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From thin air

Biography without context
by
June 2025, no. 476

Inconvenient Women: Australian radical writers 1900-1970 by Jacqueline Kent

NewSouth, $34.99 pb, 311 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

From thin air

Biography without context
by
June 2025, no. 476

Was Katharine Susannah Prichard one of those present at the first meetings of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), or not? Did she or didn’t she later pass intelligence to the Soviets, as charged by historians of ASIO Desmond Ball and David Horner? What difference would it have made to have had Lesbia Harford’s full queer oeuvre before the Australian public when it was written? Why didn’t Dymphna Cusack join the CPA if, as this book asserts, her politics were just as far left as Frank Hardy’s? How aware was Eleanor Dark of First Nations activism when writing The Timeless Land (1941)? Politics sit at the heart of Australian literary history, but a raft of questions remain for contemporary readers.

Inconvenient Women: Australian radical writers 1900-1970

Inconvenient Women: Australian radical writers 1900-1970

by Jacqueline Kent

NewSouth, $34.99 pb, 311 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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