Kate Grenville – författare

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024A DAILY MAIL NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2023LONGLISTED FOR BEST FICTION IN THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS AUSTRALIA 2024Born into the sweat and drudgery of a New South Wales sheep farm at the end of the 19th century, Dolly Maunder is different to her siblings. She will not endure the small, servile existence of a wife. Dolly, bright, ambitious and stubborn, dreams of a different fate, of building something that she truly owns.She will do whatever it takes to be the woman she deserves to be. Even with a husband and children, Dolly pushes the boundaries of what is 'proper' and what a wife and mother ought to do, as war spreads across Europe and the rules are forever changed. But every life has its limits. What happens when Dolly's wanderlust finally risks taking her too far?

Grenville makes awkward atmospheres and fumbling encounters wonderfully vivid. Read it and cringe' The TimesThe Idea of Perfection is a funny and touching romance between two people who've given up on love. Set in the eccentric little backwater of Karakarook, New South Wales, pop. 1374, it tells the story of Douglas Cheeseman, a gawky engineer with jug-handle ears, and Harley Savage, a woman altogether too big and too abrupt for comfort.Harley is in Karakarook to foster 'Heritage', and Douglas is there to pull down the quaint old Bent Bridge. From day one, they're on a collison course. But out of this unpromising conjunction of opposites, something unexpected happens: sometimes even better than perfection.'From these two reticent characters, besieged by two lifetimes of regret, doubt and dismay, Grenville manufactures an extraordinary comedy of manners, made all more powerful by her own reticence as a writer' Guardian'Outrageously entertaining' Daily Mail'Mined throughout with little pockets of danger and depth' Guardian'A truly amazing writer' Rosie Boycott, chair of the Orange Prize jury

Albion Gidley Singer appears an entirely proper man: husband, father, pillar of the community. But he is a hollow man, and within him are frightened and frighteningly dark places from which spring loathing and fear of female flesh. And the kind of violence that might call itself love.Dark Places tells the story of this man - two parts monster to one part buffoon - and of his growing obsession. As the horror mounts, we gain a terrifying glimpse of the male ego's dark side, and of the destruction it can wreak upon itself and others. Yet at the same time Kate Grenville keeps alive the reader's sympathy for this doomed figure. This is a novel that fearlessly confronts the aspects of ourselves from which we normally recoil.

*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024*FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST Sarah is the youngest daughter of William Thornhill, a ruthless man who made a life for himself and his family in New South Wales after being sentenced from England. When Sarah finds true love with Jack, an older boy with mixed ancestry, she also encounters disapproval: someone in her family will not tolerate their relationship. The reason lies in both the past and the present, and it will take Sarah across an ocean, to a place she never imagined she would go, to discover if her love is ever going to be enough.

With an introduction by Evie WyldThe Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville is a funny and touching romance between two people who've given up on love. Set in the eccentric little backwater of Karakarook, New South Wales, pop. 1374, it tells the story of Douglas Cheeseman, a gawky engineer with jug-handle ears, and Harley Savage, a woman altogether too big and too abrupt for comfort.Harley is in Karakarook to foster 'Heritage', and Douglas is there to pull down the quaint old Bent Bridge. From day one, they're on a collision course. But out of this unpromising conjunction of opposites, something unexpected happens: sometimes even better than perfection.

With an introduction by Evie WyldThe Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville is a funny and touching romance between two people who've given up on love. Set in the eccentric little backwater of Karakarook, New South Wales, pop. 1374, it tells the story of Douglas Cheeseman, a gawky engineer with jug-handle ears, and Harley Savage, a woman altogether too big and too abrupt for comfort.Harley is in Karakarook to foster 'Heritage', and Douglas is there to pull down the quaint old Bent Bridge. From day one, they're on a collision course. But out of this unpromising conjunction of opposites, something unexpected happens: sometimes even better than perfection.

What does it mean to be on land taken from others?

‘What does it mean to be on land that was taken from other people? Now that we know how the taking was done, what do we do with that knowledge?’

Kate Grenville is no stranger to the past. Her success and fame as a writer exploded when she published The Secret River in 2005, a bestseller based on the story of her convict ancestor, an early settler on the Hawkesbury River.

More than two decades on, and following the defeat of the Voice referendum, Grenville is still grappling with what it means to descend from people who were, as she puts it, ‘on the sharp edge of the moving blade that was colonisation’.

So she decides to go on a kind of pilgrimage, back through the places her family stories happened, and put the stories and the First People back into the same frame, on the same country, to try to think about those questions. This gripping book is the result of that journey.

'Grenville's pages are streaked with light … Kate Grenville is, like Kim Scott and Lia Hills here and Percival Everett in the US, turning our faces towards the two dazzlingly contemporary questions central to all of us, Colonisation and Race.'—The Age

'A beautifully written exploration of geography, spirituality and settlement … Grenville is to be celebrated for vulnerably setting forth into our darkest corners, unsettling us all.' —ArtsHub

'Effortless and artful … Unsettled, and the collective memory and identity it invokes, speaks powerfully to a structure of postcolonial feeling within Australian society' —The Conversation

'A gripping, profound look at colonisation that puts First Nations' stories back in the frame.'—Harper's Bazaar

'An unforgettable reimagining and retelling of history that is, in turns, intimate, unsparing – and confronting.' —Good Weekend

'This is a book of deep and complex musings with sharp illuminations – tiny gold nuggets rising up through the hidden sands of time … The book allows the reader space to breathe somewhere ­between the worlds of fact and fiction, and feel into the space ­between the past and present. Through her own journey, Grenville gives her readers a road map for a deeper understanding.'—The Australian

