Author(s): Anna Funder, Melissa Lucashenko, Christopher Kremmer, Sydney PEN

Culture & Ideas

Three brilliant essays written by leading and acclaimed Australian writers unflinchingly show us our world as never before. Anna Funder examines the nature of courage in a powerful and moving essay, commemorating the life and work of the 'bravest of the brave', murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, and other remarkable women who have stood up to totalitarian regimes at unthinkable cost to themselves. Australian history is full of images of ingenious settlers battling against the harsh, unforgiving land in order to survive. But is the European notion of 'survival' different from the indigenous one? Aboriginal writer Melissa Lucashenko argues eloquently and passionately that it is. Did the notion that 'greed is good' die out with the 1980s? Perhaps at no other moment in living memory has greed played such a defining - and damning - role. At once clear-eyed and coruscating, Christopher Kremmer contemplates greed from all angles: social, historical, economic and cultural.