The best known books set in each country: Australia

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Australia.

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

(Scheduling this to go live quite early, to catch the Australians.)

TitleAuthorGoodreads
raters
LibraryThing
owners
Big Little LiesLiane Moriarty1,076,5757,890
The Rosie ProjectGraeme Simsion580,2418,169
The Husband’s SecretLiane Moriarty707,8976,692
The Light Between OceansM. L. Stedman470,9827,908
The Thorn BirdsColleen McCullough359,4647,901
What Alice ForgotLiane Moriarty498,6924,987
Nine Perfect StrangersLiane Moriarty461,9684,160
I Am the Messenger / The MessengerMarkus Zusak166,7426,958

I confess that I had not heard of Liane Moriarty, but she clearly scores very well here, with Big Little Lies far ahead on Goodreads and fourth in a close race on LibraryThing. Sorry to those who were hoping to see Nevil Shute (On the Beach was 21st in my ranking and A Town Like Alice 23rd) or Peter Carey (True History of the Kelly Gang was 30th, Oscar and Lucinda 31st) on the list.

I disqualified only two books. I was puzzled to see The Book Thief (which won in Germany) topping the overall poll, but I had forgotten that Markus Zusak is actually Australian. And more than half of The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton is set in England.

Next: North Korea, Syria, Mali and Burkina Faso.

Asia: India | China | Indonesia | Pakistan | Bangladesh (revised) | Russia | Japan | Philippines (revised) | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Thailand | Myanmar | South Korea | Iraq | Afghanistan | Yemen | Uzbekistan | Malaysia | Saudi Arabia | Nepal | North Korea | Syria | Sri Lanka | Taiwan | Kazakhstan | Cambodia | Jordan | UAE | Tajikistan
Americas: USA | Brazil (revised) | Mexico | Colombia | Argentina | Canada | Peru | Venezuela | Guatemala | Ecuador | Bolivia | Haiti | Dominican Republic | Honduras | Cuba
Africa: Nigeria | Ethiopia (revised) | Egypt | DR Congo | Tanzania | South Africa | Kenya | Sudan | Uganda | Algeria | Morocco | Angola | Mozambique | Ghana | Madagascar | Côte d’Ivoire | Cameroon | Niger | Mali | Burkina Faso | Malawi | Zambia | Chad | Somalia | Senegal | Zimbabwe | Guinea | Benin | Rwanda | Burundi | Tunisia | South Sudan | Togo
Europe: Russia | Türkiye | Germany | France | UK | Italy | Spain | Poland | Ukraine | Romania | Netherlands | Belgium | Sweden | Czechia | Azerbaijan | Portugal | Greece
Oceania: Australia | Papua New Guinea

Sprawl, ed. Alisa Krasnostein

Second paragraph of third story (“How to Select a Durian at Footscray Market”, by Stephanie Campisi – third if you count the opening poem):

There are blobs of fruit flesh on the ground where people have pestled kumquats or grapes beneath their shoes, shoes that are old and friendly sandals or heels thin and high as kebab skewers. Kids, hair carved into waterfalls that trail down their necks or propped up in pineapply plumes with supercute sparkly hair bobbles, stagger about in that toddlerish way, their plump bellies steering them towards tasting plates of chopped up sour mango, glistening papaya, white and virginal dragonfruit and blobs of eyeball-like longan.

An anthology of sff stories by Australian writers, published in 2010 in anticipation of that year’s Worldcon. They’re all pretty good. I particularly liked the opening by Tansy Rayner Roberts, “Relentless Adaptations”, which looks at a dystopian future for literature, and the sinister youth of Angela Slatter’s “Brisneyland by Night”. but I don’t think that there is a dud in the collection. You can get it here.

This was both my top unread book acquired in 2015 and the sf book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on those piles are two books by Brain Aldiss, respectively Complete Short Stories: The 1950s and Jocasta, Wife and Mother.