debut novel is After the Great Storm In the near future, Sydney is dominated by seemingly monolithic corporate structures. From prisons to transport and even medicine, the city skyline is overcome by these enormous structures that obscure the sky and channel the increasingly destructive storms that swamp the city.. Alice’s husband is locked in one of these high-rise prisons. Jailed for a crime he claims to be innocent of and vehemently protesting the cost cutting of the same corporations that have locked him away. Alice wants a baby but first she has to get her husband out of jail. There’s the legal costs and she’s not even sure she can afford to keep their house let alone pay for the experimental fertility treatments. With nowhere to turn Alice is increasingly desperate for respite. When another catastrophic storm hits on Alice’s way home from work she must hurry to escape the environmental destruction. In the morning as the neighbourhood takes stock of the latest damage, a strange and shadowy figure appears on Alice’s doorstep… Ann Dombriski’s future imperfect tale of a barely recognisable Sydney is a fascinating look at possible consequences of our rapid modernisation. While Alice lives in a townhouse in a so-called heritage neighbourhood, we are privy to the changes that have divided Sydney up into sectors and splintered the social fabric along ghettoized economic lines. Alice’s life is teetering on the verge of collapse and we are forced to watch on as blow after blow makes it seem increasingly unlikely that Alice will be the heroine who rides off into the sunset. The novel explores the seeming inevitable moral ambiguity of a world that has continued to develop and sell off its assets for increasing growth. All of the characters, Alice included must look to how they can best codify themselves or the things in their lives, to leverage the necessities and just survive. We are shown just how far technology can take us, even as we are challenged with a vision of capricious development for its own sake. Alice works in the field of medical research and advancements and we are challenged with the for-profit access to health and its impacts on care. Lurking behind all of this though is the secret hidden in Alice’s home. A secret that may represent the solution to her problems, even as it damns her. I feel deep into the world building of After the Great Storm and enjoyed traveling through this convincing, if chilling version of Sydney. I couldn’t see where there’d be room for 2ser in this corporate wonderland but reassuringly the aging millennials still sported fading tattoos. Even if the next generation disapproved. After the Great Storm is a fascinating deep dive into the future that strays only slightly from our current concerns. The personal becomes political and Alice’s story forces the reader to explore their own morality as we watch Alice consider what she would do for her family. There’s some terrific speculative and climate based fiction coming out of Australia and After the Great Storm is well worth your time for a glimpse towards tomorrow.
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    4 Min.
  • Chris Flynn’s Orpheus Nine

    Chris Flynn’s Orpheus Nine
    May 4 2025
    The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love. These are the stories that make us who we are. Chris is the award winning author of Mammoth - the story of a loquacious fossil, The Glass Kingdom - a drug fueled romp through outback Australia and perhaps the strangest of all Here Be Leviathans - a collection of Monkey’s, Platypuses and Sabretooth Tigers working well outside their pay grade. Chris is back with his new novel Orpheus Nine and he’s going to hold up the mirror once again whether we’re ready or not… And just a quick content warning that this narrative talks about death and pandemics, just in case you don’t want to hear about that… On a Saturday morning in the small coastal town of Gattan, families are gathered for the local under tens footy when it happens. One moment all eyes are on the action of the game, the next, confusion reigns as all the players, bar one stand stock still, frozen on the pitch. Next comes the eerie chorus from the players; a line in Latin from King Lear, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport” before all dropping dead. The horror inflicted on Gattan is repeated all over the world. Scientists are helpless to explain why children aged nine are dying when they reach their ninth birthday. In Gattan families are struggling to understand the tragedy and it quickly threatens community cohesion. Families of the dead are known as Orpheans and are pariahs in their own town. Meanwhile the families of ten year olds are regarded with suspicion, while those families of eight year olds desperately search for a way out. Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople Want more great conversations with Australian authors? Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week. Get in touch with Andrew and Final Draft. We love to hear about what you’re reading! Twitter - https://twitter.com/finaldraft2ser Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/finaldraft2ser/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/finaldraft2ser/
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    51 Min.