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y separately published work icon The Desert Knows Her Name single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2024... 2024 The Desert Knows Her Name
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Listen deeply now, if you remember how and why.

'On a hot October afternoon, a girl walks barefoot out of the Wimmera desert, near the small town of Gatyekarr.

'She finds sanctuary with Beth, a regenerative farmer and collector of seeds, devoted to bringing her family's farm back to life. The arrival of the mysterious 'desert girl' unsettles the community and old tensions erupt. The longer the girl stays silent, the more volatile the town becomes. Who is she and what does her presence mean?

'The Desert Knows Her Name is an exquisite novel that speaks to a deep longing for connection with the land, and the silences that persist in contemporary Australia.' (Publication summary)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Mulgrave, Ashwood - Mulgrave area, Melbourne South East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Affirm Press , 2024 .
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      Extent: 320p.
      Note/s:

      • Publication date 28 May 2024

      ISBN: 9781922992949
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Works about this Work

Country as Secret-keeper and Silent Witness Ariana Haghighi , 2024 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2024;
— Review of The Desert Knows Her Name Lia Hills , 2024 single work novel

'A mute girl’s unexpected arrival. A small town yet to reckon with closeted skeletons. A whirlwind of fictions, accusations and speculations. The Desert Knows Her Name is another addition to Australia’s burgeoning genre of outback-noir eco-fiction, such as Aoife Clifford’s When We Fall and Jane Harper’s The Dry and Force of Nature. Hills’ rural setting is artfully lush but enveloped in a distrusting atmosphere, paralleling the small towns familiar to Australian crime fiction.' (Introduction)   
The Desert Knows Her Name Gillian Bouras , 2024 single work essay
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 29 July vol. 34 no. 15 2024; 'The Desert Knows Her Name by Lia Hill, Affirm Press. One reason for reading fiction is the pleasure we get from immersing ourselves in a different and often unfamiliar world. But the reverse was true while I was reading The Desert Knows Her Name, by New Zealand-born Lia Hills, a versatile novelist, poet, translator and curator. This is her third novel; her first two were much praised and were listed for several awards. The novel is set in the Wimmera, the north-western part of Victoria where I spent several years of my childhood — formative years, I have always thought. The township where the novel’s action takes place (Gatyekarr) is the author’s invention, but the other places she mentions are all familiar to me, and we lived about ten miles from the Little Desert, a location that figures prominently in the novel. The salt lakes and the Wimmera River also feature. The novel, in many of its literary references, takes me back a long way. How well I remember Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, The Hobyahs, and the account of the three missing Duff children. They were despaired of but were eventually found by black trackers at the end of eight long days. This true story was in one of our readers, and the whole incident had taken place not too far away. We were learning, while not really knowing or understanding, that the trope of the lost child is a common one in Australian art and literature.' (Introduction)
‘Listen, Deeply Now’ : Sounds of the Wimmera Paul Genoni , 2024 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , July no. 466 2024; (p. 29)
— Review of The Desert Knows Her Name Lia Hills , 2024 single work novel 'In scene-setting a discussion of Lia Hills’s The Desert Knows Her Name, it is difficult to avoid going straight to the matter of genre. What we have is postcolonial, outback-noir eco-fiction. This genre mash-up isn’t new and is arguably a defining fictional mode of post-settlement Australia’s third century. As a form, it provides a meeting place where authors, both Indigenous (Melissa Lucashenko, Julie Janson) and non-Indigenous (Alex Miller, Tim Winton, and Gail Jones), meet to worry through complexly entangled fears around colonialism’s dark legacy, personal trauma, social dysfunction, and environmental degradation. And it isn’t territory new to Hills, as readers familiar with her previous (second) novel, The Crying Place (2017), will be aware.' (Introduction)
‘Listen, Deeply Now’ : Sounds of the Wimmera Paul Genoni , 2024 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , July no. 466 2024; (p. 29)
— Review of The Desert Knows Her Name Lia Hills , 2024 single work novel 'In scene-setting a discussion of Lia Hills’s The Desert Knows Her Name, it is difficult to avoid going straight to the matter of genre. What we have is postcolonial, outback-noir eco-fiction. This genre mash-up isn’t new and is arguably a defining fictional mode of post-settlement Australia’s third century. As a form, it provides a meeting place where authors, both Indigenous (Melissa Lucashenko, Julie Janson) and non-Indigenous (Alex Miller, Tim Winton, and Gail Jones), meet to worry through complexly entangled fears around colonialism’s dark legacy, personal trauma, social dysfunction, and environmental degradation. And it isn’t territory new to Hills, as readers familiar with her previous (second) novel, The Crying Place (2017), will be aware.' (Introduction)
Country as Secret-keeper and Silent Witness Ariana Haghighi , 2024 single work review
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2024;
— Review of The Desert Knows Her Name Lia Hills , 2024 single work novel

'A mute girl’s unexpected arrival. A small town yet to reckon with closeted skeletons. A whirlwind of fictions, accusations and speculations. The Desert Knows Her Name is another addition to Australia’s burgeoning genre of outback-noir eco-fiction, such as Aoife Clifford’s When We Fall and Jane Harper’s The Dry and Force of Nature. Hills’ rural setting is artfully lush but enveloped in a distrusting atmosphere, paralleling the small towns familiar to Australian crime fiction.' (Introduction)   
The Desert Knows Her Name Gillian Bouras , 2024 single work essay
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 29 July vol. 34 no. 15 2024; 'The Desert Knows Her Name by Lia Hill, Affirm Press. One reason for reading fiction is the pleasure we get from immersing ourselves in a different and often unfamiliar world. But the reverse was true while I was reading The Desert Knows Her Name, by New Zealand-born Lia Hills, a versatile novelist, poet, translator and curator. This is her third novel; her first two were much praised and were listed for several awards. The novel is set in the Wimmera, the north-western part of Victoria where I spent several years of my childhood — formative years, I have always thought. The township where the novel’s action takes place (Gatyekarr) is the author’s invention, but the other places she mentions are all familiar to me, and we lived about ten miles from the Little Desert, a location that figures prominently in the novel. The salt lakes and the Wimmera River also feature. The novel, in many of its literary references, takes me back a long way. How well I remember Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, The Hobyahs, and the account of the three missing Duff children. They were despaired of but were eventually found by black trackers at the end of eight long days. This true story was in one of our readers, and the whole incident had taken place not too far away. We were learning, while not really knowing or understanding, that the trope of the lost child is a common one in Australian art and literature.' (Introduction)
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Last amended 4 Apr 2024 12:56:26
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