Author: Eminent Contributors
Editor: Santosh K Sareen
Publisher: Affiliated East-West
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 154
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8176710202
Description
This collection reflects the literary and cultural tradition of Australia. This rich collection, from a country with which India shares a long history of story-telling, gives the Indian reader an opportunity to respond to a multitude of voices – those of the Aboriginal Australians, the Anglo-Celtic Australians, the immigrants and women. Their articulations reflect historical, political, social and cultural realities. History itself is creatively interrogated in the case of the Aboriginal Australians through reported oral narratives.
These allude to the timeless mythological past and record their ways of dreaming, observing, knowing, conversing in their magical and mysterious world. In the case of the settler communities, the history of pioneering, of the hardships and encounters in the new land can be discerned; and in the case of the immigrants, a complex experience that narrates personal struggles, failures, successes and hopes. In the process what gets fore grounded are man-woman relationships, sexually, marriages and their fragility, and the problems of children of broken homes, thus illustrating the diverse aspects of the Australian experience. Anguish, comedy and fantasy are all there, negotiating the universal themes of love, separation and death.
Sensitive. Touching and delightful, these stories, written by prominent Australian writers, are our little windows to an island-continent and engage the imagination in their won right, leading to insights, questions and curiosity about human feelings and behavior.
Contents
BRUCE BENNETT
Foreword
SANTOSH K. SAREEN
Introduction
Acknowledgements
GLENDA ADAMS
Lies
PETER COWAN
The Tractor
NINETTE DUTTON
The Black Stone
BEVERLEY FARMER
Among Pigeons
ELIZABETH HARROWER
The beautiful Climate
ELIZABETH JOLLEY
A Gentleman’s Agreement
DAVID MALOUF
Bad Blood
ALAN MARSHALL
Trees Can Speak
Kiss Her? I’d Kiss Her
OLGA MASTERS
The Home Girls
GILLIAN MEARS
Afterthoughts
JOE NANGAN AND HUGH EDWARDS
Bara, the Sun Maidens
PADDY ROE
Worawora Woman
JUDAH WATEN
Mother
HERB WHARTON
Cockatoos, Oranges and the Past
MICHAEL WILDING
Her Most Bizarre Sexual Experience
JUDITH WRIGHT
The Weeping Fig
Biographical Notes