Much as I love reading new books – and have literal piles of books I’m longing to read all over the house – sometimes it’s good to look back. Last month, The New York Times published a list of the best books of the 21^st century, as selected by 503 authors and critics. Sadly, not one Australian book made it to the list of 100. This sparked some local action.

Melbourne booksellers Readings gathered more than 600 votes from members of the Australian literary community to create a ranked top 30 list of the best Australian books of the 21^st century, which included SA’s own Hannah Kent at number three, with her debut Burial Rites (Picador) and Pip Williams at number 23 with The Dictionary of Lost Words (Affirm Press). The book voted number one was Christos Tsiolkas’s barbecue-stopper The Slap (Allen & Unwin).

In my day job at The Conversation, the Books & Ideas team also leapt into action, creating our own best Australian books of the 21^st century. Our approach was a little different: we asked 50 literary experts to each nominate one best book, with two optional honourable mentions – and we published all their picks together, unranked. The most-picked books were Waanyi author Alexis Wright’s novels Praiseworthy and Carpentaria (both Giramondo), followed by Helen Garner’s How to End a Story: Diaries Volume III, 1995–1998 (Text Publishing), Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of Travel (Allen & Unwin) and Noongar author Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance (Picador).

I feel like the two Australian lists complement each other nicely. I was fascinated to see the crossovers and differences – and together they cover a varied and enticing range. But it made me think: what would SA literary folk choose if asked the same question? And what are the best South Australian books of the century?

You can see the best books chosen by SA authors Brian Castro, Aidan Coleman, Nicholas Jose and Carol Lefevre on The Conversation list. But for this article, I asked 10 more, as well as 10 SA publishers, editors and literary experts.

I didn’t want to limit those I asked to just SA books, although many participants have included them in their picks. Multiple SA picks included Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy, Carol Lefevre’s Murmurations and Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites. Titles from around Australia that kept popping up include Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things and Richard Flanagan’s Narrow Road to the Deep North.

“It’s so hard to choose,” wrote one author. I empathise!

As an avid reader whose first bookshop job was in Rundle Mall and first publishing job in Kent Town (both last century), I’ve read a lot of brilliant SA books over the past 24  years. Here are just a few of my favourites, in no particular order.

My six best SA books of the 21^st century

Shannon Burns’ Childhood (Text), a savage, tender meditation on his precarious youth in Adelaide’s disadvantaged suburbs, is a masterclass in memoir at its best. He viscerally inhabits the damaged child he was, while meticulously investigating his life and circumstances – and the complexities of class – as the sophisticated writer he is.

I first encountered Rebekah Clarkson’s Barking Dogs (Affirm), her cycle of stories set in Mount Barker, at a reading, where I was mesmerised. Her sentences feel easy, but at close look, are perfectly polished, and her characters are vivid, recognisable and palpably human. She can also be very funny: like the best writers, she conducts an orchestra of motivations and emotions on every page.

Although Burial Rites deservedly ranked high on the Readings list, my favourite Hannah Kent novel is her second, The Good People (Picador), also based on a historical true crime. It’s set in 1820s Ireland, at the intersection of religion and science, as a desperate widow accepts a midwife’s increasingly disturbing “cures” for her disabled grandson.

Carol Lefevre’s cut-glass prose is both poetic and forensically precise. I love her work, and especially Murmurations (Spinifex), her linked story cycle inspired by Edward Hopper’s paintings: stories of love, loss, connection and disconnection, with recurring characters and details, and – as always – meditations on art and the difficult act of being good threaded throughout.

I edited Sincerely Ethel Malley (Wakefield Press), Stephen Orr’s strange and brilliant novel about the Ern Malley affair of 70 years ago, perhaps Adelaide’s oddest literary scandal. Narrated by the invented Ern Malley’s “real” sister, Ethel, it’s an intriguing play on truth and fiction, and the nature of invention itself. Or if it seems a bit much for me to choose a book I worked on, instead check out Orr’s Beaumont children novel, Time’s Long Ruin (Wakefield Press).

