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The following is a new publication which might interest you.
At the moment it is offered with 30% discount until April 30th*. More information at [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Lighting Dark Places
Essays on Kate Grenville

Edited by Sue Kossew

Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, NY 2010. XXI, 264 pp. (Cross/Cultures 131)
ISBN: 978-90-420-3285-9         Bound
ISBN: 978-90-420-3286-6         E-Book
Online info: http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=CC+131

This is the first published collection of critical essays on the work of Kate Grenville, one of Australia’s most important contemporary writers. Grenville has been acclaimed for her novels, winning numerous national and international prizes including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her novels are marked by sharp observations of outsider figures who are often under pressure to conform to society’s norms. More recently, she has written novels set in Australia’s past, revisiting and re-imagining colonial encounters between settlers and Indigenous Australians.

This collection of essays includes a scholarly introduction and three new essays that reflect on Grenville’s work in relation to her approach to feminism, her role as public intellectual and her books on writing. The other nine essays provide analyses of each of her novels published to date, from the early success of Lilian’s Story and Dreamhouse to the most recently published novel, The Lieutenant.

Her work has been the subject of some debate and this is reflected in a number of the essays published here, most particularly with regard to her most successful novel to date, The Secret River. This intellectual engagement with important contemporary issues is a mark of Grenville’s fiction, testament to her own analysis of the vital role of writers in uncertain times. She has suggested that “writers have ways of going into the darkest places, taking readers with them and coming out safely.” This volume attests to Grenville’s own significance as a writer in a time of change and to the value of her novels as indices of that change and in “lighting dark places.”

Contributors: Bill Ashcroft, Ruth Barcan, Eleanor Collins, Alice Healy, Kwaku Larbi Korang, Sue Kossew, Kate Livett, Elizabeth McMahon, Sarah Pinto, Brigid Rooney, Lynettte Russell, Susan Sheridan.

Sue Kossew is Professor of English at Monash University. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature and New Literatures Review and has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on postcolonial and South African literature.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Susan Sheridan: Reading Feminism in Kate Grenville’s Fiction

Brigid Rooney: Kate Grenville as Public Intellectual

Elizabeth McMahon: Author! Author! The Two Faces of Kate Grenville

Bill Ashcroft: Madness and Power: Lilian’s Story and the Decolonized Body

Kwaku Larbi Korang:  “Africa and Australia” Revisited: Reading Kate Grenville’s Joan Makes History

Ruth Barcan:  “Mobility is the Key”: Bodies, Boundaries, and Movement in Kate Grenville’s Lilian’s Story

Kate Livett: Homeless and Foreign: The Heroines of Lilian’s Story and Dreamhouse

Alice Healy:  “Impossible Speech” and the Burden of Translation: Lilian’s Story from Page to Screen

Sue Kossew: Constructions of Nation and Gender in The Idea of Perfection

Eleanor Collins: Poison in the Flour: Kate Grenville’s The Secret River

Sarah Pinto: History, Fiction and The Secret River

Lynette Russell: Learning from Each Other: Language, Authority, and Authenticity in Kate Grenville’s The Lieutenant

Bibliography

Notes on Contributors

Index

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