To the Islands

by Randolph Stow, Anthony J. Hassall (Foreword by)

A work of mesmerising power, against a background of black-white fear and violence, To The Islands journeys towards the strange country of one man's soul. Set in the desolate outback landscape of Australia's north-west, the novel tracks the last days of a worn-out Anglican missionary. Fleeing his mission after an agonising confrontation, he immerses himself in the wilderness, searching for the islands of death and mystery.

Genres: Australia, Fiction, 20th Century, Classics, Audiobook, Novels, Adventure

186 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Born in Geraldton, Western Australia, Randolph Stow attended Geraldton Primary and High schools, Guildford Grammar School, the University of Western Australia, and the University of Sydney. During his undergraduate years in Western Australia he wrote two novels and a collection of poetry, which were published in London by Macdonald & Co. He taught English Literature at the University of Adelaide, the University of Western Australia and the University of Leeds.
He also worked on an Aboriginal mission in the Kimberley, which he used as background for his third novel To the Islands. Stow further worked as an assistant to an anthropologist, Charles Julius, and cadet patrol officer in the Trobriand Islands. In the Trobriands he suffered a mental and physical breakdown that led to his repatriation to Australia. Twenty years later, he used these last experiences in his novel Visitants.
Stow's first visit to England took place in 1960, after which he returned several times to Australia. Tourmaline, his fourth novel, was completed in Leeds in 1962. In 1964 and 1965 he travelled in North America on a Harkness Fellowship, including a sojourn in Aztec, New Mexico, during which he wrote one of his best known novels, The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea. While living in Perth (WA) in 1966 he wrote his popular children's book Midnite.
From 1969 to 1981 he lived at East Bergholt in Suffolk in England, his ancestral county, and he used traditional tales from that area to inform his novel The Girl Green as Elderflower. The last decades of his life he spent in nearby Harwich, the setting for his final novel The Suburbs of Hell. He last visited Australia in 1974.
His novel To the Islands won the Miles Franklin Award for 1958.[1] He was awarded the Patrick White Award in 1979. As well as producing fiction, poetry, and numerous book reviews for The Times Literary Supplement, he also wrote libretti for musical theatre works by Peter Maxwell Davies.
A considerable number of Randolph Stow's poems are listed in the State Library of Western Australia online catalogue[2] with indications where they have been anthologised.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to the aboriginal beliefs somewhere in the ocean, there are the islands of the dead. The Anglican mission tries to help the aboriginals who prefer to go their own way but sometimes their ways cross… And there, in the mission, is an old, tired of futility and disenchanted in life missionary… And he has more memories than if he’d lived a thousand years…

And the mirror was broken, the wooden shutter of the window broken. Broken, broken. He saw himself as a great red cliff, rising from the rocks of his own ruin. I am an old man, an old man. J’ai plus de souvenirs que si j’avais mille ans. And this cursed Baudelaire whining in his head like a mosquito, preaching despair. How does a man grow old who has made no investment in the future, without wife or child, without refuge for his heart beyond the work that becomes too much for him?

And one day, after the tragic events, the old missionary decides to embark on his final journey to the islands of the dead. And To the Islands is the story of his last quest: through the wilderness, through the accidental encounters, through his memories, contemplations, fears, doubts and misty hopes…

‘Why try to save me?’ he demanded. ‘Who cares? This world—this world’s a grain of salt. A grain of salt in an ocean. No microscope is strong enough to see me. No camera is fast enough to catch me between birth and dying.’

Even if an unavoidable destiny of every man is to depart for the faraway islands beyond the clouds the life on the earth continues.

[zed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good and at times remarkable. The final few chapters are a superb read. In this very worthy winner of the 1958 Miles Franklin award we follow Stephen Heriot in his quest to die. Heriot has a head full of fear, guilt and after a life of working on a mission, has reached the end of his ability to have faith in life itself. After an incident at the mission he leaves with Justin, an aboriginal guide and with that fuels his fears and guilt’s to a bitter end.

What adds to the beautiful prose from the author is his excellent portrayal of Heriot as a man of urbane cultural needs questioning his own compassion. On this journey the reader is given pause to think as we are led into a world of race relations that is still an issue in Australia to this very day.

