Searching for the Secret River - Couverture souple

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1921351861 ISBN 13 : 9781921351860

Synopsis

Kate Grenville's novel The Secret River moved and exhilarated many people when it was first published in 2005. Readers marvelled at the subtlety of its language, and the power of Grenville's storytelling. And they recognised that this simple tale of a poor convict family settling on the banks of the Hawkesbury River in the early nineteenth century represented a landmark moment in Australian fiction. Grenville had taken the novel to the frontier of European settlement and written a profoundly original and disturbing work about what happened there. Searching for the Secret River is the extraordinary story of how Kate Grenville came to write her award-winning novel. It all begins with her ancestor Solomon Wiseman, transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life, but who later became a wealthy man and built his colonial mansion on the Hawkesbury. Increasingly obsessed with his story, Grenville pursues him from Sydney to London and back, and then up the Hawkesbury itself. Slowly she begins to realise she must write about him, and begins to discover what kind of book she will write. Grenville invites the reader into her writing room, and tells us about how this novel was formed, the research she did, the false starts she made and the frustrations she experienced. Searching for the Secret River is a great book about the writing of a great novel.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

The Secret River was Kate Grenville’s tour de force novel, an award-winning international bestseller that was also a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin A ward. And yet, this stunningly executed tale began life as a non-fiction book when Grenville embarked on a quest to know her ancestor, Solomon Wiseman, an E nglish convict sent to New South Wales. Wiseman soon morphed into The Secret River’s protagonist, William Thornhill.

In Searching for the Secret River, Grenville invites the reader into her writing room to lay bare her creative journey, transforming the dry facts of history into. powerful fiction. She not only reveals the wrong turns and exhilarating breakthroughs of research and writing but also peels back the guilt that overwhelms her after discovering that Wiseman, in true colonial fashion, took land and livelihood from the Australian Aboriginal people. The result is a vivid history of a novel that is, at once, a history of a family and of a country still struggling to reconcile its past and present.

Biographie de l'auteur

KATE GRENVILLE was born in Sydney, Australia. Her bestselling novel The Secret River has won numerous international awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. It was also a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Award. The Idea of Perfection won the Orange Prize for Fiction, Britain’s most valuable literary award. Grenville is also the author of several other novels and three books on the craft of writing. She lives in Sydney with her family. Visit her online at kategrenville.com.

Détails de l'édition

• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1921351861
• ISBN 13: 9781921351860
• Reliure: Poche
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible