In her latest novel, Sue Woolfe leads us into an outback Aboriginal community, on a captivating journey of discovery about how Australia’s original people have responded to the world that has been imposed on them and to the behaviour and motivations of the white people who work among them today.
We see this world through the eyes of Kate, a thirty-something white student linguist who has struggled for a sense of her own identity her entire life because of the circumstances and the forceful and beguiling personalities imposed upon her as a young girl. She is an outsider searching for the Aboriginal woman who can reveal to her the oldest song in the world.
Lyrical and brave, The Oldest Song in the World explores universal ideas of home, belonging and family with sensitivity and gentle humour. And it demonstrates that Sue Woolfe is one of Australia’s leading living writers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sue Woolfe is the author of three novels, including the acclaimed best-selling, internationally translated Leaning Towards Infinity, which won the Christina Stead Award, the Asia Pacific Region section of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was shortlisted for the Tip Tree prize in the US. Her first novel, Painted Woman was also nominated for the Commonwealth Prize. She has adapted both novels for ABC radio, for the professional stage, and Leaning Towards Infinity has been optioned for a film in the US. Her third novel, The Secret Cure, is currently being adapted for an opera. Sue Woolfe teaches Creative Writing at Sydney University, and is the author of The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady: a Novelist looks at Neuroscience and Creativity (2007) and (with Kate Grenville) Making Stories: How Ten Australian Novels Were Written (1991).Sue Woolfe will be participating in the Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival, 31 August – 2 September 2012
Imprint: 4th Estate
Publication date: 6 July 2012
rrp: NZ $34.99
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