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'From the Wreck tells the remarkable story of George Hills, who survived the sinking of the steamship Admella off the South Australian coast in 1859. Haunted by his memories and the disappearance of a fellow survivor, George’s fractured life is intertwined with that of a woman from another dimension, seeking refuge on Earth. This is a novel imbued with beauty and feeling, filled both with existential loneliness and a deep awareness that all life is interdependent.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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What I’m Reading
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2020; -
Writing and Reading Speculative Fiction
2019
single work
essay
— Appears in: Aurealis , no. 120 2019; -
What I’m Reading
2018
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2018; -
In Defence of Historical Fiction
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2018; -
How Speculative Fiction Gained Literary Respectability
2018
single work
column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 2 November 2018;'I count myself lucky. Weird, I know, in this day and age when all around us the natural and political world is going to hell in a handbasket. But that, in fact, may be part of it.
'Back when I started writing, realism had such a stranglehold on publishing that there was little room for speculative writers and readers. (I didn’t know that’s what I was until I read it in a reader’s report for my first novel. And even then I didn’t know what it was, until I realised that it was what I read, and had always been reading; what I wrote, and wanted to write.) Outside of the convention rooms, that is, which were packed with less-literary-leaning science-fiction and fantasy producers and consumers.' (Introduction)
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Jane Rawson : From the Wreck
2017
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essay
— Appears in: The Newtown Review of Books , February 2017; 'Jane Rawson’s new novel has its feet planted in the earth as well as in the ocean and the stars.' -
Alien Meets Shipwreck
Maureen Eppen
(interviewer),
2017
single work
interview
— Appears in: Good Reading , March 2017; (p. 18-19) 'In her latest novel, Melbourne author Jane Rawson adds an air of otherworldliness to the story of her ancestor who survived a 19th-century shipwreck. She talks to Maureen Eppen about history, aliens and the benefits of having been a 'hack writer' for 25 years.' (Publication summary) -
'From the Wreck' by Jane Rawson
2017
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essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 390 2017; 'From the Wreck is a deeply ecological novel. It isn’t quite cli-fi – that new genre of fiction concerned with dramatising the effects of our changing climate on people and the world – rather, it is underpinned by an awareness of the connectedness of creatures: animal, human, and otherworldly alike, and narrated in parts by a creature who has fled another planet, ruined by invaders who ‘built machines, giant, and chemical plants’ and poisoned the oceanic habitat of this character and her kind.' (Introduction) -
Survivor’s Saga from an Explorer of the Odd
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 15 April 2017; (p. 19) 'Jane Rawson is an explorer of the odd. Her 2013 debut novel A Wrong Turn in the Office of Unmade Lists was a dystopian voyage into narrative implausibility, featuring a ruined Melbourne and California’s Bay Area. More recently her novella Formaldehyde (2015) featured a dead protagonist in a love triangle. Both were works of eccentric originality.' (Introduction) -
‘From the Wreck’ Author Jane Rawson
2018
single work
column
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 23-29 June 2018;'Combining a real-life shipwreck and an alien octopus doesn’t seem an obvious way to explore the impact of mankind on the environment, but, for author Jane Rawson, the message in From the Wreck couldn’t be more imperative. “We’re very keen to look elsewhere and say, ‘Oh, this is terrible in developing countries’ … We seem to be blissfully unaware that some of the worst deforestation in the world is happening in Australia … We have one of the worst extinction records in the world.”' (Publication abstract)
Awards
- 2020 shortlisted Kitschies Award
- 2018 shortlisted Barbara Jefferis Award
- 2018 longlisted Voss Literary Prize
- 2018 longlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2018 shortlisted Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature — Award for Fiction
- South Australia,
- 1859