Searching For The Secret River - Softcover

Grenville, Kate

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0002007118 ISBN 13: 9780002007115

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2007

Synopsis

The Secret River was Kate Grenville’s tour de force novel, an award-winning international bestseller that was also a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin A ward. And yet, this stunningly executed tale began life as a non-fiction book when Grenville embarked on a quest to know her ancestor, Solomon Wiseman, an E nglish convict sent to New South Wales. Wiseman soon morphed into The Secret River’s protagonist, William Thornhill.

In Searching for the Secret River, Grenville invites the reader into her writing room to lay bare her creative journey, transforming the dry facts of history into. powerful fiction. She not only reveals the wrong turns and exhilarating breakthroughs of research and writing but also peels back the guilt that overwhelms her after discovering that Wiseman, in true colonial fashion, took land and livelihood from the Australian Aboriginal people. The result is a vivid history of a novel that is, at once, a history of a family and of a country still struggling to reconcile its past and present.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The story behind The Secret River

"A novel everyone should read." Irish Times

Shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize

In the summer of 2000, award-winning novelist Kate Grenville decided to open the closed door of her family history. Who was her great-great-great grandfather, Solomon Wiseman, a Thames boatman sent as a convict to Australia in 1806? The answers to this question were revelatory. From the bones of his life a novel slowly evolved: The Secret River.

This is the story of Grenville's investigation, a memoir of the writing process through false starts, wrong turns and exhilarating breakthroughs. It is a remarkable journey of discovery around the globe, across the generations and into fiction.

"Here is someone who can really write."
Peter Carey

About the Author:

KATE GRENVILLE was born in Sydney, Australia. Her bestselling novel The Secret River has won numerous international awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. It was also a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Award. The Idea of Perfection won the Orange Prize for Fiction, Britain’s most valuable literary award. Grenville is also the author of several other novels and three books on the craft of writing. She lives in Sydney with her family. Visit her online at kategrenville.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0002007118
• ISBN 13: 9780002007115
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240