Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 'Touching the Edges of Cyclones' : Thea Astley and the Winds of Revelation
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Thea Astley once commented that, ‘everybody is living on a cyclonic edge’, and that many of her characters were ‘always touching on the edges of cyclones’. In Queensland literature, cyclones often appear as tropes of apocalypse: new worlds of person and place are revealed out of the destruction of the old. In Astley's novel A Boat Load of Home Folk (1968), the tempestuous forces of personal cyclones, as well as those of the cyclone destroying the island around them, overtake a group of stranded cruise passengers, and consequently place and person assume unique meanings as the characters try to survive. Although one of her least-known works, A Boat Load of Home Folk is a profound novel of human experience in which Astley uses the elemental cyclone as a trope of apocalypse that is both an instrument of destruction and a catalyst of revelation.'

Source: Abstract.

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  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Queensland Review vol. 25 no. 1 June 2018 14226536 2018 periodical issue 2018 pg. 137-148
Last amended 2 Aug 2018 08:10:35
137-148 'Touching the Edges of Cyclones' : Thea Astley and the Winds of Revelationsmall AustLit logo Queensland Review
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