Black Rock White City
Novel by A. S. Patrić
9781921924835
Black Rock White City (2015) is the debut novel of Australian writer A. S. Patrić.[1] It won the Miles Franklin Award in 2016.[2]
Plot
In the late 1990s Jovan, a writer and academic in Serbia, and his wife Suzana are refugees living in Melbourne, having fled the Yugoslav Wars. Jovan works as a cleaner at a hospital, and is tasked with cleaning up some graffiti which is followed by more vandalism that becomes ever more weird and threatening.
Reception
Commenting on behalf of the Miles Franklin Award judging panel, State Library of NSW Mitchell Librarian, Richard Neville, said Black Rock White City delivers a powerful and raw account of the migrant experience in Australia, exploring the damages of war, and the possibility of redemptive love, in the context of debilitating emotional and physical dislocation.[2]
Joanne Peulen of Booklover Book Reviews said "Black Rock White City defies typical genre categorisation, and that perhaps this is the mark of a truly great novel… with the intensity and suspense of a psychological thriller, the lyricism and universality of great literature, and the grittiness and brutality of a crime novel".[3]
Lisa Hill of ANZLitLovers said "Black Rock White City is a stunning novel that places A.S. Patrić among the finest of our new crop of writers. His prose is uncompromising but his imagery is exquisite. He doesn’t fall back on lashings of foul language to express ferocity and violence; and his use of poetry to reveal the Jovan unseen by the people he meets, is sublime."[4]
Awards and nominations
- 2016 highly commended Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction
- 2016 winner Miles Franklin Literary Award[5]
See also
- 2015 in Australian literature
References
- ^ Austlit - Black Rock White City by A. S. Patrić
- ^ a b Media Release - "A. S. Patrić wins 2016 Miles Franklin Literary Award 26 August 2016
- ^ "Book Review - Black Rock White City by A S Patric" Booklover Book Reviews, 5 June 2016
- ^ "Black Rock White City, by A.S. Patrić", ANZLitLovers, 16 February 2015
- ^ Lucy Clark (26 August 2016). "'The most momentous news of my life': AS Patric wins Miles Franklin award". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
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Miles Franklin Award
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- The Big Fellow by Vance Palmer (1959)
- The Irishman by Elizabeth O'Conner (1960)
- Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White (1961)
- The Well Dressed Explorer by Thea Astley (1962)
- The Cupboard Under the Stairs by George Turner (1962)
- Careful, He Might Hear You by Sumner Locke Elliott (1963)
- My Brother Jack by George Johnston (1964)
- The Slow Natives by Thea Astley (1965)
- Trap by Peter Mathers (1966)
- Bring Larks and Heroes by Thomas Keneally (1967)
- Three Cheers for the Paraclete by Thomas Keneally (1968)
- Clean Straw for Nothing by George Johnston (1969)
- A Horse of Air by Dal Stivens (1970)
- The Unknown Industrial Prisoner by David Ireland (1971)
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- No award (1973)
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- The Grisly Wife by Rodney Hall (1994)
- The Hand That Signed the Paper by Helen Darville (1995)
- Highways to a War by Christopher Koch (1996)
- The Glade Within the Grove by David Foster (1997)
- Jack Maggs by Peter Carey (1998)
- Eucalyptus by Murray Bail (1999)
- Drylands by Thea Astley (2000)
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- Dirt Music by Tim Winton (2002)
- Journey to the Stone Country by Alex Miller (2003)
- The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (2004)
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- The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald (2006)
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- Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser (2013)
- All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld (2014)
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- Black Rock White City by A. S. Patrić (2016)
- Extinctions by Josephine Wilson (2017)
- The Life to Come by Michelle de Kretser (2018)
- Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko (2019)
- The Yield by Tara June Winch (2020)
- The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey (2021)
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