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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Australian soldier Toohey returns from Baghdad in 2003 with shrapnel in his neck, crippled by PTSD and white-knuckling life. In the Iraq of a decade earlier, aspiring pianist Nasim falls from favour with Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic son Uday, triggering a perilous search for safety. In Melbourne as the millennium turns, Robbie, faced with her father’s dementia and the family silences that may never find voice, tests boundaries. And in the present day, Gerry seeks to escape his father Toohey’s tyranny and heal its wounds.
'These characters' worlds intertwine across time and place, in a brilliant story of fear and sacrifice, trauma and survival, and what people will do to outrun the shadows. Crossing the frontiers of war, protest and cultural reconciliation, Act of Grace is a meditation on inheritance: the damage that one generation bestows upon the next, and the potential for transformation.
'This is a searing, powerful and utterly original work by an exceptional Australian writer. It will leave you changed.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
-
Individual Tales Evoke Big Picture
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16 November 2019; (p. 25)
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel'When American writer Flannery O’Connor had difficulty writing her debut novel, she pretended to herself that every chapter was in fact a self-contained short story, the form with which she was most comfortable. This trick she played on herself allowed her to complete her first full-length work of fiction, Wise Blood.
'The nine individual chapters of Anna Krien’s first novel, Act of Grace, contains many of the features of the modern short story (starting, as Chekhov advised, in the “middle of things” and ending with narrative resonance, rather than resolution).' (Introduction)
-
October in Fiction
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , October 2019;
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel ; Songspirals : Sharing Women's Wisdom of Country through Songlines 2019 single work prose -
[Review] Act of Grace
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 12-18 October 2019;
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel'Anna Krien is highly regarded for her deeply researched and incisive long-form journalism. Her books Night Games and Into the Woods, along with two Quarterly Essays, have cemented her as one of this country’s leading voices on contemporary sociopolitical and environmental issues, and an advocate for fairness and reason.' (Introduction)
-
Act of Grace : Anna Krien
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Monthly , October no. 160 2019; (p. 88)
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel -
Kaleidoscope
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 415 2019; (p. 46)
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel'A young Aboriginal girl wears an abaya because she wants to see how it feels to inhabit someone else’s experience, someone else’s history. An exiled Iraqi musician plays a piano in a shopping centre in suburban Melbourne. Native Americans protesting the construction of a pipeline on their traditional lands are shot at with water cannons and rubber bullets. Countries are lost, sacred sites invaded by careless tourists, lines on maps exclude and dispossess, sacrifices and compromises are made, and individual lives are disfigured by historical circumstance.'(Introduction)
-
Kaleidoscope
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 415 2019; (p. 46)
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel'A young Aboriginal girl wears an abaya because she wants to see how it feels to inhabit someone else’s experience, someone else’s history. An exiled Iraqi musician plays a piano in a shopping centre in suburban Melbourne. Native Americans protesting the construction of a pipeline on their traditional lands are shot at with water cannons and rubber bullets. Countries are lost, sacred sites invaded by careless tourists, lines on maps exclude and dispossess, sacrifices and compromises are made, and individual lives are disfigured by historical circumstance.'(Introduction)
-
Act of Grace : Anna Krien
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Monthly , October no. 160 2019; (p. 88)
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel -
[Review] Act of Grace
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 12-18 October 2019;
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel'Anna Krien is highly regarded for her deeply researched and incisive long-form journalism. Her books Night Games and Into the Woods, along with two Quarterly Essays, have cemented her as one of this country’s leading voices on contemporary sociopolitical and environmental issues, and an advocate for fairness and reason.' (Introduction)
-
October in Fiction
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , October 2019;
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel ; Songspirals : Sharing Women's Wisdom of Country through Songlines 2019 single work prose -
Individual Tales Evoke Big Picture
2019
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 16 November 2019; (p. 25)
— Review of Act of Grace 2019 single work novel'When American writer Flannery O’Connor had difficulty writing her debut novel, she pretended to herself that every chapter was in fact a self-contained short story, the form with which she was most comfortable. This trick she played on herself allowed her to complete her first full-length work of fiction, Wise Blood.
'The nine individual chapters of Anna Krien’s first novel, Act of Grace, contains many of the features of the modern short story (starting, as Chekhov advised, in the “middle of things” and ending with narrative resonance, rather than resolution).' (Introduction)
-
Following the Impulse
Brad Jefferies
(interviewer),
2019
single work
interview
— Appears in: Books + Publishing , August vol. 99 no. 3 2019; (p. 19) Almost a decade in the making, Anna Krien's debut novel is described by reviewer Brad Jefferies as 'an ambitious and compelling study of trauma'. He spoke to the author.'
Awards
- 2020 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards — Fiction Book Award
- 2020 longlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2020 longlisted Indie Awards — Debut Fiction
- 2020 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Fiction