Lily Brett, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, was born in Germany and emigrated to Australia with her parents in 1948. Both her fiction and poetry have won other major prizes, including the 1987 Victorian Premier’s Award for poetry for The Auschwitz Poems and the 1995 NSW Premier’s Award for Fiction for Just Like That; her novel, Too Many Men, was an international bestseller. In her new novel, Brett reprises characters from Too Many Men: Ruth Rothwax’s father Edek joins her in New York and starts a restaurant with his girlfriend, Zofia, and her gentle sidekick, Walentyna, a meatball restaurant called You Gotta Have Balls.

Ken Kalfus is the author of two short story collections, Thirst and PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies. A film adaptation of the title story, “PU-239,” produced by George Clooney, will be released in the fall. His debut novel, The Commissariat of Enlightenment, was cited as a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review. In his new novel, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, the events of 9/11 make an unlikely springboard for a biting black comedy about the dissolution of a marriage.