A mesmerising reconstruction of a hundred-year-old true story Kate Grenville discovered in the archives I stood there holding the hundred-year-old letter with a feeling that was familiar from other archives, other bulging files of dog-eared paper. It was a blood-running-fast, itchy-palm, eyes-wide-open feeling of stumbling on something. A story Rummaging around in the archives one afternoon, Kate Grenville comes across an innocuous-looking file full of letters about a schoolteacher in country New South Wales. Intrigued, she keeps reading and discovers a tale far more curious and complex than first appears. Was Joseph Connor savagely beating the students in his care? Or was he the victim of a small-town vendetta? And what went so terribly wrong between him and his daughter?Ultimately, Grenville simply has to know: was Connor a victim or a villain? Part colonial cold case, part locked-room mystery, part the dance of a writers imagination among facts and semi-facts, The Country Schoolmaster is a book like no other. In it, the novelist comes to understand the seductive pleasure of story-making, but also its dangerous limitations.

*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024*FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST London, 1806. William Thornhill, happily wedded to his childhood sweetheart Sal, is a waterman on the River Thames. Life is tough but bearable until William makes a mistake, a bad mistake for which he and his family are made to pay dearly.His sentence: to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. Soon Thornhill, a man no better or worse than most, has to make the most difficult decision of his life.

*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024*FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST In 1788 Daniel Rooke sets out on a journey that will change the course of his life. As a lieutenant in the First Fleet, he lands on the wild and unknown shores of New South Wales. There he sets up an observatory to chart the stars. But this country will prove far more revelatory than the skies above.Based on real events, The Lieutenant tells the unforgettable story of Rooke's connection to an Aboriginal child - a remarkable friendship that resonates across the oceans and the centuries.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024A DAILY MAIL NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2023LONGLISTED FOR BEST FICTION IN THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS AUSTRALIA 2024Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society's long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence.Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able - despite the cost - to make a life she could call her own.

FROM THE WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING, BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR'One of Australia's finest writers' Daily Telegraph 'Grenville inhabits characters with a rare completeness' Jay Parini'I stood there holding the hundred-year-old letter with a feeling that was familiar from other archives, other bulging files of dog-eared paper. It was a blood-running-fast, itchy-palm, eyes-wide-open feeling of stumbling on something. A story . . .'Rummaging around in the Archives one afternoon, Kate Grenville comes across an innocuous-looking file of letters about a schoolteacher in New South Wales. Intrigued, she keeps reading - and discovers a tale far more curious and complex than she ever could have imagined. Contradictory perspectives on Joseph Connor are everywhere, and many of them eerily sinister. Was he savagely beating the students in his care? Or was he the victim of a small-town vendetta? And what went so terribly wrong between him and his daughter?Grenville simply has to know: was Connor a victim, or a villain? Part colonial cold case, part dance of a writer's imagination, The Country Schoolmaster is a book like no other. In it, the novelist comes to understand the seductive pleasure of story-making, but also its dangerous limitations.

*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024*FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION It is 1788. When twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth marries the arrogant and hot-headed soldier John Macarthur, she soon realises she has made a terrible mistake. Forced to travel with him to New South Wales, she arrives to find Sydney Town a brutal, dusty, hungry place of makeshift shelters, failing crops, scheming and rumours. All her life she has learned to fold herself up small. Now, in the vast landscapes of an unknown continent, Elizabeth has to discover a strength she never imagined, and passions she could never express.Inspired by the real life of a remarkable woman, this is an extraordinarily rich, beautifully wrought novel of resilience, courage and the mystery of human desire.

*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024*FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST As a child in twentieth-century Australia, Lilian Una Singer struggles to escape a suffocating existence in the home of her tyrannical Victorian father and her elegant but ineffectual mother. Madness, cruelty and sexuality permeate the family's upper crust world and influence Lilian's upbringing. As a grown woman, Lilian has to make difficult choices if she wants to reject the idea that her story is already fixed, written by others. Will she succeed in making her life her own, despite her parents and her environment, by triumphantly savouring every moment?

*NEW NOVEL RESTLESS DOLLY MAUNDER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024*FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-SHORTLISTED AND WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST Kate Grenville's The Secret River was one of the most loved novels of 2006. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and awarded the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, the story of William Thornhill and his journey from London to the other side of the world has moved and exhilarated hundreds of thousands of readers. Searching for the Secret River tells the story of how Grenville came to write this wonderful book. It is in itself an amazing story, beginning with Grenville's great-great-great grandfather. Grenville starts to investigate her ancestor, hoping to understand his life. She pursues him from Sydney to London and back, and slowly she begins to realise she must write about him. Searching for the Secret River maps this creative journey into fiction, and illuminates the importance of family in all our lives.

William Thornhill arrives in New South Wales a convict from the slums of London. Upon earning his pardon he discovers that this new world offers something he didn't dare dream of: a place to call his own.But as he plants a crop and lays claim to the soil on the banks of the Hawkesbury River, he finds that this land is not his to take. Its ancient custodians are the Dharug people.A deeply moving and unflinching journey into Australia's dark history, Andrew Bovell's adaptation of Kate Grenville's acclaimed novel The Secret River was first performed by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2013.The play had its UK premiere in August 2019, as part of the Edinburgh International Festival, before transferring to the National Theatre, London.This edition includes an introduction by adapter Andrew Bovell, a foreword by historian Henry Reynolds, and music used in the original production.'The Secret River is a sad book, beautifully written and, at times, almost unbearable with the weight of loss, competing distresses and the impossibility of making amends' Observer on the novel The Secret River