“No don’t kill anything. Not this morning. Just for one morning let us not prey on anything”
“People got to eat, brother”
“Why” asked Heriot, glancing up at him dejectedly. “God, what malice must have gone into creating a world where people have to eat. I renounce it”


This book also covers a wealth of reference that had me scurrying to research. A few as follows:-

The poem Spleen by Charles Baudelaire

http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid... with reference to a racist poem.

http://knkx.org/post/another-man-done... in reference to the lyric of this old folk song.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias

The poem Spring by Gerard Manley Hopkins

http://www.australian-cultural-atlas.... for the Onmalmeri massacre.

The poem The garden by Andrew Marvell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiresias

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Riv...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pens%C3...

http://alldownunder.com/australian-mu...

Edit: 25/6/17. https://theconversation.com/the-case-...

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read To the Islands for the Classics Challenge which I like to complete using all Australian titles. In this case, the book is also a Miles Franklin winner, taking out the prize in only the second year of the award, and when Randolph Stow was only 22.

In some ways Stow’s novel reminded me of Graham Greene’s writing. There is the same interest in the ambivalent moral issues of the modern world, and the central character Stephen Heriot is a flawed hero, an Anglican missionary worn out by the oppressive climate and the ambiguous merit of his role in bringing ‘improvement’ to another culture. Stow shares Greene’s preoccupation with the internal lives of his characters and his economical prose never distracts from the issues at hand. His novel however is so quintessentially Australian that it could only have been written by someone who knew the country intimately. To the Islands is a masterpiece.

To read the rest of my review visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201...

[Tundra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. I felt like I was between the weave of the threads of landscape and Heriot’s mind. The audio of this was so immersive and now I feel like I need to read it again in order to capture the beautiful prose. This book must have been a revelation when it was written with its ‘anti-conquest’ message.
There was also a passage that said something like ‘to believe you need to feel’ which I think profoundly encompasses Heriot’s mental and physical journey into the wilderness.

[Jenny Esots · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a powerful drama that unfolds here.
The old traditions, the indigenous mission.
The white fellas that seem so withered and tough.
But who are permanently stung out and struggling in this harsh land.
Heriot vs Rex.
A tale of fatalism.
so well told.
The character of Australia that is still so true today.
The metaphors of death, grief and anger all play out here.

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"White man always talking and never listening" [said Justin].
"I'm sorry," said Heriot humbly.
"Whatever you say to white man, he always got something else to say. Always got to be the last one."
"We call it conversation", Heriot said, and bit his lip as soon as the words were out.

A bleak, atmospheric work, meditating on the relationship between white and black in Australia, between colonists and those they sought to colonise. "We're all lost here", says Heriot, the protagonist. And Stow - although he spent his later life living in England - evidently felt that great sense of loss among this fierce, overpoweringly beautiful country. It's a work of great prose power, as all of Stow's works are. A fairly quick read and, more importantly for a work that is now past its 60th anniversary, still a fantastic contribution to the ongoing conversation about the coming of the British to this seemingly endless continent.

They rode in a silence relieved only by the rattle of stones from the horses' hoofs. Trees, grasses and water were still as death, and beyond them was nothing but rock. They passed a stretch of rock pitted and wrinkled like lava. How old is this country? Heriot wondered. But it's not old, it's just born, the sea has never been over it, it was created yesterday, dead as the moon. Let the sea some day come up and drown it and fish come swimming out of the rock-pigeons' holes. I will ride with my hair green and wild, through the canyons of the sea.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive, evocative, short novel about Heriot, an old disillusioned missionary, set in outback Australia in the 1950s. Heriot is contemplating retirement and when he believes he has killed an aborigine, he resigns and flees into the wilderness. The man Heriot thinks he has killed is Rex. Rex had been the cause of a girls death and Heriot is full of hate for Rex because of this act. Heriot is well thought of by the aboriginal community. A young aboriginal, Justin follows Heriot and helps Heriot survive in the outback.

Good character development and an intriguing plot makes for a very worthwhile reading experience. I will definitely be looking to read Stow’s other novels.

