This week, on The ABR Podcast, we feature WA Senator Varun Ghosh’s essay, ‘Literary critic as democratic role model’, which discusses the relationship between literary criticism and politics. Ghosh argues that literary critique is crucial to the health of democracy. ‘A strong critical culture is protective of democracy’, he asserts. While there are limits to the comparison between literary critics and democratic representatives,’ Ghosh writes, ‘the habits that underpin good criticism … are also indispensable to good policymaking’.

Varun Ghosh is a Senator for Western Australia and previously a lawyer from Perth. He received degrees in Arts and Law from the University of Western Australia and was a Commonwealth Scholar in Law at the University of Cambridge.

‘Literary critic as democratic role model’ is published in the August issue of ABR.