Death in Brunswick

Boyd Oxlade: After attending an Australian university, Boyd Oxlade lived in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton — for a time in a converted chicken shed — before the suburb became gentrified, and worked occasionally as a cook and as a gravedigger, but was mostly on government benefits: once for nine years straight.

Hoping in vain to make some money, Oxlade wrote Death in Brunswick. It was published by Heinemann in 1987 and acclaimed for its finely tuned comic depiction of Melbourne’s ethnically diverse northern suburbs.

He co-wrote the screenplay for a film adaptation of the novel with the director John Ruane. Released in 1991, the movie starred Sam Neill, Zoe Carides and John Clarke, and became a cult hit. Its grave-digging scene remains one of the most famous moments in Australian cinema.