This book won the 1958 Miles Franklin award. The author was 22 years of age when he wrote this book.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is just so much going on in this beautifully written novel. Squint at it one way and you see a Lear-like journey into deathmadness, an allegory for the end of life and service. Look differently and you see an impassioned argument for the communities around missions, those of respect and support. But most powerfully to me, is a simmering undercurrent of horror and fundamental brokenness from the massacre, dispossession and land theft. This is not just because of the detailed description of a massacre, a description which Stow has footnoted so the reader knows this is a verbatim account, from an Aboriginal witness, of an actual massacre. And underneath the madness of Heriot is his obsession with murder and forgiveness, his rambling journey through whether this is inevitable:

"It was because of murders that I was ever born in this country. It was because of murders my first amoebic ancestor ever survived to be my ancestor. Every day in my life murders are done to protect me. People are taught how to murder because of me. Oh, God,’ said Heriot savagely, ‘if there was a God this filthy Australian, British, human blood would have been dried up in me with a thunderbolt when I was born.’"

At the same time, back in the mission, themes of self-determination, punishment, justice, vengeance, bias, civilization, law, lore and who has the right to decide what swirl around through a multitude of perspectives, casting doubt in the end on any idea of a single society or rule at the mission. It's a technique used in a much more structured, and devastating, way in Visitants, but it works here mostly to be destabilising, it is never clear how much Stow intends the narrative to be subversive, and how much it emerges as such simply through his own unresolved ambivalence to the mission. In the end, there an deeply unsettled feeling over the whole, as if this legacy of murder may have destroyed both Heriot, and all the white characters in turn.
The legacy to Lear is obvious, and the simple descriptive passages, the combination of wisdom and lunacy to be found in this young man's view of senility is just as touching. The final scenes, bringing together the book's powerful observation, prose and ambiguity is outstanding and, like Lear, will mean different things to different people down the ages, and that is wonderful.

[Zeus Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most enjoyable read of the year so far. There's so much control in Stowe's writing. Such beautiful waxing and waning, when to be a poet and when to be a dramatist. The best turn of phrase is one that pivots on a decided plot. And the best line is one that hangs off a good character.

There's a salient moment around 2/3rds of the way when the brightness gets turned up on all the white characters (missionaries and assorted helpers) and we get an inventory of their physical appearances - all in one paragraph, which reads almost as a second thought, maybe a post hoc interpolation from the author; and coming so late in the piece it stuck out to me. It's intriguing because there's no shortage of a richly presented natural world, so why so lean on the characters' physical appearances?

I wonder what other readers think of this.

[Em · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was so incredibly boring. Just some guy wandering the outback wishing for death, which for both his sake and mine, I hoped would hurry up.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stephen Heriot, old white man and about to retire, goes bonkers in a mission for indigenous Australians in north-western Australia and wanders off into the countryside to kill himself. That's the plot, in a nutshell. Granted, it's sometimes poetic, describing the harsh Australilan wilderness in a sparse, lyrical prose. Granted, it paints indigenous people as real, human, and compassionate, very unlike the popular caricature that the target audience for this book, the average 1950s white Australian, would have imagined. But mostly it's just boring. At 126 pages, it's only a short book, but the story is as slow as the day is long, full of clunky, incomprehensible dialogue, lists of local flora and fauna that sound more like they belong in a school biology report than a novel, and a whining old man so annoying that you wish he'd just shoot himself and get it over with. Daily life on the mission is not really explained clearly, so you don't get a feel for the work they're trying to do or the isolation and loneliness which is probably the cause of Heriot's distress; these details are only briefly referred to in passing. It's got a few pluses (I've already listed), which is why I haven't given it a failing rating. Yet this is supposed to be a classic of Australian literature. Maybe when it was published in the mid-20th century, it qualified for such an accolade, based on the tastes of the day. Now it just seems twee.

[James Connolly · Rating 1 out of 5]

The novel's ambitions fall beyond Stow's grasp. The Indigenous characters are otherised serving only as vessels to develop or reflect the spiritual struggles of the white characters.

[Danya Button · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have lived in Australian indigenous communities this is an amazing book to read.

[rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel won Randolph Stow the Miles Franklin award for 1958. He was 22 years old at the time. The award was well deserved IMHO. This is an extraordinary work for one so young.

However the prose style today seems at times stilted and a little cumbersome, especially in the first 30% or so of the book. I found it to be a little hard to read (though nowhere near as hard as the works of Joseph Conrad for example.) It improves markedly in the final 70% or so where it becomes very readable.

The story follows Herriot, a missionary (Anglican I think) assigned to a mission station in Australia’s Kimberley region. He is at the end of his tenure and is, in his own mind, moving towards the end of his life. Herriot is regarded as a severe though honest and disciplined man by his colleagues at the mission.

However his past haunts him, especially the loss of his wife and baby daughter. His relationship with some local people, especially a young male Rex, is also fraught. Herriot believes Rex to have beaten his own wife so severely that she and a baby she was carrying died. A confrontation between the two results in Herriot throwing a rock at Rex, hitting him in the head. Herriot flees, thinking he has killed Rex. He takes a horse and minimal supplies then heads off into the bush. A loyal indigenous man, Justin, follows him.

The hub of the story becomes Herriot’s search for expiation in the wilds of the Kimberley, Justin’s faithfulness in following him to ensure he survives where Europeans have no idea of how to survive, and the evolving relationship between white and black man. Herriot seeks his own death while Justin seeks Herriot’s survival.

The novel paints a stark contrast between European and indigenous beliefs about life and especially about ‘country’ and a person’s relationship with the land where they live. Although written in 1957-8, many of the themes of the novel relate strongly to modern discussions about the importance of country to indigenous people. Tim Winton (in his non-fiction book “Island Home”) said that when he was learning how to write “To the Islands” was a major influence. Winton (in his book) also advanced the notion that the idea of ‘country’ is a major influence on all Australian culture, indigenous or otherwise. Stowe’s marvellous novel supports that philosophical proposition.

[Bec D · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am giving it 4 stars not because it isn’t a masterpiece but because it’s not my “cup of tea”. I don’t really enjoy reading books about social injustice. But it’s an important book to read nevertheless. And I am glad I read it. It deals with the wicked problems existing in post-colonial Australia. This book was published in 1958 and it is remarkable for its time, particularly in its wisdom: the ideas that we need to forgive the unforgivable to be able to move on; and when we wound one person it creates a rippling effect like when you drop a pebble in a pond: it wounds others. The book includes a true story of a massacre by white Australians of Indigenous Australians. It wouldn’t surprise me if in 1958 (the year the book was published) there existed much denial about how Indigenous people had been/were treated. (Thankfully today, there is greater recognition; however still racism exists.) Indigenous Australians were only recognised as human beings under the Australian constitution in 1967 (before that they were listed under flora and fauna - unbelievable!)) so the book is remarkable for its having humanised Indigenous people (as characters in the book) and elevated their culture, as well as humanised the shame of white Australia in Heriot. The writing is beautiful and I can understand why it won the Miles Franklin Award.

[Text Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘To the Islands is a deeply moving and compassionate novel whose message and wisdom is still important today, which is why it deserves to be recognised as an important work of Australian literature.’
theconversation.com

‘To the Islands is a masterpiece.’
ANZ LitLovers

‘Powerful and convincing…An Australian classic.’
Anthony J. Hassall


‘It is a rare pleasure for those of us who are already fans to have these works at our disposal…[Stow was] the most talented and celebrated Australian author of the post-White generation.’
Monthly

‘It should be taken as no commentary on contemporary Oz Lit that I choose Text’s fistful of Randolph Stow reissues for my local favourite(s) during 2015. Their appearance reminds us that a gentle, wise, wounded, and immensely talented poet in prose once lived among us.’
Geordie Williamson, Australian Book Review, Books of the Year 2015

[EJ Kafooples · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this tale of reconciliation - a study of a man reconciling his leadership within his vocation, his soul and his deeds as a missionary on an aboriginal mission in far west Australia in a time and context that’s difficult for us to understand. The characters were well-written and many of the interactions between black and white were heartwarming even though they were on the backdrop of terrible atrocities. I liked the use of language and pidgin English scattered throughout. The description of the harsh setting enhanced the plot. I’m giving it three and a half stars though because I found the meandering mental state of Brother Stephen somewhat tiresome. Otherwise - I really enjoyed so many aspects of this book.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ... ok?

