AustLit

'Australiana opens with a break-in. Lifting away a flyscreen, strangers climb into a man’s house, help themselves to his biscuits. The crime doesn’t feel important – it’s the fourth in a month, we’re told – but the intrusion does. It evokes the entanglements of small towns, the way in which lives intersect, physical proximity breaking down the barriers of class and culture and personal choice that can divide urban populations into subcultures. As a declaration of intent, the image of trespass is pretty clear: there is no real privacy in this town, and as readers we’re about to gain access.' (Introduction)

'Yumna Kassab’s Australiana: A Novel is mostly set in an unnamed regional town, likely Tamworth, in northern NSW and in other nearby locations like Barraba, Uralla and the Pilliga. It tells of the lives of ordinary people, their relationships with the land and homes in which they dwell, the objects in which they seek solace, their hopes and losses.' (Introduction)

'There are more Australias than I can count. Though we inhabit some of them together, many we not only don’t share with others, but couldn’t even fathom sharing. Some are real, most are mythical. Politicians love to invoke a certain mythical version of Australia whenever they need to appeal to some sort of nationalistic impulse. When it comes to regional Australia, that is, all of the places outside of this country’s capital cities, the mythology is populated with clichés about rural settler life. We all know them: there are the farmers battling against drought just to feed the ingrate cities, old saws about how rural towns are places where ‘real’ Aussies live. Yumna Kassab’s latest work, Australiana, a multifaceted exploration of regional Australia, goes a long way toward dispelling such limiting narratives. Kassab presents a full and rich account of life outside of major cities, and, continuing the moral project begun in her debut work, House of Youssef (Giramondo, 2019), she draws us into this world to separate myth from reality.'(Introduction)