If any part of Australia can lay claim to being the country’s literary nexus, it is western Sydney. The wide wing of suburbia is both home to and the subject of granular attention for an ever-growing list of acclaimed writers: Yumna Kassab, Peter Polites, Luke Carman, Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Felicity Castagna – to name just a few. Each of them reflects a culturally diverse landscape in which social class and suburban identity are forever intersecting, animating the lives of those often neglected in the margins of Australia’s projected self-image.
A key figure in this discourse is Max Easton, whose latest novel – Now, Autonomy – is the third instalment of his multi-decade series that chronicles working-class struggle and its subcultural undercurrents in Sydney’s west. Beginning with the Miles Franklin-longlisted The Magpie Wing in 2021, and followed by Paradise Estate in 2023, this ambitious, compelling quasi-trilogy – each title can be read and appreciated on its own – depicts people navigating Australia’s class hierarchies, hyper-gentrification, rental housing pressures and ever-diminishing spaces for community and collective activism.
