AustLit

'Sam Watson's novel, The Kadaitcha Sung: A Seductive Tale of Sorcery, Eroticism and Corruption, is outstanding in a number of ways. Watson skilfully moves between temporal and spatial dimensions, weaving his brutal tale of a sorcerer avenging two related expressions of a major catastrophe: the interruption of Aboriginal cosmology by a rogue Kadaitcha and the British colonisation of Australia. It is a confronting text, in which homicidal and sexual violence erupts or bubbles just below the surface. The challenge of Watson's novel is that it assaults the reader with the undiluted hatred Tommy Gubba and his warriors have for and express towards whites, and towards blacks who have joined forces with whites. It is a black representation of the continuing colonial interface, particularly exploring the strategies employed by southeastern Queensland and northern New South Wales blacks in managing their relations with whites and with other blacks, especially through the adoption of 'Jack-Jacky roles', the exercise of sorcery, employment of supernatural forces and the use of violence. Watson clearly locates the Native Mounted Police in Brisbane, during the present and past. It is in his collapsing of time that the atrocities can be graphically portrayed as one continuous and contemporary flow of violence, not interrupted by the spaces of time or place. This serves to magnify the episodes and overwhelms the reader, allowing her or him no escape.' (Introduction)