The Ocean single work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 2013... 2013 The Ocean
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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon A Country Too Far : Writings on Asylum Seekers Thomas Keneally (editor), Rosie Scott (editor), Melbourne : Penguin Books , 2013 6426357 2013 anthology autobiography biography poetry short story essay (taught in 1 units)

    'One of the central moral issues of our time is the question of asylum seekers, arguably the most controversial subject in Australia today.

    'In this landmark anthology, twenty-seven of Australia's finest writers have focused their intelligence and creativity on the theme of the dispossessed, bringing a whole new perspective of depth and truthfulness to what has become a fraught, distorted war of words. This anthology confirms that the experience of seeking asylum – the journeys of escape from death, starvation, poverty or terror to an imagined paradise – is part of the Australian mindset and deeply embedded in our culture and personal histories.

    'A Country Too Far is a tour de force of stunning fiction, memoir, poetry and essays. Edited by award-winning writers Rosie Scott and Tom Keneally, and featuring contributors including Anna Funder, Christos Tsiolkas, Elliot Perlman, Gail Jones, Raimond Gaita, Les Murray, Rodney Hall and Geraldine Brooks, this rich anthology is by turns thoughtful, fierce, evocative, lyrical and moving, and always extraordinarily powerful.

    'A Country Too Far' makes an indispensable contribution to the national debate.' (Publisher's blurb)

    Melbourne : Penguin Books , 2013
    pg. 103-109

Works about this Work

Gail Jones’s “The Ocean” (2013) and A Guide to Berlin (2015) : A Literary Challenge to Asylum Seekers’ Precarity Pilar Royo Grasa , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 56 no. 4 2020; (p. 532-546)

'Gail Jones’s fiction has received major critical attention due to its engagement with trauma, memory, modernity, the visual arts, and the Australian process of Reconciliation. This article seeks to extend the focus of research on Jones’s work by looking at her little-discussed representation of forced migration. For this purpose, it examines how Jones’s 2013 short story “The Ocean” and 2015 novel A Guide to Berlin respectively tackle the 2001 refugee Tampa affair and the 2013 Lampedusa refugee tragedy. It first offers an overview of the precarity suffered by contemporary asylum seekers and refugees and how this has been explored and fictionalized by contemporary writers. It then analyses and discusses the main narrative and stylistic strategies that Jones uses in order to represent the ties that bind together refugees and non-refugees in mutually dependent relationships, which challenge Australian and European governments’ fostered xenophobia aimed at tightening border controls.' (Publication abstract)

Gail Jones’s “The Ocean” (2013) and A Guide to Berlin (2015) : A Literary Challenge to Asylum Seekers’ Precarity Pilar Royo Grasa , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Postcolonial Writing , vol. 56 no. 4 2020; (p. 532-546)

'Gail Jones’s fiction has received major critical attention due to its engagement with trauma, memory, modernity, the visual arts, and the Australian process of Reconciliation. This article seeks to extend the focus of research on Jones’s work by looking at her little-discussed representation of forced migration. For this purpose, it examines how Jones’s 2013 short story “The Ocean” and 2015 novel A Guide to Berlin respectively tackle the 2001 refugee Tampa affair and the 2013 Lampedusa refugee tragedy. It first offers an overview of the precarity suffered by contemporary asylum seekers and refugees and how this has been explored and fictionalized by contemporary writers. It then analyses and discusses the main narrative and stylistic strategies that Jones uses in order to represent the ties that bind together refugees and non-refugees in mutually dependent relationships, which challenge Australian and European governments’ fostered xenophobia aimed at tightening border controls.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 15 Apr 2015 10:58:08
Subjects:
  • Christmas Island, Australian External Territories,
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