The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
10 best books like The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Thomas Keneally): Cloudstreet, A Fortunate Life, Dirt Music, My Brilliant Career, My Place, The Harp in the South, Carpentaria, Monkey Grip, My Brother Jack, The Tree Of Man
| Author | Tim Winton |
| ISBN | 0743234413 |
Hailed as a classic, Tim Winton's masterful family saga is both a paean to working-class Australians and an unflinching examination of the human heart's capacity for sorrow, joy, and endless gradations in between. An award-winning work, Cloudstreet exemplifies the brilliant ability of fiction...
| Author | Albert B. Facey |
| ISBN | 0140081674 |
This is the extraordinary life of an ordinary man. It is the story of Albert Facey, who lived with simple honesty, compassion and courage. A parentless boy who started work at eight on the rough West Australian frontier, he struggled as an itinerant rural worker, survived the gore of Gallipoli, the loss...
| Author | Tim Winton |
| ISBN | 0330490265 |
Luther Fox, a loner, haunted by his past, makes his living as an illegal fisherman, a shamateur. Before everyone in his family was killed in a freak rollover, he grew melons and played guitar in the family band. Robbed of all that, he has turned his back on music. There's too much emotion in it, too much memory...
| Author | Miles Franklin |
| ISBN | 1600963781 |
"My Brilliant Career" is the story of Sybylla, a headstrong young girl growing up in early 20th century Australia. Sybylla rejects the opportunity to marry a wealthy young man in order to maintain her independence. As a consequence she must take a job as a governess to a local family to which her father...
| Author | Sally Morgan |
| ISBN | 0949206318 |
Looking at the views and experiences of three generations of indigenous Australians, this autobiography unearths political and societal issues contained within Australia's indigenous culture. Sally Morgan traveled to her grandmother’s birthplace, starting a search for information about...
| Author | Ruth Park |
| ISBN | 0140008535 |
Since it was first published in 1948, this compassionate novel has become a favourite with generations of Australian readers.
The Harp in the South is a nostalgic and moving portrait of the eventful family life of the Darcys of Number Twelve-and-a-Half Plymouth Street in Surry Hills, a Sydney...
| Author | Alexis Wright |
| ISBN | 1920882176 |
Hailed as a "literary sensation" by The New York Times Book Review, Carpentaria is the luminous award-winning novel by Australian Aboriginal writer and activist Alexis Wright.
Alexis Wright employs mysticism, stark reality, and pointed imagination to re-create the land and the Aboriginal...
| Author | Helen Garner |
| ISBN | 0140049533 |
In "Monkey Grip", Helen Garner charts the lives of a generation. Her characters are exploring new ways of loving and living - and nothing is harder than learning to love lightly. Nora and Javo are trapped in a desperate relationship. Nora's addiction is romantic love; Javo's is hard drugs. The harder...
| Author | George Johnston |
| ISBN | 0207187320 |
3.5 stars
It was only after I finished reading My Brother Jack by George Johnston that I discovered it had been the winner of the 1964 Miles Franklin award. To win, novels must be of the highest literary merit and present Australian life in any of its phases There is no question in my mind that this was...
| Author | Patrick White |
| ISBN | 0099324512 |
Patrick White’s style is a unique blend of roughness and literacy that can become quite absorbing, mesmerizing even, for its timelessness. The minor details of ordinary lives fuse with poetic vision and transform the common experience of man into the absolute essence that holds the power to make...
| Author | Richard Flanagan |
| ISBN | 1843542196 |
Aljaz Cosini is leading a group of tourists on a raft tour down Tasmania's wild Franklin River when his greatest fear is realized—a tourist falls overboard. An ordinary man with many regrets, Aljaz rises to an uncharacteristic heroism, and offers his own life in trade. Trapped under a rapid and drowning,...
| Author | David Malouf |
| ISBN | 0679749519 |
Winner of the IMPAC Award and Booker Prize nominee
In this rich and compelling novel, written in language of astonishing poise and resonance, one of Australia's greatest living writers gives and immensely powerful vision of human differences and eternal divisions. In the mid-1840s...
| Author | Jeannie Gunn |
| ISBN | 1406500232 |
I had already read this book many years ago but somehow I had forgotten how sad the ending is! To have so much for just fourteen months and then have to return to Melbourne alone to pick up the pieces of her former life. It must have been really hard.
Anyway, I enjoyed this memoir from 1902, when Australia...
| Author | Marcus Clarke |
| ISBN | 1406512036 |
“We convicts have the advantage over you gentlemen. You are afraid of death; we pray for it. It is the best thing that can happen to us. Die! They were going to hang me once. I wish they had. My God, I wish they had!”
For The Term Of His Natural Life is the best-known novel by Australian author,...
Power Without Glory caused a sensation when it was released, leading to a famous court case. It is a thinly veiled description of the rise to power of real life figure John Wren (in the book 'John West').
Some other people alluded to in the book include Tommy Bent, Sir Samuel Gillott, the gangster...
