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Patrick Mullins
Patrick Mullins is a Canberra-based writer and academic who has a PhD…
DiscoverThe Trials of Portnoy shortlisted for the ACT Book of the Year
Scribe is happy to share that The Trials of Portnoy by Patrick Mullins has been shortlisted for the 2021 ACT Book of the Year Award. This award recognises quality literary works by ACT-based authors; read more about it here.
Congratulations to Patrick and the other shortlisted authors.
Patrick Mullins is a Canberra-based writer and academic who has a PhD from the University of Canberra. Tiberius with a Telephone, his first book, won the 2020 NSW Premier’s Non-Fiction Award and the 2020 National Biography Award. He is also the author of The Trials of Portnoy: how Penguin brought down Australia’s censorship system.
The Trials of Portnoy
Fifty years after the event, here is the first full account of an audacious publishing decision that — with the help of booksellers and readers around the country — forced the end of literary censorship in Australia.
For more than seventy years, a succession of politicians, judges, and government officials in Australia worked in the shadows to enforce one of the most pervasive and conservative regimes of censorship in the world. The goal was simple: to keep Australia free of the moral contamination of impure literature. Under the censorship regime, books that might damage the morals of the Australian…
