AustLit

'In recent years, in both Australia and Ireland, prominent authors have offered fictional reconsiderations of periods crucial to national consciousness and definition. In Australia, for example, Kate Grenville's work has generated considerable debate about the use of history in fiction, and about the responsibility of the fiction writer to accurately or authentically represent historical events, persons and periods. The project of recovering history and thereby uncovering the nation's past sins can also be identified in other contemporary novels by authors such as Gail Jones and Larissa Behrendt. In Ireland, Roddy Doyle, Joseph O'Connor and Sebastian Barry have been at the forefront of this historical analysis and deployment...' (From author's introduction, 187)

'When The Proposition ( a UK/Australia co-production, directed by John Hillcoat and scripted by Nick Cave) was released in 2005, film reviewers had no qualms about claiming this spectacular saga of colonial violence on the Queensland frontier as a 'history' film. A reviewer on BBC Radio 4 described The Proposition as 'a bushranger Western...set in violent 1880s Australian outback exposing the bitter racial tensions between English and Irish settlers. A Sunday Times review declared that 'Australia's brutal post-colonial history is stripped of all the lies in a bloody clash of cultures between the British police, the Irish bushrangers and the Aborigines.' Foregrounding the film's revisionist spectacle of colonial violence, an Australian reviewer predicted that, despite 'scenes of throat-cutting torture, rape and exploding heads...The Proposition could be the most accurate look at our national history yet'. (Author's introduction, 207)