The most recommended books about Sydney Australia

There are precious few books on Bhutan, which adds to its allure in my eyes. I loved reading about the author’s childhood in a village near India, where he didn’t see a car until he was eight.

Om Dhungel’s smarts took him further from home, including to nearby Bangladesh. He rose to become a senior member of the government's telecoms service — when phones were so scarce that phone numbers were only four digits long and even the king of Bhutan needed help making a call sometimes!

But in the 1980s, Bhutan began an ethnic-cleansing campaign against citizens of Nepali ancestry. Om fled to Australia and contributed enormously to helping thousands of other Bhutanese refugees. I love reading books about good people—and Om is certainly one of them: a true gentleman and sensitive soul.

Remember that song from Disney's Mulan – "I'll Make a Man Out of You"? Move that to the wild west with an English lady named Sydney disguised as a boy and a ranch owner determined to turn his partner's British fop of a "nephew" into a cowhand worth his salt, and you've got a good idea of the crazy antics awaiting you in Fancy Pants. With a strong supporting cast of characters and a giggle-inducing plot, this book is sure to leave you grinning.

Ivory Tembo is a wonderfully dynamic character, brought to life with sensitivity and fascinating insight. The story is set in modern-day Sydney where a killer stalks the night, with Ivory Tembo the officer investigating the brutal murders. Extraordinary character development unfolds in just a few pages, from Ivory’s fractured youth growing up in foster care, to an emotionally vulnerable young woman, to her present-day tough, determined persona that serves her well as a detective. Forced to delve into her heritage, she is supported by a vibrant cast who bring folktale to life. With the help of a medicine woman, the mystery ventures into the supernatural, taking Ivory on an instinctive journey to unify two worlds.

I was honored to read an early draft of this novel by fellow human and Jerseyite, Val Emmich, and was immediately taken with the voice of Joan, a 10-year-old girl with a special condition that gives her the ability to remember everything, but is afraid of being forgotten. To remedy that, she wants to win a prestigious songwriting contest by writing a song that makes people both want to dance and cry (two of the strongest feelings in her opinion). So she strikes a deal with Gavin, an adult songwriter who she believes can help her make that happen. Jersey City is the primary setting for this novel, a city that along with its many other charms, offers spectacular views of the New York City skyline. 

I don’t often read books more than once, but this one I have, and I know I will read it again. The woman whose life is revealed this time is 70-year-old Nora Porteous. She has returned to her native Brisbane, Australia after having escaped it by marriage to Sydney, and having escaped that marriage to London. She now reflects wryly on how she developed throughout those years of hardship and joy as she also experiences the changes in the neighbourhood she ran from decades before. As we move through both her memories of the past and her experience of the present, the details that help us to understand her are extraordinary: ‘The man is unlocking the door. I have had to talk and smile too much in his car, and as I wait I consciously rest my face.’

Though I have spent most of my life in Sydney, Australia, Nowra’s book showed me that there were many fascinating stories about the city that I either did not know or about which I only had a vague knowledge.

For instance, a story about the peaceful and beautiful harbourside suburb of Clontarf tells of the attempted assassination there of Prince Alfred, the second son of Queen Victoria, in 1870. Then there is the Dunbar disaster thirteen years earlier, when a sailing ship carrying 122 people, passengers and crew, hit rocks near the southern side of the entrance to Sydney Harbour. All aboard died apart from one able seaman, who was miraculously lifted by a wave and dumped onto the rocks.

I’m so glad there is a children’s picture book biography of Aaron Lansky. His own memoir for adults, Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books, is so entertaining and engrossing that I’ve read it twice. While this picture book doesn’t have space for all of Lansky’s funny, touching stories, it does get across the amazing fact that thanks to one young man who refused to believe that a “dying” language should be buried, Yiddish was given new life—and a permanent address at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. (I recently visited, and it’s spectacular! There is a great children’s section, too, full of books, games, and fun activities.)

Matthew Flinders is an Australian hero but less well-known elsewhere. He was, ultimately, the person who gave Australia its name when the continent was more generally known as New Holland. He is most famous for his circumnavigation of the continent in H.M.S. Investigator in 1801–1803. Together with his younger brother, Samuel Ward Flinders, they undertook a monumental effort to map the Australian coastline and obtain careful latitude and longitude determinations. I am particularly intrigued by these significant feats in the face of serious adversity.

I, therefore, loved that Miriam Estensen goes deep into Matthew Flinders' persona in this thoroughly researched biography. She paints him not just as an important historical figure but as a man with all his flaws and vulnerabilities. This is perhaps the most extensive and most easily accessible biography of a figure who was larger than life in his own time and who continues to inspire generations… show more.

Omar Sakr is a poet. Son of Sin is his first novel and his prose reflects his poetic style.

You can see this in extracts such as:

“…the staggered and warped back and forth of people who don’t know how to talk to each other without trying to win, to force the other to concede.”

And this is what appealed to me about this work. It’s less of a narrative and more of a meditation on identity. Yes, there are story elements, but the words make you muse on what it means to ‘fit in’.

One message I took away is the idea that our identity is linked to memory, and memory fades. And it’s reflections like this that makes this novel stay with you long after the final page.

Published in 1934, this is Stead’s first novel, and its Modernistic portrayal of a loosely connected group of young men and women existing and interacting in a poverty-wracked but rapidly changing between-the-Wars Sydney caused a literary storm at the time. The City, caught between its Colonial heritage and its future as a modern Twentieth Century metropolis is the real star of the novel even as its seven bewildered, beleaguered characters roam its bay and suburbs, its libraries, university, and pubs, attempting to negotiate their changing city and their place in it. I couldn’t write a novel about Sydney without visiting Christina Stead’s Sydney first.