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This image has been sourced from Anita Heiss 2014.
y separately published work icon True Country single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1993... 1993 True Country
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Billy is drifting, looking for a place to land. A young school teacher, he arrives in Australia's remote far north in search of his own history, his Aboriginality, and his future. He finds himself in a region of abundance and beauty but also of conflict, dispossession and dislocation. On the desperate frontier between cultures, Billy must find his place of belonging.' (Source: Fremantle Press website)

Exhibitions

6939401
14131409
18388396
18387981

Notes

  • Dedication: For Robert Unghango and Mary Pandilow, who let me listen.
  • Epigraph: We carry in our hearts the true country / And that cannot be stolen / We follow in the steps of our ancestry / And that cannot be broken. 'The Dead Heart' - Midnight Oil

    (then why) ... this sense / of gain and loss, the now I am / not there, then, despite the giveaway / smile? I am born exile, or they / are tokens of infinity; and distance / like love is a necessary fiction. 'Distances' - Charles Boyle

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Fremantle, Fremantle area, South West Perth, Perth, Western Australia,: Fremantle Press , 1993 .
      image of person or book cover 3752167088762908418.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 255p.
      Note/s:
      • Published: April 1993
      ISBN: 1863680381 (pbk)
    • South Fremantle, Fremantle area, South West Perth, Perth, Western Australia,: Fremantle Press , 2000 .
      image of person or book cover 8353568797745840827.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 256p.
      Note/s:
      • Published: July 2000
      ISBN: 1863683232
    • Fremantle, Fremantle area, South West Perth, Perth, Western Australia,: Fremantle Press , 2010 .
      image of person or book cover 2252582423803992334.jpg
      Extent: 299p.
      Edition info: 2nd Edition.
      Reprinted: 2013
      Note/s:
      • First published: 1993.
      ISBN: 9781921361524 (pbk), 1921361522, 9781921361524
    • Fremantle, Fremantle area, South West Perth, Perth, Western Australia,: Fremantle Press , 2021 .
      image of person or book cover 7619633186106435106.jpg
      This image has been sourced from Booktopia
      Extent: 304p.
      Edition info: 4th edition
      Note/s:
      • Published 28 September 2021
      ISBN: 9781760991043
Alternative title: Le vrai pays
Language: French
    • c
      Monaco,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Paris,
      c
      France,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Editions du Rocher ,
      2006 .
      image of person or book cover 7232276981085676174.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 296p.
      ISBN: 2268058190, 9782268058191

Other Formats

  • Sound recording.
  • Large print.

Works about this Work

The Regional Novel in Australia Emily Potter , Brigid Magner , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;
y separately published work icon Polities and Poetics : Race Relations and Reconciliation in Australian Literature Adelle Sefton-Rowston , Oxford : Peter Lang , 2022 24390199 2022 multi chapter work criticism

'A reconciliation movement spread across Australia during the 1990s, bringing significant marches, speeches, and policies across the country. Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians began imagining race relations in new ways and articulations of place, belonging, and being together began informing literature of a unique new genre. This book explores the political and poetic paradigms of reconciliation represented in Australian writing of this period. The author brings together textual evidence of themes and a vernacular contributing to the emergent genre of reconciliatory literature. The nexus between resistance and reconciliation is explored as a complex process to understanding sovereignty, colonial history, and the future of society. Moreover, this book argues it is creative writing that is most necessary for a deeper understanding of each other and of place, because it is writing that calls one to witness, to feel, and to imagine all at the same time.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Kim Scott's True Country as Aboriginal Bildungsroman Brenda Machosky , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: A Companion to the Works of Kim Scott 2016; (p. 25-36)
The Form and Function of Narrative Perspective in Kim Scott’s True Country Jazz Money , 2015 single work essay
— Appears in: NEW : Emerging Scholars in Australian Indigenous Studies , vol. 1 no. 1 2015;

'The floating, shifting narrative of Kim Scott’s first novel True Country (1993) is one of the most captivating elements of the text that explores contemporary modes of Aboriginality. The narrative of True Country does not simply move the story from event to event; it underpins the moral of the text itself. With shifting perspectives and an unwavering sense of hope, the narrative embodies Billy’s acceptance into the community of Karnama, the home of his grandmother.' (Publication abstract)

Finding a Place in Story : Kim Scott’s Writing and the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project Natalie Quinlivann , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 3 2014;

'In True Country, the narrator draws the reader close and says, “You listen to me. We’re gunna make a story, true story. You might find it’s here you belong. A place like this.” (15) Although the narrator speaks of ‘(a) place like this’ as “a beautiful place (…). Call it our country, our country all ‘round here” (15), belonging, for the reader, for the characters in each of Scott’s novels, and for Scott himself, is more than settling into a physical environment, belonging is finding a place in the story.

'Mamang, Noongar Mambara Bakitj, Dwoort Baal Kaat, and Yira Boornak Nyininy are major achievements in Scott and The Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories Project’s process of returning, restoring and rejuvenating language and story within the Noongar community and for an ever-widening public. In their form, content and intent, the stories renegotiate ideas of place and placement, confronting personal, cultural and linguistic dislocations in Noongar lives as well as an ambivalent narrative landscape in which language and story are central to both a lingering colonialism and the process of decolonisation.' (Publication abstract)

El arte de pronunciar - Mandawuy Yunupingu Ben Haneman , 1993 single work review
— Appears in: Hontanar , March no. 18 1993; (p. 5)

— Review of True Country Kim Scott , 1993 single work novel
Strange Shadows on the Page Jennifer Cooke , 1993 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 20 February 1993; (p. 44)

— Review of A Road from Damascus David Balderstone , 1992 single work novel ; True Country Kim Scott , 1993 single work novel
Forecasts Claire Mills , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Bookseller & Publisher , December-January (1992-1993) vol. 72 no. 1033 1992; (p. 30)

— Review of True Country Kim Scott , 1993 single work novel
Life on an Aboriginal Settlement Terry O'Connor , 1993 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 30 January 1993; (p. wkd 6)

— Review of True Country Kim Scott , 1993 single work novel
Talent with a Mission Dennis Davison , 1993 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 13-14 February 1993; (p. rev 6)

— Review of True Country Kim Scott , 1993 single work novel ; The Common Rat Carmel Bird , 1993 selected work short story prose autobiography essay ; Harbour : Stories by Australian Writers 1993 anthology short story
Shouting Back : Kathryn Trees Talks to Kim Scott about His Writing Kathryn Trees (interviewer), 1995 single work interview
— Appears in: Fremantle Arts Review , August/September vol. 10 no. 1 1995; (p. 20-21)
(Re)constructing Aboriginality : Scripting Ecological Poetics in Kim Scott's True Country Divya Anand , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Cultural Interfaces 2004; (p. 60-69)
Anand argues that Kim Scott's True Country 'offers a rich scope to initiate an eco-aesthetical study aimed at reconstructing the virtually extinct paradigms of aboriginal life.'
Singing Our Place Little Bit New : Aboriginal Narrativity and Nation Building in Kim Scott's 'True Country' Richard Pascal , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Critique : Studies in Contemporary Fiction , Fall vol. 46 no. 1 2004; (p. 3-11)
Listening to Indigenous Voices : The Ethics of Reading in the Teaching of Australian Indigenous Oral Narrative Russell West-Pavlov , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transcultural Graffiti : Diasporic Writing and the Teaching of Literary Studies 2005; (p. 155-170)
Elder Tells Her People's Story Jodi Hoffmann , 2005 single work column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 10 August no. 357 2005; (p. 27)
Last amended 9 Jul 2021 08:40:57
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