I’m a big fan of Vikki Wakefield, but my favourite remains her utterly absorbing debut, All I Ever Wanted (Text), which I then labelled “Underbelly meets Hating Alison Ashley”. How can you not want to read that? It’s a wryly funny, moving, deeply compassionate coming-of-age novel about the bittersweetness of wanting to transcend where you’re from and being pleasantly surprised by people.

Best Australian books of the 21^st century, chosen by SA authors

Rebekah Clarkson

Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy (Text) is an extraordinary feat of the imagination. A novel that adjusts your internal world and leaves it that way. Honourable mentions: Nam Le’s The Boat (Penguin) – a deep dive, wide-ranging, exhilarating short stories. And Bloodrust and Other Stories by Julia Prendergast (Spineless Wonders): Unflinching and unforgettable. Published only last year, but I believe these stories will stand the test of time.
(Rebekah Clarkson’s latest book is Barking Dogs, Affirm Press.)

Tracy Crisp

I read Ali Cobby Eckermann’s Too Afraid to Cry (Liveright) because my son was reading it in Year Eight. It was our first year back after a decade overseas where he was mostly in British international schools. This was a profound contrast to those reading lists, and an interesting time to read it as I was trying to make sense of what it meant to leave and return to this continent. I’ve since read all her work which always makes me not only see, but feel, the world differently.
(Tracy Crisp’s latest book is Surrogate, Wakefield Press.)

Walter Marsh

All of Liam Pieper’s books are visceral, funny, pretty messed up, and invariably finished at 2.30am the same day I started reading. But The Toy Maker (Penguin) got its hooks into me in ways that still pop into my head years later; a scathing satire of modern Australia and the “Holocaust novel” that manages to subvert expectations. I once gave it to an octogenarian great aunt for Christmas and, as she unwrapped it, recalled with horror the contents of its opening chapter. We have never discussed it since. But five stars, for sure.

Honourable mentions: Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu made a lot of headlines but its predecessor, Convincing Ground (Aboriginal Studies Press), digs even deeper and lays the groundwork for Pascoe’s big moment. It’s one of a handful of books I read in my twenties that helped shift my perception of this continent’s history and how we live and work with its legacies today. I don’t think I was the target demographic for Alice Pung’s Laurinda (Black Inc.), a young adult novel about race and class at an elite girls school, but she does a beautiful job at creating a zoomer successor to Looking For Alibrandi, with bonus insights into the decentralised labour force of Australia’s fashion industry.
(Walter Marsh’s latest book is Young Rupert: The Making of the Murdoch Empire, Scribe.)

Rachael Mead

The top five shuffles every time I tackle the question, but Murmurations by Carol Lefevre is consistently near the top of the list. The profound concept, structure and subtle links between the stories give me great joy as a reader, and the cadence of her sentences make me slow down and drink in every word. Honourable mentions to books that reveal greater depths with each reread: Craft for a Dry Lake by Kim Mahood (Anchor), Music Our Bodies Can’t Hold by Andy Jackson (Hunter Publishing) and Barking Dogs by Rebekah Clarkson (Affirm).
(Rachael Mead’s latest book is The Art of Breaking Ice, Affirm. She is co-curator of Dog-eared Readings.)

Molly Murn

My pick is Charlotte Wood’s The Submerged Cathedral (Vintage). I often think of the opening scene ­– a man on a doorstep holding a fish wrapped in newspaper, an offering for his soon-to-be-lover who’s inside smoking in the bath. This is a keen and electric love story. Also traverses sisters, gardens, cathedrals, monastic life. Honourable mentions: The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose (Allen & Unwin), Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears and The Yellow Notebook by Helen Garner (Text).
(Molly Murn’s latest book is Heart of the Glass Tree, Penguin.)

Stephen Orr

Jack Cox’s “anti-novel” Dodge Rose (Text) promised something fresh (and need I say modern/ist) in Oz Lit in 2015. Our new Beckett (as everyone called him at the time) started out describing Eliza and Maxine, an inherited flat, plenty of legal documents and a bookcase crossing Sydney Harbour. Masterful use of language. A book I keep returning to. Honourable mention: Murray Bail’s The Pages (Text).
(Stephen Orr’s latest book is Shining Like the Sun, Wakefield Press.)

