Malcolm Knox

Mm.

Malcolm Knox, Andrew Webster and those blokes in saying that the Swans had fraudulently created this picture of this culture that they have-

Mm

... uh, which is not real anyway.

And now for quite a

change of direction, a new book from Malcolm Knox, who is a Walkley Award winning journalist, a columnist, a sports writer, mad about cricket, and a former literary editor

of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Now, he also has written a stack of non-fiction books, including Bradman's War, as you say, Cricket, Bit of a Thing, Secrets of the Jury Room, Boom, The Underground History of Australia.

And there's a sense of journeying, isn't there, Kate, about this? We start in Berlin and then we go back to Berlin at the very end of the book for the Potsdam Conference.

So I'm sure listeners are already beginning to realise this is a book by a historical obsessive.

Malcolm Knox clearly lives in this world.

He lives in the mind and cranium of Beria, of Stalin, of this era, so intently that his imagination inhabits it.

And Trump seems consumed by this idea that if he can physically attach Trump to enough stuff, It'll make him permanent.

There's a really interesting article by Australian journalist Malcolm Knox, who has an interview about this with Walter Marsh and the Guardian.

We'll link to it.

And it raises a question we've been talking about a lot, which is, does Donald Trump understand what what he's going to be remembered for? Knox has written satirical novels about Stalin's Soviet Union, and he tells The Guardian that when you study authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union, it can be useful to try to understand what we're watching right now.

People who live through this crap do.

And so when we think about future generations saying, wow, what what did Trump do with all of that power? Did he make people's lives better? Did he make Americans healthier, more prosperous, more secure? Was the country stronger? Was the country more democratic when Trump left? Or was it eight years separated by the Biden presidency, of course, with a presidency that accumulated power sought revenge, used it to enrich himself, demanded personal loyalty and just was obsessed with everybody seeing his name.

Malcolm Knox believes he knows where it ends.

I agree with him.

But it's goodbye from The Bookshelf for now.

I'm Kate Evans, and we'll be back next time with regular reviewers Hannah Kent and Tom Wright to discuss the latest works from Sebastian Barry and Malcolm Knox, plus a new novel from the writer Melissa Harrison, whose book All Among the Barley was one of Cassie's favorites.

I'm Kate Evans.

See you next time.