ABOUT THE BOOK

Harley, a man of Nyoongar ancestry, finds himself at a difficult point in the history of his country, family and self. As the apparently successful outcome of his white grandfather's enthusiastic attempts to isolate and breed 'the first whiteman born', he wants to be a failure. But would such failure mean his Nyoongar ancestors could label him a success? And how can the attempted genocide represented by his family history be told?

Oceanic in its rhythms and understanding, brilliant in its use of language and image, moving in its largeness of spirit, compelling in its narrative scope and style, Benang is a novel of celebration and lament, of beginning and return, of obliteration and recovery, of silencing and of powerful utterance. Both tentative and daring, it speaks to the present and a possible future through stories, dreams, rhythms, songs, images and documents mobilised from the incompletely acknowledged and still dynamic past.

Kim Scott is a descendant of people who have always lived along the south-east coast of Western Australia and is glad to be living in times when it is possible to explore the significance of that fact and be one among those who call themselves Nyoongar. Kin Scott began writing for publication shortly after he became a secondary school teacher of English. His first novel, True Country, was published in 1993 and he has had poetry and short stories published in a range of anthologies. In recent years he has received grants from the Literature Board of the Australia Council and the Western Australian Department for the Arts, to enable him to devote more time to writing. He lives in Coolbellup, a southern suburb of Perth, Western Australia, with his wife and children.