With the increasing commercialization of publishing at the end of the nineteenth century, the polarization of serious literature and popular fiction became a commonplace of literary criticism. Andrew McCann cautions against this opposition by arguing that popular fiction's engagement with heterodox conceptions of authorship and creativity complicates its status as mere distraction or entertainment. Popular writers such as George Du Maurier, Marie Corelli, Rosa Praed and Arthur Machen drew upon a contemporary fascination with occult practices to construct texts that had an intensely ambiguous...

Christos Tsiolkas is one of the most recognizable and internationally successful literary novelists working in Australia today. He is also one of the country s most politically engaged writers. These terms recognition, commercial success, political engagement suggest a relationship to forms of public discourse that belies the extremely confronting nature of much of Tsiolkas s fiction and his deliberate attempt to cultivate a literary persona oriented to notions of blasphemy, obscenity and what could broadly be called a pornographic sensibility.

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Christos Tsiolkas is one of the most recognizable and internationally successful literary novelists working in Australia today. He is also one of the country s most politically engaged writers. These terms recognition, commercial success, political engagement suggest a relationship to forms of public discourse that belies the extremely confronting nature of much of Tsiolkas s fiction and his deliberate attempt to cultivate a literary persona oriented to notions of blasphemy, obscenity and what could broadly be called a pornographic sensibility.

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