Issue 1, April 1996

Editor: Cassandra Pybus
© all rights reserved


Editor’s Choice:

No issue is more critical in Australia than the Mabo decision on native title with its implications for how we view our past and our future. The target article, by distinguished historian Henry Reynolds, addresses the shortcomings of the Mabo decision in an extremely controversial piece, supplemented by two extracts from an important recent book, In the Age of Mabo. Also touching on these matters and very much more, is an extract from the remarkable new book by Paul Carter,The Lie of the Land.

In other pieces, novelist Brian Castro provocatively challenges our smug contention that Australia is part of Asia, while Peter Jackson explodes the notion that gay culture in Thailand is a western import. Equally provocatively, Ian Hunter looks at some of the anxieties which adhere to the teaching of English and Gregory Currie argues that fiction does have a moral pedagogical purpose.


Target Article:

Henry Reynolds After Mabo, What About Sovereignty
with additional commentary from:


In Extract:


Reviews and snippets:


In emuse

The Demidenko Scandal

Helen Demidenko’s novel, The Hand That Signed the Paper, won the Vogel Award for a first novel in 1994, which was followed in 1995 by the most prestigious literary prize in Australia, the Miles Franklin Award, as well as the Gold Medal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. The novel relates events of the holocaust in Ukraine which Helen Demidenko falsely claimed to have drawn from the experience of her alleged Ukrainian family and it has unleashed a storm of controversy. Some of the many voices in this tumult are reproduced here.

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