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y separately published work icon Hiam single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1998... 1998 Hiam
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

"The world had changed. As far as the eye could see, the earth was red. It wasn't orange, or soil red, or brown red, or perhaps all of them at once. It was profound rich red, glittering deeply in the mid-morning light. She was vaguely aware of having known that somewhere in Australia the land was this colour but the reality of it was startling and stunning.'

Hiam is the story of a journey through both a psychic and geographic landscape, a journey through disintegration and loss. Hiam, an Arab migrant woman, abandons Adelaide to unravel her life and memories on the road North after her family and identity have been destroyed. In the course of the novel she weaves an identity out of past, present, stories, dreams and the Australian landscape with which she engages for the first time.

On one level, this is the story of a migrant's experience in a strange land, a novel which explores the pressures, fragilities and strengths of exiled communities. It is also a story of universal human grief, individual courage and the will, not only to survive, but to live fully in the world."

Source.

Notes

  • Dedication: Fot TMW.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • St Leonards, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 1998 .
      image of person or book cover 3443754153865999379.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 139, [5] p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Includes 5 pages of advertisements at the end of the book.
      ISBN: 1864486767

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording, large print, e-book.

Works about this Work

Is Cosmopolitan the New Australian? Flexible Identities in Eva Sallis’s Fiction Salhia Ben-Messahel , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies on Australia , vol. 9 no. 2 2018;

'This paper examines the way in which Eva Sallis fictionalises encounters with Europe, Asia and The Middle-East in her three books, Hiam (1998), City of Sealions (2002) and Mahjar (2003). In her narratives, Sallis depicts the migrant experience in Australia and in foreign places to deconstruct definitions of “home”, of being in the world, and construct the space of the cosmopolitan subject that meanders through historical settings and transnational contexts. Thus, Sallis seems to suggest that the relationship between history and literature is intimate, that narrative and history are multiform and bound, respectively acting upon one another, redefining the boundaries of nations and identities. Looking at how Sallis engages with the political realities and tackles the problems of being different to the mainstream, this paper examines the various meanings derived from intercultural encounters, whether such encounters subvert Australia’s settler-history but also its multicultural and post-colonial nature. The novelist’s use of geographic space and displacement as major components of contemporary identity-making, conveys an inclusive approach to otherness and constructs flexible identities out of global and cosmopolitan experiences.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Rising from the Ashes: The Reimagining of Australian Identity through Islam in Eva Sallis’ Hiam Erin Claringbold , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: New Scholar , vol. 3 no. 2 2014;
'This paper analyses how 'the road' is used in Eva Sallis' novel Hiam (1998) to mobilise Islamic spirituality in the Australian outback and challenge traditional concepts of Australian nationhood based upon colonial ideologies of self and place. Sallis' novel uses the road as a political site of contestation and ideological decolonization wherein these concepts are dissembled and reconstructed. An alternative vision of Australian national identity is proposed through the protagonist's, Hiam's, journey - one requiring self-immolation and rebirth, free of colonialism's ideological legacies which are challenged in the distorting landscape of the desert and the undulating road that disintegrates as quickly as it unfurls. Islamic spirituality acts as a framework for this new identity model, represented as a force capable of embracing infinite subjectivities and ideologies without privilege - allowing Hiam to experience a way of being (and being in place) that is open, inclusive and in an endless, perpetual state of flux. The road is central to this de- and re- construction, acting both as a political site of agency and power, and as a site upon which various histories converge to be acknowledged, contested, challenged and empowered.' (Publication abstract)
Fully Formed Rosemary Neill , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 23 - 24 April 2011; (p. 506)
To mark the thirtieth anniversary of The Australian / Vogel award, Rosemary Neill surveys the highs and lows of a prize that has launched the careers of many leading writers.
Landscape and Australian Fiction Susan K. Martin , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Modern Australian Criticism and Theory 2010; (p. 41-49)
'Susan Martin's essay... considers the central role played in Australian literature and its criticism by ideas about the land and environment, from colonial images of conquering or domesticating the land, to the heroic or anti-heroic ideas of nation-forming bush, to the increasing sense of an Aboriginal land, to new postcolonial forms of spatial history and contemporary eco-criticism.' Source: Modern Australian Criticism and Theory (2010)
y separately published work icon A Translation of Worlds: Aspects of Cultural Translation and Australian Migration Literature. Anette Svensson , Umea : Umea University, Dept of Language Studies , 2010 Z1676807 2010 single work criticism

This study explores the exchange of cultural information that takes place in the meeting between immigrant and non-immigrant characters in a selection of Australian novels focusing on the theme of migration: Heartland (1989) by Angelika Fremd, A Change of Skies (1991) by Yasmine Gooneratne, Stella's Place (1998) by Jim Sakkas, Hiam (1998) by Eva Sallis and Love and Vertigo (2000) by Hsu-Ming Teo.

The concept cultural translation functions as a theoretical tool in the analyses. The translation model is particularly useful for this purpose since it parallels the migration process and emphasises the power relations involved in cultural encounters. Within the framework of the study, cultural translation is defined as making an unfamiliar cultural phenomenon familiar to someone. On the intratextual level of the text, the characters take on roles as translators and interpreters and make use of certain tools such as storytelling and food to effect translation. On the extratextual level, Fremd, Gooneratne, Sakkas, Sallis and Teo represent cultural translation in the four thematic areas the immigrant child, storytelling, food and life crisis.

