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NBC Banjo Award for Non-Fiction
Subcategory of NBC Banjo Awards
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History

The Banjo Awards were administered by the National Book Council and sponsored by Collins Booksellers and the Herald Sun.

Latest Winners / Recipients

Year: 1997

winner y separately published work icon The Europeans in Australia : A History Alan Atkinson , Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1997 Z1178966 1997 reference non-fiction

'In the first volume of his history of Australia, Alan Atkinson covers the first impact of European power on Australia. He argues that the Europeans were not simply conquerors, that their own cultures were infinitely complex, thickly-woven with ideas about spirituality, authority, self and land, all of which influenced the development of Australia.' (Publication summary)

For volume 1 (The Beginning).

Year: 1996

joint winner y separately published work icon The World of My Past Abraham Biderman , Melbourne : AHB Publications , 1995 Z1178995 1995 single work autobiography

The autobiography of the author who survived the ghetto in Lodz, Poland, the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau where his parents died, and also of surviving the camps of Althammer, Dora and Bergen-Belsen. This book is the memorial to his parents and to his brother who also did not survive, and to the other victims of the Holocaust.

joint winner y separately published work icon Fate of a Free People Henry Reynolds , Ringwood : Penguin , 1995 Z1179007 1995 single work non-fiction The 19th century 'black wars' in Tasmania with a response, in the revised 2004 edition, to Keith Windshuttle's writings about Aboriginal history. Awarded to the 1995 edition.

Year: 1995

winner y separately published work icon Rethinking Life and Death : The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics Peter Singer , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 1994 Z1179820 1994 single work non-fiction

Year: 1994

winner y separately published work icon Christina Stead : A Biography Hazel Rowley , Port Melbourne : Heinemann , 1993 Z202981 1993 single work biography

'Like the author herself, Christina Stead’s novels were challenging and engrossing. Raised by a narcissistic father, Stead left for London at the age of twenty-six and soon met William Blake, a writer, broker, and Marxist political economist who became her life partner. His personal ambitions and their politics resulted in a nomadic existence, with Stead sidestepping the traditional feminine role in exchange for a career. She struggled to find an audience for her work, however, only succeeding late in life with the reissue of The Man Who Loved Children. Hazel Rowley’s richly detailed and even-handed biography spans Stead’s life, expertly blending her encoded personal papers with interviews of her closest confidants. Masterfully written and researched, Christina Stead is a fascinating chronicle of one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Open Road ed.)

Year: 1993

winner y separately published work icon Shearers' Motel Roger McDonald , Chippendale : Picador , 1992 Z50361 1992 single work prose autobiography travel
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