Reckoning with the Past

Ashley Barnwell is Ashworth Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Melbourne, Australia.Joseph Cummins has a PhD in Literary Studies from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and serves on the board of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature.

• Introduction1. Dredging Up Family Secrets – Kate Grenville’s The Secret River and Richard Flanagan’s Death of a River Guide2. Confronting the ‘Double Fold of Silence’ – Kim Scott and Hazel Brown’s Kayang & Me and Sally Morgan’s My Place 3. Belonging Across Generations – Brian Castro’s Birds of Passage and Shanghai Nights, and Alex Miller’s The Ancestor Game4. Returning to Homelands – Christos Tsiolkas’ Dead Europe and Christopher Koch’s The Many-Coloured Land: A Return to Ireland5. Listening to the Ghosts of the Past – Andrew McGahan’s The White Earth ConclusionBibliography