Cirrus@Austlit

'Since the beginning of the twenty-first century Australia has entered a phase known as post-reconciliation, which for some artists and writers has marked a turning-point in race relations and issues of belonging to the multicultural society in an Asia-Pacific environment. While post-reconciliation has paved the way for constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the effects of settler history can still be perceived in debates on the nation and cultural identity. Recent nationalist claims and cultural tensions raise concerns about the country’s ability to overcome the colonial past and fully embrace the multicultural ideal. In his article on recent Australian fiction, Nicholas Birns reminds us that Sue Ryan-Fazilleau, in her extensive study of Peter Carey’s work, suggested that the novelist was engaged in a postcolonial quest for identity. Ryan-Fazilleau’s valuable contribution to the study of Australian literature is raised in Birns’s examination of the works of some twenty-first-century Australian authors and the place of technology in their sense of identity.' (From : Introduction)