The first theme, the immigrant child, examined in chapter one, explores the effects of using the immigrant child as translator in communication situations between immigrants and representatives of Australian public institutions. In these situations, the child becomes the adult's interpreter of the Australian target culture. The role as translator entails other roles such as a link to and a shield against the Australian society and, as a result, traditional power relations are reversed.

Chapter two analyses how the second theme, storytelling, is presented as an instrument for cultural education and cultural translation in the texts. Storytelling functions to transfer power relations and resistance from one generation to the next. Through storytelling, the immigrant's hybrid identity is maintained because the connection to the source culture is strengthened, both for the storyteller and the listener.

The third theme, food as a symbol of cultural identity and as representation of the source and target cultures, is explored in chapter three. Source and target food cultures are polarised in the novels, and through an acceptance or a rejection of food from the source or target cultures, the characters symbolically accept or reject a belonging to that particular cultural environment. A fusion between the source and target food cultures emphasises the immigrant characters' cultural hybridity and functions as a strategic marketing of culturally specific elements during which a specific source culture is translated to a target consumer.

Finally, the fourth theme, life crisis, is analysed in chapter four where it is a necessary means through which the characters experience a second encounter with Australia and Australians. While their first encounter with Australia traps the characters in a liminal space/phase that is signified by cultural distancing, the second encounter offers a desire and ability for cultural translation, an acceptance of cultural hybridity and the possibility to become translated beings - a state where the characters are able to translate back and forth between the source and target cultures.

Untitled Abbas El-Zein , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: Hurriyat , no. 15 1999;

— Review of Hiam Eva Sallis , 1998 single work novel
Intriguing Debuts James Bradley , 1998 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 4-5 July 1998; (p. 11)

— Review of The Spotted Skin Rowena Ivers , 1998 single work novel ; Hiam Eva Sallis , 1998 single work novel
Strong Women Nigel Krauth , 1998 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 203 1998; (p. 20-21)

— Review of The Spotted Skin Rowena Ivers , 1998 single work novel ; Hiam Eva Sallis , 1998 single work novel
L-Plate Literati Neil James , 1998 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian's Review of Books , September vol. 3 no. 6 1998; (p. 26,30)

— Review of The Spotted Skin Rowena Ivers , 1998 single work novel ; Mrs Feather and the Aesthetics of Survival Lisa Merrifield , 1998 single work novel ; Hiam Eva Sallis , 1998 single work novel ; Silences Long Gone Anson Cameron , 1998 single work novel
Coming Soon 1998 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 14 June 1998; (p. 19)

— Review of Hiam Eva Sallis , 1998 single work novel
Cultural Roadie Paul Best (interviewer), Roger Taylor (interviewer), 1998 single work interview
— Appears in: AQ : Journal of Contemporary Analysis , November-December vol. 70 no. 6 1998; (p. 36-39)
The Good Neighbour Nikki Barrowclough , 2005 single work biography
— Appears in: Good Weekend , 7 May 2005; (p. 24-26, 30)
Fragmented and Entwined: Migration Stories in Sibyl's Cave and Other Australian Fiction Catherine Padmore , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , no. 5 2006; (p. 25-38)

'As a writer, a reader and a migrant, I am interested in the gaps in migration narratives and in where the stories touch other stories. These features suggest the difficulty of capturing the enormity of the migrational shift in one narrative and offer a sense of the nuances contained within a single person's experiences of migration. In this article I explore some ways in which individual migration stories have similar fragmented structures and make dynamic connections to wider stories, using examples from my own and other Australian fiction.'

In addition to her own work, Sibyl's Cave, Padmore refers to Eva Sallis's Hiam (1998), Arnold Zable's Cafe Scheherazade (2001), Peter Lyssiotis and Nick Petroulias's 'New Troy' (2000) and Rosa Cappiello's Oh, Lucky Country [Paese Fortunato] (1984). 'Some of these works have fragmented structures and all contain intertextual links to other stories. The embedded stories in these texts are often not Australian in origin but have travelled to Australia from elsewhere, reflecting the migrational history that shapes one aspect of contemporary Australian identity.'

Vogel for Adelaide Writer 1997 single work column
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , October no. 169 1997; (p. 1)
Literature in the Arid Zone Tom Lynch , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Littoral Zone : Australian Contexts and Their Writers 2007; (p. 70-92)
This chapter surveys and assesses from an ecocentric perspective some representative literary portrayals of the Australian deserts. Generally, it contrasts works that portray the desert as an alien, hostile, and undifferentiated void with works that recognise and value the biological particularities of specific desert places. It explores the literature of three dominant cultural orientations to the deserts: pastoralism, mining, and traversal. It concludes with a consideration of several multi-voiced and/or multi-genred bioregionally informed works that suggests fruitful directions for more ecocentric literary approaches. (abstract taken from The Littoral Zone)
Last amended 19 Sep 2022 10:23:50
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