Ambition, Rage, Gothic Hunger: New Novels from Min Jin Lee, Louise Kennedy and Catherine Chidgey

In American Hagwon, the bestselling author of Pachinko, Min Jin Lee, explores family, education, ambition and the long shadow of economic upheaval, set between Seoul, Sydney and California. Louise Kennedy's Stations offers a tough and deeply felt Irish family story, while Catherine Chidgey's The Starving Bride turns hunger into a strange gothic performance. Kate and Cassie are joined this time by regulars, novelist and academic Professor Tony Birch and critic and literary judge Beejay Silcox. And, as we count down to the Top 100 Australian Books, Frank Moorhouse's biographer Matthew Lamb reveals his top three.

Books featured

Min Jin Lee, American Hagwon, Fourth Estate

Louise Kennedy, Stations, Bloomsbury Circus

Catherine Chidgey, The Starving Bride, Penguin

Matthew Lamb's Top 100 picks

Forty-Seventeen (1988) by Frank Moorhouse

Tourmaline (1963) by Randolph Stow

Writer Reader Critic (1992) by Dorothy Green

Other books mentioned

Janet McCalman, Struggletown

Peter Carey, The Fat Man in History