Cirrus@Austlit

'Horakova talks about Kim Mahood's memoir "Craft for a Dry Lake," one of the most complex representations of the Australian Outback, one that offers a "new history of the frontier." Framed as a homecoming journey to the Tanami Desert northwest of Alice Springs alter her lather's death in a helicopter crash, Mahood's narrative begins as a biography of her parents. She reflects on a childhood spent on the homestead among her family and both Aboriginal and white staff, and her eventual departure to the city in order to pursue an education and later her artistic career. Among other things, Horakova discusses the memoir's complexity consists in its ability to simultaneously build upon and write back to several well-established literary traditions. ' (Publication abstract)