AustLit logo

AustLit

image of person or book cover 5514012689495140038.jpg
This image has been sourced from online.
y separately published work icon The Savage Crows single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1976... 1976 The Savage Crows
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This revelatory story of the most tragic, cruel, brave and misguided episode in Australia's history – the 'saving' of a unique race, the Tasmanian Aborigines – is seen through the eyes of an obsessive young present-day narrator. Breathtaking and visionary in its scope, The Savage Crows breaks new fictional ground in its affecting portrayal of the collision of worlds, generations and mythologies. From suburban apathy and cynicism blossoms a wild, foolhardy and beautiful hinterland of time and space.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Penguin 2001 ed.)

Exhibitions

18388415
18387981
VIEW ALL EXHIBITIONS

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Collins , 1976 .
      image of person or book cover 5514012689495140038.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 264p.
      ISBN: 0002215896
    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Picador , 1987 .
      image of person or book cover 7496397269708390447.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 264p.
      Description: port.
      ISBN: 0330270834
    • Ringwood, Ringwood - Croydon - Kilsyth area, Melbourne - East, Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2001 .
      image of person or book cover 7738833286158266509.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 264p.p.
      ISBN: 0411007990
Alternative title: A gyilkos varjak : regény
Language: Hungarian
VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording.
Find library holdings on Trove

Related Works

VIEW ALL RELATED WORKS (2)

Works about this Work

Walk on the Wild Side : Literature in the Time of Choleric Susan K. Martin , 2013 single work essay
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 28 no. 1/2 2013; (p. 75-83)
The Other Side Robert Drewe , 2012 single work column
— Appears in: The West Australian , 1 September 2012; (p. 22)
Lunch Booking Robert Drewe , 2012 single work autobiography
— Appears in: The West Australian , 1 September 2012; (p. 22)
'Grace of the Crocodiles' : Towards Deterritorialization Marc Delrez , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Engaging with Literature of Commitment : The Worldly Scholar (Volume 2) 2012; (p. 231-244)

'In an article entitled 'Minimal Selves,' Stuart Hall suggests that 'identity' is formed at the unstable point where the 'unspeakable' stories of subjectivity meet the narratives of history, of a culture.' This essay is an attempt to explore just such an articulation of identity, as it crystallizes at the boundary between the private and the public in one of Robert Drewe's most recent novels, Grace (2005)...' (From author's introduction 231)
y separately published work icon The Roving Party : Extinction Discourse in the Literature of Tasmania Rohan Wilson , 2009 Z1775389 2009 single work thesis 'The nineteenth century discourse of extinction - a consensus of thought primarily based upon the assumption that 'savage' races would be displaced by the arrival of European civilisation - provided the intellectual foundation for policies which resulted in Aboriginal dispossession, internment, and death in Tasmania. For a long time, the Aboriginal Tasmanians were thought to have been annihilated. However, this claim is now understood to be fanciful. Aboriginality is no longer defined as a racial category but rather as an identity that has its basis in community. Nevertheless, extinction discourse continues to shape the features of modern literature about Tasmania.

'The first chapter of this dissertation will examine how extinction discourse was imagined in the nineteenth century and will trace the parallels that contemporary fiction about contact history shares with it. The novels examined include Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World by Mudrooroo, The Savage Crows by Robert Drewe, Manganinnie by Beth Roberts, and Wanting by Richard Flanagan. The extinctionist elements in these novels include a tendency to euglogise about the 'lost race' and a reliance on the trope of the last man or woman.

'The second chapter of the dissertation will examine novels that attempt to construct a representation of Aboriginality without reference to extinction. These texts subvert and ironise extinction discourse as a way of breaking the discursive continuities with colonialism and establishing a more nuanced view of Aboriginal identity in a post-colonial context. Novels analysed here include Drift by Brian Castro, Elysium by Robert Edric, and English Passengers by Matthew Kneale. However, in attempting to arrive at new understandings about Aboriginality, non-Aboriginal authors are hindered by the epistemological difficulties of knowing and representing the Other. In particular, they seem unable to extricate themselves from the binaries of colonialism.' (Trove)
Aborigines, Lost and Found Cliff Hanna , 1977 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , March vol. 37 no. 1 1977; (p. 111-117)
— Review of The Glass Canoe David Ireland , 1976 single work novel ; The Savage Crows Robert Drewe , 1976 single work novel
[Review] Tales of Mystery and Romance [and] The Savage Crows D. Green , 1977 single work review
— Appears in: The National Times , 12-17 September 1977; (p. 19-20)
— Review of Tales of Mystery and Romance Frank Moorhouse , 1977 selected work short story ; The Savage Crows Robert Drewe , 1976 single work novel
[Review] The Savage Crows D. R. Burns , 1976 single work review
— Appears in: Nation Review , 19-15 November 1976; (p. 117)
— Review of The Savage Crows Robert Drewe , 1976 single work novel
A Journey of Discovery Manning Clark , 1976 single work review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 16 October vol. 98 no. 5028 1976; (p. 58)
— Review of The Savage Crows Robert Drewe , 1976 single work novel
[Review] The Savage Crows R. Hall , 1976 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian Weekend Magazine , 23 October 1976; (p. 33)
— Review of The Savage Crows Robert Drewe , 1976 single work novel
Getting a Head : Dismembering and Remembering in Robert Drewe's The Savage Crows Susan K. Martin , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 21 no. 1 2003; (p. 54-66) The article examines the use of bodily metaphors of dismemberment and beheading in Drewe's novel about the fate of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people, The Savage Crows, in the light of the Western historic notion of the 'social body' and the body of the state. It concludes that 'In a critique of the ways in which contemporary Australian society rests on but denies the fragmentation and dismemberment of Aboriginal communities in the past, this novel dismembers and fragments a contemporary Aboriginal community, and in the process, repeats the theft of William Lanney's head for white purposes, in order to produce a coherent (white social) body ... at the close of the narrative' (65).
The Savage Crows: A Personal Chronology Robert Drewe , 1983 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Kunapipi , vol. 5 no. 1 1983; (p. 65-72)
Moments of Encounter in Mudrooroo's Wooreddy Maria Srinivasan , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Austral-Asian Encounters : From Literature and Women's Studies to Politics and Tourism 2003; (p. 204-216)
In the Service of Complex Truths : The Aims and Art of Robert Drewe's Fiction Michael Ackland , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 50 no. 2005; (p. 26-41) A discussion of Robert Drewe's repeated questioning in his writings of notions of 'truth'.
First Voice : Robert Drewe Looks Back on the Writing of His First Novel Robert Drewe , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Age , 11 March 2006; (p. 29)
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (42)
Last amended 4 Dec 2019 14:54:42
Subjects:
  • Tasmania,
  • Sydney, New South Wales,
  • Perth, Western Australia,
  • Flinders Island, Bass Strait Islands, Tasmania,
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X