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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'It is early 1942 and Australia is in the midst of war.
'While working at a Japanese hospital in the pearling port of Broome, Dr Ibaraki is arrested as an enemy alien and sent to Loveday internment camp in a remote corner of South Australia. There, he learns to live among a group of men divided by culture and allegiance.
'As tensions at the isolated camp escalate, the doctor's long-held beliefs are thrown into question and he is forced to confront his dark past: the promise he made in Japan and its devastating consequences.' (From the publisher's website.)
Notes
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Dedication: for Kris
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Large print.
- Dyslexic edition.
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
-
Revisiting the Haunted Past : Christine Piper’s After Darkness
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , May no. 61 2017;'
A frequently-used metaphor in Australian national discourse is that of one or other ‘shameful’ or ‘dark’ chapter in our past. Alongside the notion of shame and guilt comes the idea of repressed and silenced memory, either through deliberate institutionalised forgetting or through the impossibility of fully articulating traumatic pasts. At the same time, as Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton suggest, ‘forms of remembering and commemoration have become the central contemporary mode through which various constituencies understand history, including the national past’ (371). This seemingly contradictory clash of a willed forgetfulness alongside a fascination with remembrance may account for the popularity in Australian literature of historical novels, a sub-set of which may be termed ‘sorry novels,’ and of literary works that may be regarded as participating in a process of what Tessa Morris-Suzuki and others in East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence (2013) term ‘reconciliation as method’. This concept is defined ‘not as an end-point in which consensus on history is achieved, but rather as sets of media, skills and processes that encourage the creative sharing of ideas and understandings about the past’ (13). The focus on ‘creative sharing’ suggests that such texts may participate in uncovering ‘unfinished business’ and in this way contribute to debates about understandings of the past. At the very least, the concept of ‘reconciliation as method’ prompts us to consider how literary narratives (among other forms of cultural texts) provoke questions of historical responsibility.' (introduction)
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Book Review – After Darkness by Christine Piper
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Booklover Book Reviews 2014;
— Review of After Darkness 2014 single work novel -
Readers' Life : What You're Reading
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Good Reading , August 2014; (p. 72)
— Review of After Darkness 2014 single work novel -
Chequered Past
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 364 2014; (p. 49)
— Review of After Darkness 2014 single work novel -
Well Read
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 5 July 2014; (p. 25)
— Review of After Darkness 2014 single work novel ; A Most Peculiar Act 2014 single work novel
-
At War with His Emotions
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 3-4 May 2014; (p. 18)
— Review of After Darkness 2014 single work novel -
The Dark Days of Wartime Racism that Reverberate Today
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 7-8 June 2014; (p. 36-37) The Age , 7 June 2014; (p. 30)
— Review of After Darkness 2014 single work novel -
Amid War's Horrors, A Doctor Faces Choices
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 7 June 2014; (p. 21)
— Review of After Darkness 2014 single work novel -
Book Review: After Darkness by Christine Piper
2014
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The NSW Writers' Centre Blog
— Review of After Darkness 2014 single work novel -
Well Read
2014
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 5 July 2014; (p. 25)
— Review of After Darkness 2014 single work novel ; A Most Peculiar Act 2014 single work novel -
Lifting the Lid on Plight of Wartime Interns
Author's Own Life Helps Make a Winner
2014
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 23 April 2014; (p. 14-15) The Age , 23 April 2014; (p. 12) -
After Darkness Comes the Literary Dawning
2014
single work
column
— Appears in: The Australian , 23 April 2014; (p. 5) -
Revisiting the Haunted Past : Christine Piper’s After Darkness
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , May no. 61 2017;'
A frequently-used metaphor in Australian national discourse is that of one or other ‘shameful’ or ‘dark’ chapter in our past. Alongside the notion of shame and guilt comes the idea of repressed and silenced memory, either through deliberate institutionalised forgetting or through the impossibility of fully articulating traumatic pasts. At the same time, as Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton suggest, ‘forms of remembering and commemoration have become the central contemporary mode through which various constituencies understand history, including the national past’ (371). This seemingly contradictory clash of a willed forgetfulness alongside a fascination with remembrance may account for the popularity in Australian literature of historical novels, a sub-set of which may be termed ‘sorry novels,’ and of literary works that may be regarded as participating in a process of what Tessa Morris-Suzuki and others in East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence (2013) term ‘reconciliation as method’. This concept is defined ‘not as an end-point in which consensus on history is achieved, but rather as sets of media, skills and processes that encourage the creative sharing of ideas and understandings about the past’ (13). The focus on ‘creative sharing’ suggests that such texts may participate in uncovering ‘unfinished business’ and in this way contribute to debates about understandings of the past. At the very least, the concept of ‘reconciliation as method’ prompts us to consider how literary narratives (among other forms of cultural texts) provoke questions of historical responsibility.' (introduction)
Awards
- 2015 shortlisted Kibble Literary Awards — Nita May Dobbie Award
- 2015 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2015 shortlisted Indie Awards — Debut Fiction
- 2014 shortlisted Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction
- 2014 winner The Australian / Vogel National Literary Award (for an unpublished manuscript) — $20,000 prize
- Broome, Kimberley area, North Western Australia, Western Australia,
- South Australia,
- 1942