Cirrus@Austlit

'This essay considers the "phantom presences" that shadow attempts by novelists in contemporary Australia to communicate within and across cultures. Cross-cultural communication is haunted by "phantom limbs" in all sorts of ways: the phantom limb of the revenant white nation, the phantom limbs of various cultures migrants left behind, and the phantom limb of "home" - of "landscapes [which] ache in all places of departures". The essay explores technical issues of cultural representation - a process which ultimately cannot avoid problematic constructions of self-orientalising ethnicity. I explain the personal context through which my novels Love and Vertigo (2000) and Behind the Monn (2005) were produced and the historical context of the novels' publication. I then consider the content of multicultural/ethnic Australian fiction within the broader context of Australian history, looking at how this legacy - a legacy of phantom presences - shapes cross-cultural writing as well as responses to this genre of fiction.' (521)