‘Savage Paradise’: History, Violence and the Family in Some Recent Australian Fiction
Abstract
Discusses David Malouf's Harland's Half Acre (1984), Thomas Keneally's A Family Madness (1985) and Rodney Hall's Captivity Captive (1988), arguing that 'All three insist, in a more or less explicit way, on the difficulties encountered by Europeans in coming to terms with themselves as Australians and this insistence is made more compelling by their close relation with historical reality.'
Please sign in to access this article and the rest of our archive.
Published 1 June 1991 in European Perspectives: Contemporary Essays on Australian Literature. Subjects: Australian identity, Egalitarianism, Family conflict, Nationalism, Physical violence, Place & identity, Tom Keneally, David Malouf.
Cite as: Pons, Xavier. ‘‘Savage Paradise’: History, Violence and the Family in Some Recent Australian Fiction.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 15, no. 2, 1991, doi: 10.20314/als.040337150b.