[Chris Waterford · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author writes well and the timing and the setting of this novel is familiar to me but I struggled to find any life in this story.
5/10

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last book for the #AusReadingMonth23

[Martin Ramsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winner of the second Miles Franklin award in 1958 this is a story set on a mission in Western Australia. The story of a massacre of Aboriginal people at Onmalmeri looms large in the background of this narrative in which an ageing priest begins to have doubts about his faith and sets off into the interior in search of the ‘islands’. His journey leads him to a cave filled with human skulls and bones and a cave painting of a man without a mouth whom he addresses as Wolaro, God.

Life has become a terrible burden for this Lear-like old man brought crashing back to reality. He reflects on his breaking of the crucifix, “In the breaking of the crucifix he had confessed, at last and forever, the failed faith, so long a swag on his back to be humped by night over the hard countries of his privacy. Now he could admit to himself that what was once the bright fruit of a young tree had shrivelled and dried sifted away in the late years of loneliness, and was not to be found again, on the ant-bed floor of a church; and could admit the idol story of death, the god least despised in this country of suicides. He cried to himself under the thrashing trees to be taken and broken on the wheel of the wind.” (76)

Heriot and his young Indigenous companion, Justin, wander alone through the harsh landscape driven by hunger and thirst. Heriot tells Justin, “There’s some wasp that lays its eggs inside caterpillars. The grubs eat the caterpillars, but it doesn’t die. No, they keep it alive so that they can eat it longer.” (191)

The system of beliefs he once embraced and enforced with brutal force on the No mission has come crashing down. Heriot, speaking in the voice of the white Christian patriarchy resigns his post on the mission telling a junior colleague, “You’ve time, I think, to see enormous changes, perhaps the end of physical misery among them, as the old ones die out in the way we old ones do. But in the end you’ll have something else to face - misery of the mind. And that will be hardest, Way, the worst sickness to cure. It’s come already. You know Stephen.” (59)

In the scene where he tries to assert his authority one final time on the mission, Stow writes, “Across the face of Rex as he turned away, and across the faces of the men, a slow grin flickered. Twenty years ago, or even fifteen, this threat from Brother Heriot might have been dangerous; but the old man was weak now and had changed, or perhaps all white men had changed, at all events the whip was gone, and the old man’s almost unheard-of-weapons of expulsion and wage-stoppage were powerless against Rex…” (61)

This is a novel about the death of a white Australia that is still struggling to adjust to a post-colonial reality. Interestingly, Helen, who is the nurse at the mission, expects some kind of symbolic Reconciliation can be achieved only if Rex, the young Indigenous man who is the victim of a final act of violence by by Heriot, is able to forgive Heriot. The symbolism maybe asking too much?

[Jeremy Blank · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is hard to believe that Randolph Stow wrote this in 1958 at the age of twenty-three. I experienced the revised edition from 1982 it may well have altered significantly, so I guess I need to read the original. There is one particular quote included in the novel which is exactly the same as in the 1965 classic The Merry Go Round in the Sea, where the author makes the observation that clouds building on the horizon of the sea are the icebergs or icy mountains of Antartica, but, with a sentence like that why would you not repeat it?

A story about an old priest leaving his mission through a major event to roam a bleak and sunburnt wilderness is biblical in its premise. his relationships are described as carved by the WA sun, harsh, bright and brutally sharp, while blown through by winds of insects and animals. The writing is appealing to me, as have been The Merry Go Round in the Sea and The Suburbs of Hell. Stow's dialogue and descriptions dance through the mind, skipping from sentence to sentence and place to place, where the weather is a barometer of emotional intensity and plot line. I would love to see

Stow's writing has clearly influenced Tim Winton, to the point where Winton's children's book The Deep, literally quotes Stow's descriptions of water below an old jetty from The Merry Go Round in the Sea. In the bleak, inhospitable and vast country Herriott drags himself through I am reminded of Winton's descriptions in Dirt Music of Lucas's travels through the WA bush. There's a comparative analysis there for someone with time on their hands!

