National Fictions is a study of Australian literature and film. It is also a study of Australian culture, viewing the novels and films as products of a specific culture - as narratives with similar structures, functions, forms and meanings. It covers a wide range of texts, offering both close analysis and an account of their place within the system of meanings the book proposes as dominant in Australian culture.The second edition of this influential work includes a new Afterword which traces recent changes in Australian literature and film, examining the growth of women's writing and popular...

Making it National argues that we need to rethink the way national identity is constructed in Australia today. Graeme Turner takes a series of recent instances - the mythologising of Bond and the larrikin entrepreneurs, the Spycatcher trials, Maralinga and the Bicentenary - showing how popular images of national identity are used to serve specific rather than national interests.'Graeme Turner's writing has a remarkable power to engage its readers with all the immediacy, vividness and drama of our very best journalism, while putting cultural theory to work in new and creative ways.' - Meaghan...