That Deadman Dance: A Novel
WINNER: Miles Franklin Award,Victorian Prize for Literature, Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the South East Asia and Pacific Region, Australian Literary Society Gold Medal, Adelaide Festival Award for Fiction, Adelaide Festival Premier’s Award for Best Book"Piquant and lyrical…The historical interaction between these two cultures in a changing 19th-century Australia is given full play in Scott’s ambitious, elegiac storytelling." —Publishers Weekly"Scott’s exuberant third novel is both an evocative paean to his Aboriginal roots and a meticulously researched account of early nineteenth-century encounters between his Noongar people, living on Australia’s southwest coast, and newly arrived European settlers. Scott writes lyrically of this lush land and its initially naive inhabitants in this elucidating chronicle of early Native confrontations." —Booklist"The truth of all indigenous peoples is in this book. Never has a first contact story been so true and powerful with its happiness and heartbreak all wound up together in one insightful, potent novel. Kim Scott’s words are like stones that strike together and create fire. Yet they remain graceful as they strike. So perfectly written, so deeply filled with real history,That Deadman Danceis the best new novel by a native writer I have seen in a long time." —Linda Hogan, author ofMean SpiritandPeople of the Whale"An enchanting and authentic book, giving us an insider’s view of Australia before it was Australia . Enormously readable, humane, proud, and subtle." —Thomas Keneally, winner of the Man Booker Prize, author ofSchindler’s ListandA Commonwealth of Thieves"A subtle portrayal of cross-cultural contact . . . Scott is an assiduous researcher and a deep thinker . . . But inThat Deadman Dance, it is the author’s imagination and his graceful prose that shine brightest . . . [A] compelling and beautifully constructed novel." —Australian Book Review"An extraordinary work, both realist and visionary . . . Scott’s scope is vast and his way of telling complex . . .That Deadman Danceis a novel to read, recite, and reread." —Sunday Morning Herald"A writer of arresting talent . . . Scott’s fiction is innovative but inspired by a passion for truth." —The Australian"Extraordinary . . . Scott’s prose shimmers. This is a book that demands to be savoured . . . Scott’s flawlessly written tale adds both meaning and depth to this deeply Australian story." —Bookseller + Publisher(AU)"[That Deadman Dance]is a strong dramatisation of a consciousness poised at the intersection of magical and materialist cultures . . . It is a book of lyrical energies, held in check by a realistic sense of history, which balances the elegy for what we know was lost with possibilities of mutual understanding that have always been there." —from the citation for the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize