I read Andrew McGahan’s Praise (1992) in my first year of university. I was blown away. It was unlike anything else I had ever read: raw, gritty, real.
One of the most prominent writers of Australia’s short-lived literary “grunge” movement, McGahan – along with his peers Christos Tsiolkas, Justine Ettler, Luke Davies, John Birmingham and Linda Jaivin, among others – represented a cohort of young writers interested in a literature that was both political and personal: confessional in terms of their own lives, but also as an expression of a generational experience.
