AustLit
Texts
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y The Australian Short Story : An Anthology from the 1890s to the 1980s Laurie Hergenhan (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1986 Z380969 1986 anthology short story (taught in 13 units)
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y The Great World London : Chatto and Windus , 1990 Z436200 1990 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 3 units)
'Every city, town and village has its memorial to war. Nowhere are these more eloquent than in Australia, generations of whose young men have enlisted to fight other people's battles - from Gallipoli and the Somme to Malaya and Vietnam. In THE GREAT WORLD, his finest novel yet, David Malouf gives a voice to that experience. But THE GREAT WORLD is more than a novel of war. Ranging over seventy years of Australian life, from Sydney's teeming King's Cross to the tranquil backwaters of the Hawkesbury River, it is a remarkable novel of self-knowledge and lost innocence, of survival and witness.'
Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage reprint).
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y Prelude to Christopher Sydney : P. R. Stephensen , 1934 Z824226 1934 single work novel (taught in 22 units)
'Should a woman bear a child knowing that there are traces of insanity in her family? Linda Hainlin, niece of a famous biologist, was aware of the danger when she married Dr. Nigel Hendon, a practical idealist, whose creed was normality and the rational ordering of the world. This book tells how, years later, while temporarily deprived of her husband's sane companionship, Linda feels the oncoming of those homicidal impulses which presage madness. On this tragic theme, 'Prelude to Christopher' is written with strong literary art as a narrative of four days of crisis. The story goes back in memory to the happiness of Linda's love for Nigel, and forward in her frightened imagination to a future from which the strongest must flinch. Christopher, the unborn child, dominates terrific events in which he has no living part to play. The prelude to his birth is told with emotional power.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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It's Raining in Mango 1987 single work short story (taught in 2 units)
— Appears in: It's Raining in Mango : Pictures from the Family Album 1987; (p. 161-176) It's Raining in Mango : Pictures from the Family Album 1989; (p. 187-204) Collected Stories 1997; (p. 256-275) Australian Women's Stories : An Oxford Anthology 1999; (p. 182-199) For Aboriginal man, Billy Mumbler, life in north Queensland offers a precarious existence, particularly under the watchful eye of the law. Trying to live peacably and protect his family proves almost impossible.
Description
Assessment
Essay (40%)
Non-Invigilated Exam (25%)