A luxury hotel becomes a place of menace and fear.

A group of rich guests have booked places at the Termush hotel, a comfortable resort. The only difference is that they are not hoping to enjoy a relaxing holiday. They have reserved places in the hope of surviving a nuclear Armageddon. The story opens after the “disaster” has happened, with a brief description of what atmospheric changes a nuclear explosion can wreak. The hotel guests try to believe that life can return to some sort of normalcy – but everyone knows they are lying to themselves. The hotel's management endeavours to create a veneer of polite civilisation, but tough decisions are being made, primarily, whether survivors of the explosion that try to enter the hotel should be allowed in. Should there be a cap on how many survivors can be accommodated? Who gets to make these decisions? What are the ethical implications? Can there even be ethical questions in such an environment?

A mounting tension builds as it becomes obvious that there are forces outside the hotel that want to break in. No matter how much the management tries to pretend that everything is under control, it's clear that the hotel provides a flimsy bulwark against the reality of the outside world. The guests' safe haven is crumbling before their eyes.
Danish author Sven Holm published Termush in 1967, and it was translated into English in 1969 by Sylvia Clayton. It's a short, terse novel with clipped, pared back prose. Every character in the story remains unnamed, except for Maria, whose emotional outbursts are deemed the only rational response to the unfolding horror of the guests' situation. Termush brilliantly examines the psychology of survival at any cost, creating a novel of unremitting despair.

Termush, by Sven Holm. Published by Faber $22.99. 

Review by Chris Saliba

A new biography of Rupert Murdoch concentrates on his early years.

Rupert Murdoch’s influence is ubiquitous, yet the man himself remains oddly opaque. Contradictions abound. During his university days, he toyed with left-wing politics, but soon moved to the right. He painted himself the outsider, but quickly became the establishment. As Murdoch once said candidly: “Monopoly is a terrible thing, until you have it.”
 
Journalist Walter Marsh’s new biography of Murdoch concentrates on the mogul’s formative years in Adelaide at the helm of The News, especially its controversial coverage of the 1959 Stuart royal commission, which brought Rupert and his editor, Rohan Rivett, close to a jail term for seditious libel. 
 
The book also works as a dual biography of his father, Keith. Murdoch senior started as the editor of the Melbourne Herald and was soon engineering a series of ambitious business deals that sowed the seeds of the Murdoch empire, but left him overdrawn and overstretched. Rupert clearly inherited his father’s penchant for high stakes and risk taking. 
 
Young Rupert is a scrupulously well-researched history that examines the power of the press in the twentieth century, and its influence on politics. Rupert Murdoch remains largely elusive, yet new research shows glimpses of a man under pressure and unable to enjoy his success. Readers interested in Australian politics and publishing will find much to satisfy here.

Young Rupert: The Making of the Murdoch Empire, by Walter Marsh. Published by Scribe. $34.99

Release date 1st August. Review by Chris Saliba

This review first published at Books + Publishing.