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y separately published work icon Shallows single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1984... 1984 Shallows
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Tim Winton's first Miles Franklin-winner, Shallows revolves around the ruthless commerce of whaling, and Queenie Cookson, who joins the fight to end it.
'Whales have always been the life-force of Angelus, a small town on the south coast of Western Australia. Their annual passing defines the rhythms of a life where little changes, and the town depends on their carcasses. So when the battle begins on the beaches outside their town, and when Queenie Cookson, a local girl, joins the Greenies to make amends for the crimes of her whaling ancestors, it can only throw everything into chaos.' (Publication summary)

Notes

  • Epigraph: 'So close behind some promotory lie/The huge leviathans to attend their prey,/And give no chace, but shallow in the fry,/Which through their gaping jaws mistake the way.' - John Dryden Annus Mirabilis
  • Epigraph: 'those grim travellers in dawn skies/see the beauty - makes them cry inside/makes them angry and they don't know why/grim travellers in dawn skies' - Bruce Cockburn 'Grim Travellers'
  • Dedication: To Denise, with love

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Unwin Paperbacks , 1985 .
      image of person or book cover 4332691873582935621.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: xi, 235p.p.
      ISBN: 0868618004 (pbk.)
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       Weidenfeld and Nicolson ,       1986 .
      image of person or book cover 4177860369841594287.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: xi, 235p.p.
      ISBN: 0297789279
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,      :       Atheneum ,       1986 .
      image of person or book cover 7739075196441871400.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 235p.
      ISBN: 0689118066, 9780689118067
    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: McPhee Gribble , 1991 .
      image of person or book cover 6266770840330146778.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: xi, 259p.p.
      ISBN: 0869142577
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       Picador ,       1991 .
      image of person or book cover 8646933080441927334.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: xiv, 289 p.p.
      ISBN: 0330319647
    • South Yarra, South Yarra - Glen Iris area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,: McPhee Gribble , 1993 .
      image of person or book cover 1356703074496330627.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 259p.
      ISBN: 0869143360
    • Saint Paul, Minnesota,
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,      :       Graywolf Press ,       1993 .
      image of person or book cover 9004549487735380743.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 235p.
      ISBN: 1555971938, 9781555971939
    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 1996 .
      image of person or book cover 5150665048400819352.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: xi, 259p.p.
      ISBN: 0140258531
    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 1998 .
      image of person or book cover 5435914096882222289.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 259p.
      ISBN: 0140274006 (pbk.), 9780140274004
    • Camberwell, Camberwell - Kew area, Melbourne - Inner South, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2009 .
      image of person or book cover 6075016187450137536.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 1v.p.
      ISBN: 9780143180258, 0143180258, 9780143010562, 0143010565
      Series: Penguin Modern Classics series - publisher
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       Picador ,       2011 .
      image of person or book cover 8152566117939636219.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 256p.p.
      ISBN: 9781447201762, 1447201760
Alternative title: 浅滩
Transliterated title: Qian tan
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Works about this Work

Nation and Environment in the Twentieth Century Novel Tony Hughes-d'Aeth , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;
The Fiction of Tim Winton : Relational Ecology in an Unsettled Land Lyn McCredden , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Le Simplegadi , November vol. 17 no. 2017; (p. 63-71) Complicating the processes of belonging in place, for non-Indigenous Australians, is the growing realization that they live in a huge, diverse land, a place in which they are not native. The fiction of popular Anglo-Saxon Australian novelist Tim Winton echoes the understanding of poet Judith Wright, for whom “two strands – the love of the land we have invaded and the guilt of the invasion – have become part of me. It is a haunted country” (Wright 1991: 30). This essay will explore Winton’s novels in which there is a pervasive sense of unease and loss experienced by the central characters, in relation to place and land. Winton’s characters – Queenie Cookson and her traumatic witnessing of the barbaric capture and flaying of whales; Fish Lamb’s near-drowning in the sea, and Lu Fox’s quest for refuge in the wilderness, prophet-like, after the tragedy of his family’s death – are all written with a haunting sense of white unsettlement and displacement, where such natural forces – the sea and its creatures, the land’s distances and risks – confront and re-form the would-be dominators.
Last Whales : Eschatology, Extinction and the Cetaean Imaginary in Winton and Pash Graham Huggan , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Journal of Commonwealth Literature , June vol. 52 no. 2 2017; 'Few of the earth’s creatures capture the popular imagination quite like the whale, which has come to serve as an ambivalent figure for both salvation and perdition, whether the moral dramas that unfold around it are seen in religious (eschatological) or scientific (ecological) terms. Whales are at once signifiers for extinction, pointing to the threat of planetary destruction, and signifiers for redemption, in which the ongoing environmentalist campaign for protection doubles as a human struggle to save us from ourselves. This article looks at two contemporary Australian literary texts, Tim Winton’s Shallows (1985) and Chris Pash’s The Last Whale (2008), both of which explore competing extinction scenarios: the extinction of whales; the extinction of the whaling industry; and the extinction of whaling as a way of life. Given the further possibility of human self-extinction, the article argues that a new cetacean imaginary is needed in which whales are seen as complex manifestations of a life that co-exists with humanity, but is neither reducible to human understandings of history nor to the various futures — or non-futures — that human beings might imagine for themselves.' (Publication abstract)
'Grounding' of Humanity Reflected in Tim Winton's Shallows Hong-xia Zhou , Pei Zhang , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Xihua University , September vol. 35 no. 5 2016; (p. 79-83)

