Last week I visited a Georgian secondary school and participated in a Year 9 English class. The students were all conversant in Georgian, Russian, and English.
Having studied Russian, German, French, American, British, and Australian literature, as well as the science fiction genre, I was interested in their selection of literature for classroom study. Recently, the class has been reading John Steinbeck's 1937 novella "Of Mice and Men" and the 1942 Albert Camus novel "The Outsider" (L'Etranger). Next on their list is J.D. Salinger's 1951 classic "Catcher in the Rye."
I was asked questions about Australia, my homeland, and was asked to present my list of Australian literature for a hypothetical Year 9 syllabus. I chose the following:
Thea Astley, Drylands (1999)
Thea Astley is one of Australia’s most frequent winners of literary awards. Her protagonists are often women who are searching for partners, for peace, or for an ideal way to live. At the same time Australia is presented as a dry place, a landscape which offers little scope for comfort or retreat.
Bruce Chatwin, Songlines (1986)
Songlines is an interesting account of aspects of First Nations culture from an adventurer who is not Australian. Songlines is a detailed account of the author’s experiences living with First Nations peoples, containing cultural explanations which raise fundamental questions about life in general.
Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career (1901)
My Brilliant Career is an amazing autobiographical novel written by Sarah Franklin under a mandatory masculine pseudonym at the age of 16 around the turn of this century. This is an Australian classic used extensively in schools and universities. It's a first-person account of outback life, full of brilliant description of landscapes, daily routine work, and a young person's rebellion against conformity, drabness, and poverty. The book incensed Sarah's family so much that it was withdrawn from publication shortly after its initial appearance and remained hidden for about fifty years! A brilliant piece of work in every respect.
Murray Bail, Eucalyptus (1998)
Eucalyptus is a wonderful story set in rural New South Wales (eastern Australia), where a man plants hundreds of different species of eucalyptus (gum) trees on his farm. He announces that his 19-year-old daughter, Ellen, can marry the first man to name all the species correctly. A series of would-be suitors from around the world turn up, but many are more interested in the challenge than the prize. Set under the searing Australian sun, this story reads like a magical fairytale about love, destiny and nature. This book won the 1999 Commonwealth Writers Prize and the 1999 Miles Franklin Award.
George Johnston, My Brother Jack (1964)
The narrator, David Meredith, is a journalist. It's a story about two brothers who grow up in suburban Melbourne between World I and II. The elder brother, Jack Meredith, is the epitome of the strong Australian male who is full of bravado and wants to fight for his country while David, the narrator, is more introverted, unsure of himself and lacks self esteem. Ironically, it is David who gets to see the frontline as a celebrated war correspondent while Jack, through one misfortune after another, never passes his army medical. This book has been described as a quintessential Australian novel which explores two Australian myths: that of the man who loses his soul as he gains wordly success; and that of a tough, honest, Aussie whose greatest ambition is to serve his country. My Brother Jack won the 1964 Miles Franklin Award.
Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967)
In 1975 Peter Weir made this book into a film. The book is very popular among girls in secondary schools. It's about a party of schoolgirls who go on a Picnic at Hanging Rock, a sacred site near Mt Macedon in Victoria, on Valentine's Day 1900. During the picnic four girls mysteriously disappear when they explore the rock. One of the best things about this book is Lindsay's evocative descriptions of the Australian landscape and wildlife. There is no satisfactory conclusion to this intriguing mystery.
Janine Burke, The Blue Faraway (1996)
In Australia, two Year 9 students, Casey Buchanan and Zep de Marco, are forced together to do an English assignment on Joan Lindsay’s novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock. Both students have problems at home and Zep has been devastated by the death of a close friend. On an excursion to Hanging Rock something happens that connects them to the rock and to each other. With its exploration of friendship and gender and with a sense of mystery, the novel is a good companion for a comparative study of Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock.
David Malouf, The Great World (1990)
"Every city, town and village has its memorial to war.” Nowhere are these monuments more eloquent than in Australia where generations of young men have enlisted to fight other country’s battles - from Gallipoli and the Somme to Malaya and Vietnam. The Great World is about two men, Vic and Digger, who become Prisoners of War (POWs) during the Second World War and how that soul-destroying experience affects the rest of their lives. It is, above all else, a tale of friendship (mateship) and a study of human nature under extreme conditions. This book won the 1991 Miles Franklin Award, the 1991 Commonwealth Writers Prize, and the 1991 Prix Fémina Etranger.
Tim Winton, Cloudstreet (1991)
Cloudstreet refers to a broken down house in a poor part of Perth, Western Australia, the most isolated city on earth. But when two rural families, the Lambs and the Pickles, move into the old house they turn the place into a home against all odds. The story follows their complicated lives over the course of 20 years, and it is both funny and sad. This book received huge publicity upon publication and it won the 1992 Miles Franklin Award.
Diana Kidd, Onion Tears (1990)
Onion Tears is a story of young Nam-Huong who escaped Vietnam, but lost her grandfather during the long terrible voyage to Australia. She has many reasons to cry, but finds it hard to release her grief as she struggles to understand a different culture in her new homeland, Australia. This simple novel of refugees and the trauma they face is a good text for classroom discussion.
Witi Ihimaera, The Whale Rider (2003)
The Whale Rider is so moving that it makes you believe anything is possible. It’s a story about cultural rituals among the Maori people of New Zealand that is fascinating and entertaining. It features a tattooed whale and characters who seem to possess strange and unusual abilities, but it is essential a novel about a family. The birth of a daughter breaks the family’s lineage, and the view of the men of the family is that a girl child is useless. As she grows, she craves her great-grandfather’s acceptance and love.
MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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