Do you remember what Australian books you studied when you were in school? We all know that prescribed texts can be hit and miss from students’ points of view, but the books that make the VCE and HSC lists (and so on) are chosen because they are considered to have merit and qualities worth dissecting and appreciating.
In this next instalment of our search for the Top 100 Australian Books of All Time for ABC Radio National’s countdown (voting opens at the end of this month!), we at the PMI Library are turning our attention to classroom classics: homegrown books that are studied at schools across Australia. Some, like My Brilliant Career and The Secret River, were highlighted in our previous blog post about books that have been adapted for stage or screen. As all genres are eligible, this new list of potential contenders includes plays, short story collections, memoirs, novels and poetry.
Rainbow’s End by Jane Harrison is a 2007 play about three generations of Aboriginal women in the 1950s as they fight racism and displacement in their struggle for education, housing, community and agency. Nan Dear, her middle-aged daughter Gladys and Gladys’ teenage daughter Dolly live in a humpy beside a flood-prone river. Inadvertently drawn into their lives is Errol, a White encyclopedia salesman who falls in love with Dolly and slowly unpacks his biases and assumptions as he grows closer to the family. Rainbow’s End has been on the VCE English text list since 2023.
The Complete Stories by David Malouf collects 31 short stories from three earlier collections: Every Move You Make (2006), Dream Stuff (2000) and Antipodes (1985), along with two short stories that accompanied Malouf’s 1982 novella Child’s Play. Deeply Australian, these stories betray Malouf’s beginnings in poetry, with their lyrical style and fascination with dreams, time and landscape. The Complete Stories entered the VCE English text list in 2025.
We Come with This Place by Debra Dank is a 2022 memoir written in a nonlinear, interwoven style. Dank’s Aboriginal heritage is front and centre as she weaves together narratives of childhood in rural Australia, family, generational trauma and connection to Country until the land becomes a character of its own. We Come with This Place entered the VCE English text list in 2026.
Edenglassie by Melissa Lucashenko is a 2023 novel featuring dual narratives set five generations apart. Mulanyin falls in love with Nita in Edenglassie in the 1850s, when Aboriginal people still outnumber the British colonists. Two centuries later, amid the bicentenary of Brisbane (formerly Edenglassie), Winona and Dr Johnny care for Winona’s Granny Eddie after a fall. The two stories are interconnected, demonstrating the enduring link between the past and the present and the far-reaching impacts of colonialism and racism. Edenglassie has joined the VCE English text list for 2027.
Cloudstreet by Tim Winton is a 1991 novel set over a twenty-year period and chronicling the lives of the working-class Lamb and Pickles families as they each occupy half of a sprawling house (nicknamed Cloudstreet) on Cloud Street in Perth. The Lambs are characterized by their Catholic faith, made complex by their son Fish’s traumatic near-drowning injury at the start of the book, whereas the Pickles link the ups and downs of their lives to the ‘shifty shadow’ of luck. Cloudstreet is a perennial favourite and was on the VCE English text list from 2014 to 2017.
Summer of the Seventeeth Doll by Ray Lawler was first performed in 1955 and is considered the most significant play in Australian theatre history, being seminal in its depiction of distinctly Australian life and characters. In 1953, Barnie and Roo return to Carlton from sugar cane cutting in Queensland to reunite with their casual lovers, Olive and Nancy, for the seventeenth summer in a row. Roo’s habit of giving Olive a Kewpie doll every year marks these months as the summer of the seventeenth doll, but unexpected changes to this longstanding arrangement bring tension and personality clashes into the narrative. Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is currently on the Western Australian Suggested Text List for English in Years 11 and 12.
Drylands by Thea Astley won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2000. It was Astley’s fourth win and her final novel and is subtitled ‘a book for the world’s last reader’. Janet, the purported writer, is an inhabitant of the dying town of Drylands, and her stories and observations explore themes of drought, power, loneliness, violence and dystopia. Drylands is on the current VCE Literature text list and the 2027 text list for Literature in Western Australia.
The Yield by Tara June Winch is a 2019 novel about August Gondiwindi, who returns to Australia after the death of her grandfather, Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi. Interspersed with scenes of August’s bittersweet homecoming and her efforts to save the land from being repossessed by a mining company are the words and memories that Albert has been writing down in his final days, determined to pass on his knowledge, language and culture. The Yield is currently on the VCE Literature and QACE English and EAL prescribed text lists.
At the Altar of Touch by Gavin Yuan Gao is a debut poetry collection divided into five sections: ‘Coup de grâce’, ‘The Moon’s Annotations’, ‘Riverborne’, ‘At the Altar of Touch’ and ‘The Resurrection’. Gao’s background as a genderqueer, bilingual immigrant poet who grew up in Beijing and Brisbane richly informs each poem here, exploring family, grief, cross-cultural and queer identity. At the Altar of Touch has been on the VCE Literature text list since 2025.
Smart Ovens for Lonely People by Elizabeth Tan is a short story collection that won the 2020 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction and was longlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize, among other accolades. Some are previously published, some are new, but the twenty stories collected here have common themes of conspiracies, celebrities, therapies and loneliness, with Tan’s writing style being quirky, witty and full of social commentary. Smart Ovens for Lonely People has been on the VCE Literature text list since 2023.
What Australian books did you study at school that you would consider worthy of inclusion among the Top 100 Australian Books of All Time?
Written by library volunteer Susannah Cosham.