Max Easton

The new novel from Max Easton following his Miles Franklin-longlisted debut The Magpie Wing and its acclaimed follow-up Paradise Estate. Traversing anarchist collectives and experiments in autonomous living, political protest and DIY activism, Now, Autonomy continues Easton’s thirty-year portrait of working-class life in subcultures and music scenes, exploring intergenerational political solidarity, and the ever-present risk of disillusionment under the heavy hand of the state.

Set across the course of a year, against the backdrop of pandemic and war, of climate and housing crises, Paradise Estate – Max Easton’s follow-up to The Magpie Wing – documents the struggle against generational confusion and social malaise. When isolation and atomisation are all we’ve been given, what can be built from common ground?

Max Easton’s debut novel explores how, even in a city divided against itself, disparate communities – underground music scenes, rugby league clubs, communist splinter groups – share unexpected roots.