The authors interrogate Tim Winton's Shallows to expose notions of innate humanity. 
Australia : An Inescapable Cultural Paradigm? Cross- and Transcultural Elements in Tim Winton’s Fiction Tomasz Gadzina , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the European Association for Studies on Australia , vol. 7 no. 2 2016; (p. 30-40) 'The article considers Tim Winton’s fiction in terms of its cross- and transcultural character. Despite the fact that local Australian settings permeate the writer’s narratives, Winton creates an imaginary space that is both local and transnational in terms of its quality of the domestic culture, which Winton extends beyond its original field of practice. Winton achieves the transcultural quality of his fiction through transgressions and boundary breaking that are possible due to his frequent reworking of the traditional Australian themes and concepts of the unknown, supernatural, mystical, numinous and sacred, exploitation of leitmotifs of journey, transit and in-betweenness, use of cross-cultural symbols as well as various utopian and dystopian topoi such as Arcadia and Heimat.' (Publication abstract)
The Sullen Novelists : New Australian Fiction Thelma Forshaw , 1985 single work review
— Appears in: Quadrant , March vol. 29 no. 3 1985; (p. 77-79)
— Review of The Island Antigone Kefala , 1984 single work novel ; Shallows Tim Winton , 1984 single work novel ; Crooks Bill Reed , 1984 single work novel ; Milk and Honey : A Novel Elizabeth Jolley , 1984 single work novel ; Bearded Ladies : Stories Kate Grenville , 1984 selected work short story poetry ; The Man Who Stayed Below Alan Gould , 1984 single work novel ; Last Ferry to Manly Jill Neville , 1984 single work novel ; The Chinaman Don'o Kim , 1984 single work novel
Whaling and the Meaning of Life William Noonan , 1984 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian Magazine , 22-23 December 1984; (p. 11)
— Review of The True Story of Lilli Stubeck James Aldridge , 1984 single work novel ; Shallows Tim Winton , 1984 single work novel ; Tunnel Vision Dorothy Johnston , 1984 single work novel
Two Australian Novels... Bach , Like Life is Never Simple Katharine England , 1984 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 8 December 1984; (p. 9)
— Review of The Children's Bach Helen Garner , 1984 single work novella ; Shallows Tim Winton , 1984 single work novel
Am I a Camera? Roger Milliss , 1986 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , April no. 102 1986; (p. 74-77)
— Review of The Morality of Gentlemen Amanda Lohrey , 1984 single work novel ; Memories of the Assassination Attempt and Other Stories Gerard Windsor , 1985 selected work short story extract ; Shallows Tim Winton , 1984 single work novel ; Good Mates Paul Radley , 1985 single work novel
[Review] That Eye, the Sky [and] Shallows A. P. Riemer , 1989 single work review
— Appears in: The Good Reading Guide 1989; (p. 281)
— Review of That Eye, the Sky Tim Winton , 1986 single work novel ; Shallows Tim Winton , 1984 single work novel
y separately published work icon Tim Winton : The Writer and His Work Michael McGirr , South Yarra : Macmillan Education Australia , 1999 Z1022919 1999 single work criticism Aimed principally at younger readers and students, this work contains biographical information about Winton which situates him in a Western Australian context and has chapters dealing with each of Winton's novels to date. Each chapter concludes with a section 'Questions and Activities'.
y separately published work icon Mind the Country : Tim Winton's Fiction Salhia Ben-Messahel , Crawley : University of Western Australia , 2006 Z1286107 2006 single work criticism
Engaging the Masses : Tim Winton, Activism and the Literary Bestseller Brigid Rooney , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Literary Activists : Australian Writer-Intellectuals and Public Life 2009; (p. 158-180)
Sea of Transformation : Re-Writing Australianness in the Light of Whaling Sissy Helff , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Local Natures, Global Responsibilities : Ecocritical Perspectives on the New English Literatures 2010; (p. 91-104)
A Century of Oz Lit in China : A Critical Overview (1906-2008) Yu Ouyang , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 25 no. 1 2011; (p. 65-71) ‘This paper seeks to examine the dissemination, reception and perception of Australian literature in China from 1906 to 2008 by providng a historical background for its first arrival in China as a literature undistinguished from English or American literature, then as part of a ruoxiao minzu wenxue (weak and small nation literature) in the early 1930s, its rise as interest grew in Communist and proletarian writings in the 1950s and 1960s, and its spread and growth from the end of the cultural revolution in 1976 across all genres, culminating in its present unprecedented flourishing.’ (Introduction, p. 65)
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Last amended 30 Apr 2020 09:28:56
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