AustLit

'Randolph Stow (1935–2010) was a writer who resisted critical containment. His complete oeuvre of eight novels, a children’s novella, a libretto, translation work and several collections of poetry presents an accomplished and impressive literary legacy.

Kate Rendell said:

'“Commencing this project with the simple ambition to present a critical collection responding to the full breadth of Randolph Stow’s work, I extended an invitation to literary scholars and critics whose work I knew addressed his writing. The responses were encouraging and generous, confirming the wide reach of interest in Stow’s life and literature. It reminded me that while not as comprehensively studied as some of his contemporaries, Stow continues to enjoy the support of broad public and academic readership.”

'The collection republishes a number of significant essays but also presents new readings acknowledging the remarkable skill as well as the limitations of Stow’s literary imagining. All are a testimony to the resonance of Stow’s writing while acknowledging the critical complexities of his work.' (Publication summary)

'In 1957 the young writer Randolph Stow travelled to Forrest River Mission in East Kimberley, Western Australia to conduct research for a new novel. His experiences and observations at the mission over four months resulted in the publication of his Miles Franklin Award-winning book To the Islands (1958). A novel that fluctuates between the symbolic imperatives of the central narrative and the material realities of Forrest River, To the Islands is both a remarkable and uneasy representation of place. Particularly unsettling is Stow’s inclusion of an oral account of massacre taken down verbatim at the mission in 1957. Arguing that this massacre narrative represents a moment of slippage in the novel – whereby the localised trauma of Forrest River can be seen to infiltrate Stow’s King Lear-like narrative – this paper draws on recent archival research to suggest the massacre account in To the Islands allows a momentary and profound register of colonial violence, not otherwise expressed in the novel.' (Publication abstract)