AWARDS
Tasmania Pacific Literary Award (Shortlisted 2001)
Kate Challis Award (Winner 2001)
Western Australian Premier’s Book Award (Winner 2000)
Miles Franklin Literary Award (Winner 2000)
Queensland Premier’s Literary Award (Shortlisted 2000)
Dublin Impac Literary Award (Longlisted 2000)
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.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
‘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
About the Author
Kim Scott
About the Book
Paperback
Pages 502
