As Nicholas Jose suggests in his introduction to Jean-François Vernay's A Brief Take on the Australian Novel, “the outside gaze illuminates what the insider cannot see.” Vernay's book joins a growing list of critical surveys of Australian literature written by “outsiders.” Other recent books about Australian literature published by overseas critics include Nicholas Birns's Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead (2015) and Belinda Wheeler's A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature (2013). Both Birns and Wheeler are based in the United States, which reflects the strong contemporary North American interest in Australian literature, itself perhaps a kind of “late style” following the inaugural nineteenth-century British appraisals such as A. Pratchett Martin's The Beginnings of an Australian Literature (1898) or Desmond Byrne's Australian Writers (1896). Vernay writes from New Caledonia and brings a refreshingly non–Anglo American perspective to the table, reflecting perhaps an even “later style,” a “decentring” critical...

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