'‘The style of a narrative is a kind of dialect,” observed American writer and painter Guy Davenport in a 1976 essay. “The laws it obeys are of its own nature.” These words appeared five years after publication of the novel that occupies the extreme orbit of Thomas Keneally’s imaginative universe. A Dutiful Daughter is at once the most introvert and urgently expressive of his works: a northern hemisphere allegory set on a swamp-ridden dairy farm somewhere on the coastal fringe of the “least significant of continents”, a tale of incest and bestial transformation that plays out somewhere between kitchen-sink realism and philosophical novel.' (Introduction)
'Internationally, Thomas Keneally is one of Australia’s most successful authors, whether in terms of critical reception, book sales, or author profile. He is probably best known as the author of Schindler’s List from 1982—Schindler’s Ark in Britain and Australasia—even if his fame in this regard has been somewhat obscured by Stephen Spielberg’s multi-Oscar-winning movie of 1993. The story of how Keneally came to write this book and its subsequent success is one of the more remarkable episodes in Australian book history, and of course it is by no means confined to Australia, its point of origin only in a very qualified sense. Published simultaneously in London, New York, and Sydney, Schindler’s List appeared in at least eight different English-language and fourteen foreign-language editions even before the release of Spielberg’s movie. It won the Booker Prize for 1982, the first by an Australian novelist, although Keneally had already been short-listed for the award on three occasions. Across the Atlantic, it was one of the New York Times ’ Best Books of 1982, and in the following year the winner of the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize. The movie’s success meant new English and American editions together with a dozen or so translations in 1994 alone, including Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, and Catalan versions. New Czech and Marathi editions appeared as recently as 2009.' (Author's introduction)
