Cirrus@Austlit

'How long can you run from a lie, if that lie is what your life is founded on?

'In a near future all identity information is encoded in digital language. Nations know where everyone is, all the time. Not everyone agrees with this constant surveillance, and when the system is hijacked and shut down, all global borders are closed. The world is no longer connected, and there is no back-up plan to establish belonging, ownership or trade.

'Scarlet Friday, whose job is to correct historical record, is stranded on the wrong side of the globe. Befriended by a stranger, she grabs an old, faded history book and writes her own version over the top—a record of the Great Undoing on the run.

'But in deciding what truth to tell Scarlet must face her own history. How do we navigate identity when it is all a lie? She must reckon with her past before she can imagine her future.' (Publication summary)

'WE SCAMPER INTO a warm room full of returned relics and donated artwork. Outside, the temperature hovers around 12 degrees – freezing for a Meanjin girl. The sky is low and grey, a fog shrouds the silhouetted gums. Sheets of rain come and go. Local Elder David King welcomes us into the space, welcomes us warmly to Gundungurra Country. We sit together and he shares stories of his mother and his aunties and uncles. His words are gentle. He tells truth about dispossession and homecomings. He talks about forming a strategy – after the government returned the gully to the rightful custodians in the early 2000s. Of sitting with family to formulate answers to bureaucratic questions. His description of the aunties’ refusal to corral these answers into settler language stirs me. Over a period of years, they formulated four key performance headings: community + belonging + cups of tea + cake.' (Introduction)