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To the Highlands

by Jon Doust

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About the Book

It is 1968. All around the world people are marching, protesting, fighting for freedom and free love.

Jack Muir arrives in the islands fresh out of Grammar School: a failure, a virgin, and a reluctant employee of The Colonial Bank of Australia.

Life in the islands is raw, sensuous, real. Here, the white man takes what he wants. But the veneer of whiteness is flimsy, and brutality never far from the surface.

To be free, you must set free. So says George Kanluna, future leader of the islands. Yet there is a world of difference between freedom and those things you unleash in others – and in yourself.

Praise for the Book
‘Doust firmly establishing himself as a rare contemporary voice …’ The Australian

‘Doust works deftly: he disturbs us, then he makes us laugh, and with our prim censure destabilised helps us move toward an altogether more complicated, and perhaps more compassionate, attitude.’ Kim Scott

To the Highlands is a short, dense, assured and incidentally poignant performance that has been worth the wait.’ Canberra Times

‘There is a relentless rawness to this book that make its moments of tenderness hit their mark even more keenly.’ Paula Grunseit in Australian Bookseller+Publisher

‘Doust creates a distinctive Australian voice and the novel abounds in small and telling cameos.’ Sydney Morning Herald / The Age

‘…gritty and confronting…’ The West Australian

Category
Adult Fiction
Publication Year
2012
Edition
1
Publisher
Fremantle Press
ISBN13
9781921888779
HB/PB
Paperback
Format
A4
Pages
204
Other Editions
Media
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Book Club Notes
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From the Catalogue

Wilderness Society Award

Congratulations to Sally Morgan whose book The Last Dance won the Wilderness Society’s 2013 Environment Award for Children’s Literature. Meg McKinlay and Kyle Hughes-Odgers were also shortlisted in the same category for Ten Tiny Things