September 7, 2011 - AAPAboriginal author Kim Scott has beaten 20 contenders to take out the Victorian Prize for Literature, the richest literary prize in the country.
Scott won the $100,000 award for his novel That Deadman Dance, which explores the first encounters between European settlers and Aborigines in Western Australia.
Presenting the inaugural prize in a presentation on Tuesday night, Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu congratulated Scott and fellow category winners for "sharing their energy and creative spirit with Victorian readers and enriching the literary and cultural life of Victoria".
The award recognises the nation's top writing talent and celebrates Victoria's literary culture, Mr Baillieu said.
Scott's novel has already won him $42,000 after it took out the Miles Franklin Award in June.
And from the Pan Macmillan Australia website:
Big-hearted, moving and richly rewarding, That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century in the area around what is now Albany, Western Australia. In playful, musical prose, the book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers.
The novel's hero is a young Noongar man named Bobby Wabalanginy. Clever, resourceful and eager to please, Bobby befriends the new arrivals, joining them hunting whales, tilling the land, exploring the hinterland and establishing the fledgling colony. He is even welcomed into a prosperous local white family where he falls for the daughter, Christine, a beautiful young woman who sees no harm in a liaison with a native.
But slowly – by design and by accident – things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is developing. Stock mysteriously start to disappear; crops are destroyed; there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind. A friend to everyone, Bobby is forced to take sides: he must choose between the old world and the new, his ancestors and his new friends. Inexorably, he is drawn into a series of events that will forever change not just the colony but the future of Australia...
Scott won the $100,000 award for his novel That Deadman Dance, which explores the first encounters between European settlers and Aborigines in Western Australia.
Presenting the inaugural prize in a presentation on Tuesday night, Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu congratulated Scott and fellow category winners for "sharing their energy and creative spirit with Victorian readers and enriching the literary and cultural life of Victoria".
The award recognises the nation's top writing talent and celebrates Victoria's literary culture, Mr Baillieu said.
Scott's novel has already won him $42,000 after it took out the Miles Franklin Award in June.
And from the Pan Macmillan Australia website:
Big-hearted, moving and richly rewarding, That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century in the area around what is now Albany, Western Australia. In playful, musical prose, the book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers.
The novel's hero is a young Noongar man named Bobby Wabalanginy. Clever, resourceful and eager to please, Bobby befriends the new arrivals, joining them hunting whales, tilling the land, exploring the hinterland and establishing the fledgling colony. He is even welcomed into a prosperous local white family where he falls for the daughter, Christine, a beautiful young woman who sees no harm in a liaison with a native.
But slowly – by design and by accident – things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is developing. Stock mysteriously start to disappear; crops are destroyed; there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind. A friend to everyone, Bobby is forced to take sides: he must choose between the old world and the new, his ancestors and his new friends. Inexorably, he is drawn into a series of events that will forever change not just the colony but the future of Australia...
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Author photo right - Tom Blachford
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