Heather Taylor Johnson

If ever there was an Australian masterclass in storytelling, in my thinking it’s Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy. It’s a novel you fall into and can’t easily climb out of, and the discomfort is strangely comforting, the complexity of emotion just so enviable. Honourable mentions to Fiona McGregor’s quintessential Sydney novel, Indelible Ink (Scribe), a book that made me fangirl email the author, and Lucy Van’s essayistic poetry book, The Open.
(Heather Taylor Johnson’s latest book is Little Bit, Wakefield Press. She is co-curator of Dog-eared Readings.)

Vikki Wakefield

I struggle to choose a “best book” because the books I can’t stop thinking about aren’t necessarily the ones I most enjoyed. Gillian Mears’ Foal’s Bread (Allen & Unwin) took me a long time to finish, but I was so seduced by the characters, reading it became a compulsion. It’s a tough book, a fine example of Australian Gothic – devastating, exquisitely written and ultimately transformative. Honourable mentions go to Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore (Text) and Georgia Blain’s Between a Wolf and a Dog (Scribe).
(Vikki Wakefield’s latest book is To the River, Text.)

Pip Williams

My top pick is Dog Boy by Eva Hornung, an extraordinary novel about a neglected boy adopted by a pack of dogs. It shines an uncomfortable light on our humanity. After 15 years, I am still in awe of the story and the storyteller. Honourable mentions: Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason (Harper) and Burial Rites by Hannah Kent.
(Pip Williams’ latest book is The Bookbinder of Jericho, Affirm.)

Allayne Webster

This Is How We Change the Ending by Vikki Wakefield (Text) is my best book. Winner of the 2020 Children’s Book Council Book of the Year (Older Readers), this complex novel examining class warfare should be a permanent fixture on the Australian curriculum, and studied in every classroom and read by every incoming politician across Australia. Honourable mentions: Stone Girl by Eleni Hale (Penguin), winner of the 2019 Readings Prize and based on the author’s childhood experience growing up in state care in Victoria, this will live rent-free in your heart for years to come. A truly unforgettable, powerful tale of survival. Amelia Westlake by Erin Gough (Hardie Grant Egmont), winner of the 2019 NSW Premier’s Ethel Turner Award. This is Australian queer YA at its absolute best: witty, political, feminist, chock full of love and heart; the story is about banding together and standing strong in the face of discrimination.
(Allayne Webster’s latest book is Selfie, Text.)

Best Australian books of the 21^st century, chosen by SA literary workers

Louise Adler

Frank Moorhouse’s entire Edith trilogy – though technically, Grand Days was published in 1993, Dark Palace (2000) and Cold Light (2011) make it. Masterpieces. Honourable mentions: South Australians Pip Williams, for Dictionary of Lost Words (Affirm), JM Coetzee, for Elizabeth Costello (Vintage) and Hannah Kent, for Burial Rites (Picador). And Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang (Penguin), Richard Flanagan’s Narrow Road to the Deep North (Knopf), Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire (Virago), Melissa Lucashenko’s Too Much Lip (UQP), Michelle de Kretser’s The Hamilton Case (Knopf) and Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap (Allen & Unwin).
(Louise Adler is director if Adelaide Writers’ Week.)

Alex Dunkin

My favourites keep changing, but currently Devotion by Hannah Kent (Picador) is my favourite. I was captivated by the love story, and the beauty and contrast described between the different parts of the world. My honourable mentions are Son of Sin by Omar Sakr (Affirm Press) and Colouring the Rainbow: Blak, Queer and Trans Perspectives (Wakefield Press), edited by Dino Hodge. They both deliver on centring the personal ,while maintaining the unique qualities in voice and style from each writer. I’m excited to see what will come out from Australian writers next.
(Alex Dunkin is publisher at Buon-Cattivi Press.)

Amelia Eitel

My very favourite book since 2000 is probably The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood. It hasn’t left me since I read it and I still think about it often. Notable mentions: All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld (Vintage) and A Fraction of The Whole by Steve Toltz (Penguin).
(Amelia Eitel is the new owner of Imprints Booksellers.)

