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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Growing up in an Italian family in 1950s Queensland, Rafaela longs to move to Melbourne and start her own life. When she finally seizes her chance, floodwaters halt her train's progress south, and a beautiful young Sikh scientist named Chanchal captures her heart. While both their families search for their wayward children, Rafi and Chanchal forge ahead with their life together, living briefly in isolation and bliss on a farm, unaware that their story is travelling. Set against the stifling heat of the Queensland canefields, the lush farmland of northern New South Wales and the bustle of Melbourne in the early 1960s, Chanchal's and Rafi's stories unfold and intersect over the following years, as their chance encounter becomes a story of two countries on the cusp of modernity. Provenance is an accomplished and original novel that explores colour and cultural difference at a moment in India and Australia's post-Independence and post-war history when the West was keen, as one character puts it, to get on with the sexy part of the twentieth century.' (Publisher's blurb).
Notes
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Dedication: For Michiel, with love.
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Epigraphs: As the saying goes, 'The hottest kiln produces the finest china'. - June Dally-Watkins, The Secrets Behind My Smile.
Call everyone noble, none is low born...- Guru Nanak, Guru Granth.
The disproportion in their fortune was nothing; it did not give her a moments regret, but to have no family...- Jane Austen, Persuasion.
But one does not interrogate, no matter how tactfully, a couple so newly formed. They were at an age, after all, when everything looms larger than it is, when nothing can ever, as we say, simply arrange itself. - Colette, Earthly Paradise.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Sharp Insight to Blunt Edge
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 21 April 2007; (p. 17)
— Review of The Crimes of Billy Fish 2007 single work novel ; Provenance 2007 single work novel -
Running Away towards Surrender
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 14 April 2007; (p. 24)
— Review of Provenance 2007 single work novel ; The Pepper Gate 2007 single work novel -
Untitled
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 3 April vol. 125 no. 6563 2007; (p. 61)
— Review of Provenance 2007 single work novel -
This Week's Selections
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 31 March 2007; (p. 10)
— Review of Provenance 2007 single work novel -
Lovers Bogged Down in Writer's Research
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 31 March - 1 April 2007; (p. 8-9)
— Review of Provenance 2007 single work novel
-
Love Vaults Prosaic Barriers
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 10-11 March 2007; (p. 35)
— Review of Provenance 2007 single work novel -
Untitled
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , 16 - 29 March no. 312 2007; (p. 23)
— Review of Provenance 2007 single work novel -
Lovers Bogged Down in Writer's Research
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 31 March - 1 April 2007; (p. 8-9)
— Review of Provenance 2007 single work novel -
This Week's Selections
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 31 March 2007; (p. 10)
— Review of Provenance 2007 single work novel -
Untitled
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 3 April vol. 125 no. 6563 2007; (p. 61)
— Review of Provenance 2007 single work novel
Last amended 10 Jul 2007 10:30:35
Settings:
- Queensland,
- Melbourne, Victoria,
- New South Wales,
- 1960s
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