I am so glad to have gotten to read Randolph Stow's work. He brings the harshness of the Australian country to life as it forms not only a backdrop but a major character motif for the tempo of the work. As is mentioned in the foreword Stow was writing in indigenous language in the 1950s. He honours language, exposing the lack of regard by many colonials for what the author witnessed through his work as a young man in the Western Australian Kimberley region. He introduces how characters' acknowledge colonials who do speak language. The characters in To the Islands are beautifully drawn with sensitivity and credibility. I enjoyed this book immensely. Three books read and all three classics. Great writer, great writing.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt really complicatedly about this book. Written in the 1950s, To The Islands tries and fails to transcend its own racism, much like its white protagonist Heriot. Though the aboriginal characters are fully spherical, relatively distinct, and generally sympathetic (rare, as I understand it, for white portrayals of indigenous Australians in the 50s) there is a higher order prejudice that never really loses its grip, a kind of paternalism that lends all narrative agency to the white characters and gets a little white man’s burden-y at times. A morally courageous book would have taken the next logical step from humanizing its aboriginal characters and been more openly critical of the entire colonial project. As it is, Stow steers clear, focusing more on Heriot’s tortured and at times melodramatic search for meaning in death.

Still the writing was undeniably beautiful, reminded me not a little of Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses”. It conjures an unfamiliar landscape with such force that I could feel the heat of the desert.

[Jayden McComiskie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok. It took me three goes to finish this book. Not because it was bad, but because it had so much potential, that every now and then I read something awful and had throw it, stamp and yell in disbelief. When I read the opening, I assumed I was in for an amazing read:

"A child dragged a stick along the corrugated iron wall of a hut, and Harriot woke and found the morning standing at his bed like a valet, holding out his daylight self to be put on again, his name, his age, his vague and wearing occupation."

The scenes with Harriot and Justin where the best. When the novel reflected back to the people of the mission, I could not care less. The book could have taken out those chapters.

Stow's prose is unbelievably good. His dialogue is portentous and sloppy. Too much tell and not enough show.

Like I said, if the scenes at the mission where cut out, and we only had Herriot's and Justin's scenes post going bush, this would have been a ripper. a 4 stars.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

- this book was ok, I didn't particularly enjoy reading it at any stage and it was quite a grind to finish
- his post-colonial critique was done well and was clearly ahead of his time, but I didn't find it particularly compelling to the extent that the characters were relatively uninteresting
- the existentialism was an interesting philosophical reflection, and was used effectively and primarily as a device for further post- colonial cultural critique
- landscape description was great, probably the aspect of the book I liked the most
- very bleak and philosophical, which is fine, but not to my personal appeal

2/5, didn't enjoy

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight into a darker side of Australian history - where indigenous people were locked into religious missions in outback australia in mid century 1900s. As the book was written in 1958 it may have been a reflection on contemporary places at the time. Great insight into the lives of religious clergy and other folk who were working these missions and the time - got an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and wasted lives, without being preachy. The story is also quite good as the main character explores the harsh wilderness - many aspects of the story are still relevant today- a book way ahead of its time.

[Tracie Griffith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know Stow won a major award for this book at an early age, but I was so glad I had read Tourmaline first. Tourmaline was so masterful in comparison - having been written at a much later age. Very interesting to see the development in the writer.

[Adrian K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If this novel retains any interest ... it may be because this story of an old man is really about a certain stage in the life of a sort of young man who has always been with us, and always will be."

--Randolph Stow, preface to the revised edition

[Bialey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in the 1950's and published when the author was just 22, this thought provoking novel is set in an aboriginal church mission in the Kimberleys in far north west Australia.
Powerful and moving, a worthy winner of the Miles Franklin award. I'm looking forward to reading his other novels.

[Bethan · Rating 3 out of 5]

although i’m not sure how useful this will be for my diss, it was still a good read. very epic in its scope and of a decidedly different tone than the other books i’ve read. it’s not my favourite, but it was certainly very good.