Farrin Foster

My best book is The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood. Perhaps it is because I was in my late twenties when I read this book, but it felt like an illumination of all the unnamed forces that were pulling at me as I attempted to become myself. Its brutality and honesty about toxic gender dynamics and their central role in Australian cultural life is balanced by a cracking story and Wood’s crystal-clear voice. Honourable mentions: It must have been years since I read Tara June Winch‘s The Yield (Hamish Hamilton), but images from it still float across my mind almost weekly. The picture Winch slowly accumulates of the deep violence of ongoing colonisation and the love inherent in de-colonisation efforts is visceral. Almost unbearably prescient, Don Watson’s Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language (Knopf) is probably a writer’s pick more than anything else, but Watson’s succinct argument about the danger of our decaying public language feels like a warning that has now been deeply validated.
(Farrin Foster is editor of Splinter literary journal.)

Paul Gallasch

My pick is Hall of Uselessness by Simon Leys (Black Inc), because as he points out in the introduction by way of a quote by Zhuang Zi, “everyone knows the usefulness of what is useful, but few know the usefulness of what is useless”. Then, Inner Workings by JM Coetzee (Text), because the collection only deepened my appreciation for books that I already loved. Finally, 21 Nights In July (Hunter Publishing) by Ianto Ware: a deliciously funny and informative book about cycling and life. (Paul Gallasch is a documentary filmmaker and owner of Ern Malley bar.)

Margot Lloyd

Shirley Hazzard‘s The Great Fire expanded my idea of what Australian fiction could be – epic, meticulously formed, and not necessarily set in Australia at all! Margaret Merrilees‘s Big Rough Stones (Wakefield Press) – Adelaide’s own Tales of the City – is a gorgeous celebration of sisterhood and community. And I can’t go past Angela O’Keeffe‘s The Sitter (UQP), which is a perfect book – experimental but utterly compelling, tender with flashes of wonderfully wry humour – about women reclaiming their stories. I admit, I was lucky enough to work on two of these books (not Shirley Hazzard’s!). (Margot Lloyd is co-director of Pink Shorts Press. Pink Short Press’s first book is due in 2025.)

Maddy Sexton

My top pick is The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood. It hit me for six when I read it in my early twenties, and is a book I still think about frequently. Honourable mentions to Burial Rites by Hannah Kent and The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay (Scribe).
(Maddy Sexton is head of YA at Wakefield Press.)

Anna Solding

The Narrow Road to the Deep North is my top pick, due to its delicate balance of focus on the larger history and narrower personal, emotional journeys of its characters. I was completely immersed in the story and came out dazed by the end of the book. To be transported in that way is the ultimate reading experience for me. The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott (Text) also hooked me from the first line and never let me go, while The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin) generated so much thought and discussion, and I’m also a huge fan of shifting points of view.
(Anna Solding is publisher at MidnightSun.)

Lynette Washington

My pick is Ryan O’Neill’s The Weight of a Human Heart (Black Inc). I adore the way Ryan never sacrifices empathy, emotion and narrative but engages in formal, playful deconstruction of what makes a short story. It blew my mind and reminded me what fiction was capable of. Honourable mentions: Robbie Arnott’s The Rain Heron, Joan London’s Gilgamesh (Penguin), Carol Lefevre’s Murmurations and Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things (Allen & Unwin).
(Lynette Washington is publisher at Glimmer Press.)

Gavin Williams

Georgia Blain‘s Between a Wolf and a Dog (Scribe): her clear-eyed account of a single day in a family rent asunder by ill-health, infidelity and existential hopelessness remains as perceptive and arresting today as when it was first published. Blain has a poet’s eye for both the inner workings of the human heart and the gentle redemptive powers of the natural world, and her prose was never more elegant or polished as it was here. That this was her final work of fiction – she died aged just 52, in 2016 – remains an unvarnished tragedy. Honourable mentions, in no order, to Jessica Au’s Cold Enough For Snow (Giramondo), Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional (Allen & Unwin) and Gillian Mears’ Foal’s Bread.
(Gavin Williams is owner of Matilda Bookshop.)

Jo Case is a monthly columnist for InReview and deputy editor, books & ideas, at The Conversation. She is former bookseller at Imprints on Hindley Street and former associate publisher of Wakefield Press.