We’re approaching the last week of voting in this year’s ABC-RN Top 100 poll of Australian books. This week’s reading trail celebrates Brian Castro, author of twelve novels as well as non-fiction and poetry – and one of Australia’s most extraordinary and lesser-read writers.

In “The Wound that Does not Heal”, published in the Summer 2022 edition of Meanjin, Shannon Burns considers Brian Castro’s remarkable literary career – a body of formally daring, richly rewarding novels that has earned major awards and sustained critical acclaim, yet comparatively little popular recognition. Castro is, says, Burns, “the rare kind of author who cannot write a bad book”.