Robyn Cadwallader Robyn Cadwallader i(A75283 works by)
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

Robyn Cadwallader has taught in the English Department at Flinders University. She has researched and written about St Margaret of Antioch, a thirteenth century Christian martyr and dragon-slayer.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2022 recipient Varuna Fellowships Varuna Residential Fellowships for historical fiction ‘Not Less Than Anything’

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The Fire and the Rose Sydney : HarperCollins Australia , 2023 25997376 2023 single work novel historical fiction

'From Robyn Cadwallader, the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of The Anchoress and Book of Colours, comes a vibrant, richly imagined and deeply moving novel set in the turbulent world of thirteenth-century England.

'England, 1276: Forced to leave her home village, Eleanor moves to Lincoln to work as a housemaid. She's prickly, independent and stubborn, her prospects blighted by a port-wine birthmark across her face. Unusually for a woman, she has fine skills with ink and quill, and harbours a secret ambition to work as a scribe, a profession closed to women.

'Eleanor discovers that Lincoln is a dangerous place, divided by religious prejudice, the Jews frequently the focus of violence and forced to wear a yellow badge. Eleanor falls in love with Asher, a Jewish spicer, who shares her love of books and words, but their relationship is forbidden by law. When Eleanor is pulled into the dark depths of the church's machinations against Jews and the king issues an edict expelling all Jews from England, Eleanor and Asher are faced with an impossible choice.

'Vivid, rich, deep and sensual, The Fire and the Rose is a tender and moving novel about how language, words and books have the power to change and shape lives. Most powerfully, it is also a novel about what it is to be made 'other', to be exiled from home and family. But it is also a call to recognise how much we need the other, the one we do not understand, making it a strikingly resonant and powerfully hopeful novel for our times.' (Publication summary)

2023 longlisted HNSA Historical Novel Prize Adult
y separately published work icon Book of Colours Sydney South : HarperCollins Australia , 2018 13526246 2018 single work novel historical fiction

'London, 1321: In a small shop in Paternoster Row, three people are drawn together around the creation of a magnificent book, an illuminated manuscript of prayers, a book of hours. Even though the commission seems to answer the aspirations of each one of them, their own desires and ambitions threaten its completion. As each struggles to see the book come into being, it will change everything they have understood about their place in the world. In many ways, this is a story about power - it is also a novel about the place of women in the roiling and turbulent world of the early fourteenth century; what power they have, how they wield it, and just how temporary and conditional it is.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2018 winner Canberra Critics Circle Awards Fiction
2019 winner Australian Capital Territory Book of the Year Award
2019 shortlisted Voss Literary Prize
y separately published work icon The Anchoress Sydney : HarperCollins Australia , 2015 8222438 2015 single work novel

'England, 1255: Sarah is only seventeen when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman shut away in a small cell, measuring seven paces by nine, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a much-loved sister in childbirth and the pressure to marry, she decides to renounce the world, with all its dangers, desires and temptations, and to commit herself to a life of prayer and service to God. But as she slowly begins to understand, even the thick, unforgiving walls of her cell cannot keep the outside world away, and it is soon clear that Sarah’s body and soul are still in great danger…'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2016 longlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) The Matt Richell Award for New Writer
2016 longlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year
2016 shortlisted Indie Awards Debut Fiction
2015 winner Canberra Critics Circle Awards
2016 shortlisted Festival Awards for Literature (SA) Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature South Australian Literary Awards Award for Fiction
2016 shortlisted Australian Capital Territory Book of the Year Award
Last amended 16 Sep 2021 11:27:52
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