Benang

Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Winner of the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award, Winner of the Kate Challis RAKA Award.

Harley, a man of Nyoongar ancestry, finds himself at a difficult point in the history of his country, family and self. As the apparently successful outcome of his white grandfather’s enthusiastic attempts to isolate and breed the ‘first white man born’, he wants to be a failure. But would such failure mean his Nyoongar ancestors could label him a success? And how can the attempted genocide represented by his family history be told?

Oceanic in its rhythms and understanding, brilliant in its use of language and image, moving in its largeness of spirit, compelling in its narrative scope and style, Benang is a novel of celebration and lament, of beginning and return, of obliteration and recovery, of silencing and of powerful utterance. Both tentative and daring, it speaks to the present and a possible future through stories, dreams, rhythms, songs, images and documents mobilised from the incompletely acknowledged and still dynamic past.

‘Benang is brilliant. It is a mature, complex, sweeping historical novel which will remind people of Rushdie, Carey and Grenville at their best. This is an absolute page turner and in the end we are left with a sense of joy and gratitude that such stories are still possible – that the silence has been broken.’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘… Benang soars to the level of superb storytelling with an emotional punch to the guts, not unlike Toni Morrison’s Beloved.’ Weekend Australian
‘Haunting and poignant, Benang pierces the heart even as it seeks to lance the savage bleeding of the wounds of white settlement in Australia.’ Canberra Times