Events

Join us at this Melbourne launch of Minister Andrew Leigh’s latest book: The Shortest History of Innovation.

From the wheel to gene editing, new ideas shape our world.

In this dazzling, surprising and always entertaining book, bestselling author Andrew Leigh tells the story of innovation.

Innovation shapes almost every corner of our lives, yet we rarely pause to notice it. Someone had to invent nails and wheelbarrows; alphabets and books; glass windows and windscreen wipers; tin cans and synthetic dyes. From tools and technologies to fresh approaches in art and architecture, innovation surrounds us.

Leigh shows that three forces drive innovation: tinkering, teams and trade. He examines hotbeds of creativity, the forces that suppress them, and the surprising ways ideas travel across borders and disciplines. The result is a lively, compact look at the engines powering progress.

A brilliant follow-up to the international bestseller The Shortest History of Economics.

Revered American novelist Percival Everett discusses his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James, a bold and transformative response to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

In his reimagining of an American classic, Percival Everett flips the script on Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, placing Huck’s enslaved companion Jim – here renamed James – at the centre of the narrative and granting him the voice he’s been long denied. The resulting novel is gripping, funny and strikingly relevant: a sharp reckoning with American identity, the dehumanising legacy of slavery and the enduring absurdity of racial supremacy.

In this special event, Everett joins host Osman Faruqi to discuss what drew him to this act of literary reclamation and why he views his work as being in conversation with Twain’s. He will also reflect on his decades-spanning literary career and the recent adaptation of his novel Erasure into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear from one of the most inventive and incisive voices in contemporary American literature in Everett’s only Melbourne appearance.