AustLit logo
Eva Sallis Eva Sallis i(A30668 works by) (birth name: Eva Katerina Hornung) (a.k.a. Eva Katerina Sallis)
Also writes as: Eva Hornung
Born: Established: 1964 Bendigo, Bendigo area, Ballarat - Bendigo area, Victoria, ;
Gender: Female
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.

BiographyHistory

Eva Sallis is the daughter of Richard Hornung, who was born in Palestine to a German family, and his wife Briar (Mitcalfe) who was born in New Zealand. She has five brothers and three sisters, many of whom are professional musicians.

Sallis has an MA (1991, on the poetry of T. S. Eliot and the philosophy of F. H. Bradley) and a PhD (1996) on the various versions of the 1001 Nights, both from the University of Adelaide. She has published several academic articles and reviews, and a book of literary criticism, Sheherazade Through the Looking Glass: The Metamorphosis of the 1001 Nights (Curzon, UK 1999). She has a working knowledge of German, French and Arabic and has travelled many times to the Middle East, furthering Arabic studies. She travels regularly to Yemen, in particular. Sallis has been awarded a number of grants and awards for her work, including an ArtsSA Emerging Artists Grant in 1998 and an AustralianCouncil Literature Fund grant in 2000.

Since 1989 Sallis has worked at times in all three South Australian universities; researching, tutoring and lecturing mainly in English, but also in Communication and the Media, and in Arab Culture and Architecture. In 1997 she co-founded the assessment service Driftwood Manuscripts.

Her novels have won a wide range of awards, including the Australian/Vogel Literary Award, the Nita May Dobbie Award, the Asher Literary Award, and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award

In 2008, Sallis reverted to the name Eva Hornung.

Most Referenced Works

Affiliation Notes

  • Born elsewhere; moved to SA

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The Marsh Birds Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2005 Z1184434 2005 single work novel (taught in 2 units) 'Dhurgham As-Samarra'i is a twelve-year-old boy, the youngest child in a middle-class Baghdadi family. He finds himself at the Great Mosque in Damascus in Syria, not knowing what has happened to his parents and sister who fled Baghdad with him. The only thing he knows is that he was told that if the family became separated they were to meet at the Mosque. Alone, he waits and waits. This is the story of what befalls Dhurgham after he realises his family won't be turning up; it is the story of his journey into adulthood, his journey through bitterness to forgiveness, and his journey from Iraq to Syria, to Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and beyond. Detained after arriving in Australia, Dhurgham, resilient yet unable to deal with his past, becomes an untried criminal existing in limbo as his file is processed. Fleetingly, New Zealand offers a refuge, family and affection but he is caught again in a nightmare of red-tape and confinement until his hope turns into anger and his past must be faced and resolved. What do you do when you belong nowhere, with no family, no homeland, and no hope for the future? Who do you become?' (Source: publisher website.)
2005 shortlisted Colin Roderick Award
2006 highly commended ASAL Awards ALS Gold Medal
2006 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
2006 shortlisted Festival Awards for Literature (SA) Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature South Australian Literary Awards Award for Fiction
2006 shortlisted South East Asia and South Pacific Region Best Book
2005 inaugural winner Asher Literary Award
2005 shortlisted The Age Book of the Year Award Fiction Prize
2006 special mention Manning Clark House National Cultural Awards Individual Category
2007 longlisted International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
y separately published work icon Mahjar : A Novel St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 2003 Z1022419 2003 single work novel Zein, Farhan, Rayya and their circle are migrants of the fifties, yearning for both their future and their past. Their children, Salah, Rima, Hussein and their friends are young Australians with a distinctive voice and place succeeding or failing in the clash between generations, struggling for independence in the face of their parents' hopes and dreams. Abd al-Rahman is an Iraqi refugee who has lost everything. And Ali, Ahmad, Akram and Yusuf are children in Palestine and Baghdad who have no future, but whose stories soar.
Mahjar is about lives, journeys and stories, about exile and the experiences that push people to new homelands. Through interwoven stories and fables it evokes Australia's intimate connection with the Middle East. (Source: Back cover)
2004 winner Queensland Premier's Literary Awards Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award This award was known as the Steele Rudd Australian Short Story Award from 1988-2007.
y separately published work icon Hiam St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1998 Z804000 1998 single work novel (taught in 4 units)

"The world had changed. As far as the eye could see, the earth was red. It wasn't orange, or soil red, or brown red, or perhaps all of them at once. It was profound rich red, glittering deeply in the mid-morning light. She was vaguely aware of having known that somewhere in Australia the land was this colour but the reality of it was startling and stunning.'

Hiam is the story of a journey through both a psychic and geographic landscape, a journey through disintegration and loss. Hiam, an Arab migrant woman, abandons Adelaide to unravel her life and memories on the road North after her family and identity have been destroyed. In the course of the novel she weaves an identity out of past, present, stories, dreams and the Australian landscape with which she engages for the first time.

On one level, this is the story of a migrant's experience in a strange land, a novel which explores the pressures, fragilities and strengths of exiled communities. It is also a story of universal human grief, individual courage and the will, not only to survive, but to live fully in the world."

Source.

1999 shortlisted The Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award
1999 winner Kibble Literary Awards Nita May Dobbie Award
1997 winner The Australian / Vogel National Literary Award (for an unpublished manuscript)
Last amended 6 Mar 2018 10:25:01
Other mentions of "" in AustLit:
    X