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y separately published work icon Sweet Water : Stolen Land single work   novel   historical fiction  
Issue Details: First known date: 1993... 1993 Sweet Water : Stolen Land
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The destinies of two families, black and white, are fatally interwoven... in this frontier novel. Racial brutality and the tragic account of the Myall Creek massacre underscore the story of Ginny and Wollumbuy, Kamilaroi people of Warrumbungle Range. Mysterious killings follow the arrival Karl and Gundrun Maresch, a German couple who establish a Lutheran mission near the young settlement of Coonabarabran.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

Exhibitions

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Notes

  • Dedication: To my wife Roslyn my daughter Tanya and son James my (late) / father, Jack; my mother, Anne my brothers: John, (late) Kevin, Roderick, Gregory / my sisters: Elaine, Lynne.
  • Preamble by Phillip McLaren, September, 1992 (pp. vii-viii)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording.

Works about this Work

Philip McLaren and the Indigenous-Australian Crime Novel Cornelis Martin Renes , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 20 2016; (p. 22-37)
'This paper locates the postcolonial crime novel as a space for disenfranchised groups to write back to the marginalisation inherent in the process of colonisation, and explores the example of Australia. From its inception in the mid-19th century, Australian crime fiction reflected upon the challenging harshness and otherness of the Australian experience for the free and convict settler, expelled from the metropole. It created a series of popular subgenres derived from the convict narrative proper, while more ‘standard’ modes of crime fiction, popularised in and through British and American crime fiction, were late to develop. Whereas Australian crime fiction has given expression to the white experience of the continent in manifold ways, up until recently it made no room for Indigenous voices – with the exception of the classic Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte series written by the prolific Arthur Upfield in the first half of the 20th century. For the longest time, this absence reflected the dispossession, dispersal and disenfranchisement of the colonised Indigenous peoples at large; there were neither Aboriginal voices nor Aboriginal authors, which made the textual space of the Australian crime novel a discursive terra nullius. This paper will look at the only Indigenous-Australian author to date with a substantial body of work in crime fiction, Philip McLaren, and elucidate how his four crime novels break new ground in Australian crime fiction by embedding themselves within a political framework of Aboriginal resilience and resistance to neo/colonialism. Written as of the 1990s, McLaren’s oeuvre is eclectic in that it does not respond to traditional formats of Australian crime fiction, shifts between generic subtypes and makes incursions into other genres. The paper concludes that McLaren’s oeuvre has not been conceived of as the work of a crime writer per se, but rather that its form and content are deeply informed by the racist violence and oppression that still affects Indigenous-Australian society today, the expression of which the crime novel is particularly well geared to.' (Publication abstract)
McLaren Set for New Book Andy Parks , 2015 single work column
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 17 June no. 603 2015; (p. 15)
...author philip McLaren says he is getting ready to write his "John Grisham novel"...'
Reflections : Booking Destiny Kirstie Parker , 2010 single work biography
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 3 November no. 488 2010; (p. 21-22)
Sex Encounters of the Strange Kind : Forms of Postcolonial Discourse in Three Australian Novels Xavier Pons , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth , Autumn vol. 29 no. 1 2006; (p. 47-58) Messengers of Eros : Representations of Sex in Australian Writing 2009; (p. 197-210)
'The paper focuses on scenes from three Australian novels ... . Through an analysis of the representation of sexual intercourse by the three novelists, the paper highlights the sense of strangeness associated with the postcolonial, born out of the colonists' feeling that they do not truly belong to their adopted land and must force themselves upon it. Sex, which can be an expression of love, here degenerates into lust, violence or parody. It becomes an expression of the unnerving alienation which overcomes Europeans in a postcolonial context. Sex here as a struggle for domination is a paradigm of the perverted human relations which are inherent in the postcolonial condition. In his own fashion, and through a variety of narrative modes, each of the three (male) novelists illustrates the unbearable strangeness of being in an alien land.' (47)
'A Vision through the Smoky Haze' : Viewing Corroboree in Selected Australian Novels Melinda Rose Jewell , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , vol. 20 no. 1&2 2005; (p. 31-54)
"Fiction portraying the experiences of Australian Indigenous people often contains depictions of the 'corroboree'. This representation commonly conveys a scenario in which Indigenous people dance while being watched by white spectators. This establishes a relationship between seeing and knowing that locates power in the hands of the white observers. Later in this century, both non-Indigenous, then more typically Indigenous authors, deconstruct the power structures at work in these portrayals." (31)
Unaipon Award Winners John McLaren , 1995 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 138 1995; (p. 76-77)

— Review of Bridge of Triangles John Muk Muk Burke , 1994 single work novel ; Sweet Water : Stolen Land Philip McLaren , 1993 single work novel
Forecasts Susan Powell , 1993 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Bookseller & Publisher , July vol. 73 no. 1039 1993; (p. 33)

— Review of Sweet Water : Stolen Land Philip McLaren , 1993 single work novel
Love and Death in the Bush Geoff Page , 1993 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 28 August 1993; (p. 49)

— Review of Sweet Water : Stolen Land Philip McLaren , 1993 single work novel
Stereotypes Self-Destruct Katharine England , 1993 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser Magazine , 23 October 1993; (p. 21)

— Review of Sweet Water : Stolen Land Philip McLaren , 1993 single work novel ; Headlines Laurie Bookluck , Debra Adelaide , 1993 single work novel
Forensic Gothic Bill Perrett , 1993 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 156 1993; (p. 40)

— Review of Sweet Water : Stolen Land Philip McLaren , 1993 single work novel
Philip McLaren Mireille Vignol (interviewer), 2002 single work interview
Sex Encounters of the Strange Kind : Forms of Postcolonial Discourse in Three Australian Novels Xavier Pons , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Commonwealth , Autumn vol. 29 no. 1 2006; (p. 47-58) Messengers of Eros : Representations of Sex in Australian Writing 2009; (p. 197-210)
'The paper focuses on scenes from three Australian novels ... . Through an analysis of the representation of sexual intercourse by the three novelists, the paper highlights the sense of strangeness associated with the postcolonial, born out of the colonists' feeling that they do not truly belong to their adopted land and must force themselves upon it. Sex, which can be an expression of love, here degenerates into lust, violence or parody. It becomes an expression of the unnerving alienation which overcomes Europeans in a postcolonial context. Sex here as a struggle for domination is a paradigm of the perverted human relations which are inherent in the postcolonial condition. In his own fashion, and through a variety of narrative modes, each of the three (male) novelists illustrates the unbearable strangeness of being in an alien land.' (47)
'A Vision through the Smoky Haze' : Viewing Corroboree in Selected Australian Novels Melinda Rose Jewell , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , vol. 20 no. 1&2 2005; (p. 31-54)
"Fiction portraying the experiences of Australian Indigenous people often contains depictions of the 'corroboree'. This representation commonly conveys a scenario in which Indigenous people dance while being watched by white spectators. This establishes a relationship between seeing and knowing that locates power in the hands of the white observers. Later in this century, both non-Indigenous, then more typically Indigenous authors, deconstruct the power structures at work in these portrayals." (31)
Reflections : Booking Destiny Kirstie Parker , 2010 single work biography
— Appears in: Koori Mail , 3 November no. 488 2010; (p. 21-22)
Unspeakable Bodies : Representing the Aboriginal in Australian Critical Discourse Suvendrini Perera , 1994 single work criticism
— Appears in: Meridian , May vol. 13 no. 1 1994; (p. 15-26)
Last amended 19 Jul 2018 05:53:21
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