Winner of the Association for the Study of Australian Literatures Alvie Egan Award 2019!
Winner of the Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies (GAPS) Dissertation Award 2018
This is the first in-depth, broad-based study of the impact of the Australian High Courts landmark Mabo decision of 1992 on Australian fiction. More than any other event in Australias legal, political and cultural history, the Mabo judgement which recognised indigenous Australians customary «native title» to land challenged previous ways of thinking about land and space, settlement and belonging, race and relationships, and nation and history, both historically and contemporaneously. While Mabos impact on history, law, politics and film has been the focus of scholarly attention, the study of its influence on literature has been sporadic and largely limited to examinations of non-Aboriginal novels.
Now, a quarter of a century after Mabo, this book takes a closer look at nineteen contemporary novels including works by David Malouf, Alex Miller, Kate Grenville, Thea Astley, Tim Winton, Michelle de Kretser, Richard Flanagan, Alexis Wright and Kim Scott in order to define and describe Australias literary imaginary as it reflects and articulates post-Mabo discourse today. Indeed, literatures substantial engagement with Mabos cultural legacy the acknowledgement of indigenous peoples presence in the land, in history, and in public affairs, as opposed to their absence demands a re-writing of literary history to account for a Mabo turn in Australian fiction.