Books & music

Günter Grass, who was one of Germany’s most important post-war novelists, died on April 13 at the age of 87 in the town of Lübeck, in northern Germany. Grass was perhaps most famous for his 1959 book The Tin Drum, a novel that embodied fantastical elements in its critique of Weimar and Nazi Germany. As such, his style bore resemblances to Latin America’s genre of magical realism. In 1979, the book was turned into an Academy Award winning film by Volker Schlöndorff, which won the Oscar for best foreign film.

The Inconvenient Genocide: Who Remembers the Armenians? Geoffrey Robertson QC, Vintage Books, Sydney, 294 pages, 2014 On the eve of Nazi Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler urged his generals “to kill without mercy men, women and children of the Polish race or language”. “Only in such a way will we win [what] we need,” Hitler said. “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians.” The Nazi leader was referring to the genocide carried out by the Ottoman Turkish empire in 1915 against the Armenian people within its borders.

Hell-Bent: Australia’s Leap Into The Great War Douglas Newton Scribe, 2014 344 pages, $32.99 (pb) Behind all the froth, then and now, about the noble cause of World War I — defence of freedom against German aggression — lay a far less exalted reality, writes retired University of Western Sydney historian Douglas Newton. The war’s “grand plan” for Britain, candidly called “The Spoils” by the British Colonial Secretary, was to divvy the world up among the victors.

“Down The Abbott Hole” By Zelda Grimshaw Download free A group of musicians in Cairns, Queensland, have released a song controversially calling for the head of Tony Abbott. “Down the Abbott Hole” refers to Abbott’s Australia as a bleak and sterile environment, in which fear reigns over logic, and the atmosphere is “cold as ice, black as coal”. The song can be streamed online and was being played by radio stations all over the country just hours after its release.

Melbourne punk band The Duvtons have come out of a five-year hiatus to record a catchy new anti-Abbott song to hasten the fall of “our very own idiot”.

Here's this month's radical record round-up, with an emphasis on International Women's Day.

The mainstream media are swarming all over the Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy and Felon Mason is stripped to the waist.

In the early days of hacker collective Anonymous, political activism seemed to be the last thing on its members' minds. Seeking only laughs, usually at the expense of others, members would dismiss anyone they disapproved of as "fags".

Blood & Guts: Dispatches From The Whale Wars Sam Vincent Black Inc., 2014, 274 pages, $29.99 (pb) Industrial-scale whaling, writes Sam Vincent in Blood & Guts, had picked clean the world’s oceans until only the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary remained, protected by the icy remoteness of Antarctica and a worldwide ban on commercial whaling.

Radical Aboriginal rapper Provocalz uploaded the new track "Closure" to YouTube on March 20, in his words to "get out the anger n frustrations of the last few days". It responds to the proposal to forcibly close up to 150 rural Aboriginal communities.

Grrl Fest is an independent multi-platform music and arts event, celebrating and empowering women-identified artists. This year, the Melbourne event will be celebrating its third year. Grrl Fest will be held on March 21 at the Northcote Town Hall. There will be an outdoor venue, markets, music, workshops, cocktails and cabaret. The venue is a change up from the dusty warehouse beginnings of Grrl Fest.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman By Jill Lepore Knopf, 2014, 410 pages Wonder Woman cannot marry, according to Amazon law. She doesn’t want to, either. Especially if it would mean that she — the comic book superhero disguised as a secretary — would be stuck in the kitchen cooking dinner for her would-be domesticator, Captain Steve Trevor, the US pilot she fell in love with after rescuing him from his plane crash on her woman-only, feminist island utopia.