The annual literary wrap-ups of 2021 are about to start but I want to go all the way back in time to 2020. The fourth issue of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature each year includes an introduction to the previous year’s literature of selected Commonwealth nations accompanied by a bibliography. Since 1976, my PhD supervisor, Van Ikin, has been coordinating the Australian entry and I’ve been privileged to be a co-author for the last six years.

We give an overview of major works and their reception as well as themes, trends and controversies. It’s inevitably incomplete and skewed somewhat to our personal interests and biases! It’s also weighted by the format toward literary fiction, poetry, drama, and literary criticism with non-fiction and other fiction only covered selectively.

The official published version is now available on the journal’s website but requires a login; you can download our unpublished version for free as a pdf below.

For the historical record, here’s the compilers by years of publication:

Van Ikin and John Maddocks 1976-1984
Van Ikin and Brenda Walker 1984-1987
Van Ikin and Kieran Dolin 1988, 1990-1997
Van Ikin and David McCooey 1989
Van Ikin and Elizabeth Hardy 1998-2000
Van Ikin and Darren Jorgensen 2001-2006
Van Ikin and Keira McKenzie 2007-2013
Van Ikin, Keira McKenzie and Margaret Stevenson 2014-2015
Van Ikin, Nathan Hobby, Keira McKenzie, Margaret Stevenson 2016
Van Ikin, Nathan Hobby and Margaret Stevenson 2017-2018
Van Ikin and Nathan Hobby 2019—>