Mirandi Riwoe and Arnold Zable

This event has been cancelled as part of our preventative measures to stem the spread of coronavirus COVID-19. If you have tickets for this event, we’ll be in touch with you directly via email.

Find out more about our response to the coronavirus situation here.

For this edition of Double Booked Club, we’ll bring together two celebrated Australian authors whose latest books each hold exile, injustice and the meeting of cultures close to their hearts.

Mirandi Riwoe’s Stone Sky Gold Mountain evokes goldfields-era Australia, telling the story of two Chinese siblings who arrive in rural Queensland seeking fortune. Instead, they find themselves entangled in suspicion and discrimination. It’s a gripping, heartfelt and richly-rendered book by an acclaimed, versatile author (Riwoe also writes crime novels under the name M.J. Tjia).

The four stories of The Watermill, by widely-beloved storyteller and human rights advocate Arnold Zable, take place around the world – from remote provinces in China and Cambodia to pre- and post-war Yiddish Poland, Kurdish Iraq and Iran, and Indigenous and present-day Melbourne. Zable’s compassionate, sensitive nonfiction unfolds with novelistic lyricism, as he explores the tides of history, memory, healing and belonging.

With host Melanie Cheng, Riwoe and Zable will talk about their respective books, their bodies of work and their habits of writing and reading. 

Want to prepare? Ahead of the event, you can read an extract from Stone Sky Gold Mountain by Mirandi Riwoe (courtesy UQP) and an extract from The Watermill by Arnold Zable (courtesy Text Publishing). We’ll make these available closer to the event date.

Watch and participate from wherever you are – the event will be live-streamed on this page, and you can sign up for reminders here. 

#doublebookedclub 

Sun Bookshop will be our bookseller for this event.