Awards

• Short-listed for Miles Franklin Literary Award 2006
• Winner of Australian Book Industry Award Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2006
• Winner of NSW Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Fiction 2006
• Winner of The Commonwealth Writer's Prize 2006

Overview

In 1806 William Thornhill, a man of quick temper and deep feelings, is transported from the slums of London to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and their children he arrives in a harsh land he cannot understand. But the colony can turn a convict into a free man. Eight years later Thornhill sails up the Hawkesbury to claim a hundred acres for himself. Aboriginal people already live on that river. And other recent arrivals - Thomas Blackwood, Smasher Sullivan and Mrs Herring - are finding their own ways to respond to them. Thornhill, a man neither better nor worse than most, soon has to make the most difficult choice of his life.

Full Product Details

9781743161937

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Reviews

Fabulous historical fiction. -- The Australian One of the most entertaining, accomplished, engaging novels written in this country. -- The Courier Mail The Secret River is a powerful, highly credible account of how a limited man of good instincts becomes involved in enormity and atrocity. It is, at one remove, a sane and moving allegory of Australian development. It has quiet drama and drama of the hectic ghastly breakneck kind. It would make a fine film.It has the subtlety of being a sort of Swiss Family Robinson saga about the Australian dream. In historical terms it dramatises the settler's dream and it all but climaxes in its representation of the Australian nightmare. Then there is calm and sadness and the colour drained from the dream. The Secret River is a historical novel, full of contemporary insight and it is also a subtle expression in fictional terms of the myth of collective guilt for the fate of the Aborigines. It is to Kate Grenville's credit that she never surrenders her sense of the individual faces she captures as she tells this story. I suspect a lot of readers are going to find this book both subtle and satisfying. -- The Age

"""Fabulous historical fiction."" -- The Australian ""One of the most entertaining, accomplished, engaging novels written in this country."" -- The Courier Mail ""The Secret River is a powerful, highly credible account of how a limited man of good instincts becomes involved in enormity and atrocity. It is, at one remove, a sane and moving allegory of Australian development. It has quiet drama and drama of the hectic ghastly breakneck kind. It would make a fine film.It has the subtlety of being a sort of Swiss Family Robinson saga about the Australian dream. In historical terms it dramatises the settler's dream and it all but climaxes in its representation of the Australian nightmare. Then there is calm and sadness and the colour drained from the dream. The Secret River is a historical novel, full of contemporary insight and it is also a subtle expression in fictional terms of the myth of collective guilt for the fate of the Aborigines. It is to Kate Grenville's credit that she never surrenders her sense of the individual faces she captures as she tells this story. I suspect a lot of readers are going to find this book both subtle and satisfying."" -- The Age"

Author Information

Kate Grenville is one of Australia's finest writers. Her early works have become modern classics and are admired by critics and readers around the world. Her 1992 novel, The Idea of Perfection, was a bestseller and winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, Britain's most valuable literary award. In 2006 Kate Grenville was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the NSW Premier's Literary Award for The Secret River, and the novel was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Kate lives in Sydney with her family. Grenville's A Room Made of Leaves won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction at the 2021 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Paul Blackwell is a well-known Australian stage actor and occasional film actor. He has appeared in many productions from some of Australia's best-known theatre companies, including Company B, Sydney Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Patch Theatre and Opera Australia. He has appeared in several films, though often in small parts. His recent film appearances include Candy, December Boys, Hey Hey its Esther Blueburger and the silent film Dr. Plonk.

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