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I tell you that this story of my own is part of a much older story... one of a perpetual billowing from the sea, with its rhythm of return, return, remain... I offer these words, especially to those of you I embarrass, and who turn away from the shame of seeing me... We are still here, Benang.
‘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
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.
