ARCHIVED MEDIA RELEASE
PA/4/2003 6 February 2003
Leading Australian writers Peter Carey and Kim Scott on India tour
Highly acclaimed Australian authors Peter Carey and Kim Scott are visiting India on a major tour to inspire new audiences for Australian books, writers and culture.
The authors are in India under the Asialink Literature Touring Program, supported by the Australian Government. The 7-14 February tour includes public speaking events, interactions with Indian writers and scholars, and taking part in the famous Kolkata Book Fair.
"This important visit is a mark of the growing interest that so many Indians have in contemporary Australia and its literature," said Ms Penny Wensley AO, Australia's High Commissioner to India.
"Like India, Australia has made a significant contribution to world literature, so it is natural that a shared passion for great writing is helping bring our societies closer together."
Peter Carey is a writer of major international standing, who has won the Booker Prize twice, in 1988 and 2001, as well as every major literary award in Australia. Kim Scott is a leading indigenous Australian author, whose most recent novel won Australia's premier literature prize, the Miles Franklin Award. Supported by a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts, Penguin India has published an Indian edition of Scott's prize-winning novel, Benang, to coincide with the tour.
At the Kolkata Book Fair, the writers will interact with the reading public - including at Asialink's popular exhibition of Australian books - and will take part in a forum with Indian writers and academics. The Oxford Bookshop, Kolkata, will present a literary evening with Scott and Carey, hosted by Indian writer Amit Chaudhuri.
In Delhi, the authors will attend functions in their honour hosted by the Australian High Commissioner and Penguin Books India. They will interact with Australian literature scholars at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and will conclude the tour as keynote speakers at the Katha Literary Festival - "Deep Stories and Silences" - at the Indian International Centre.
The Australian Government has sponsored this tour through the Asialink Literature Touring Program, with funding from the Australia-India Council and the Australia Council for the Arts, and support from the Australian High Commission. The Asialink program aims to raise the profile of Australian literature in Asia, through author tours, book exhibitions and providing publications and other resources. The Australia-India Council and High Commission are supporting this tour as part of a wider effort to raise the level of awareness in India of Australian culture and cultural achievement.
For further information, contact Rory Medcalf, First Secretary, tel. 011 26888 223, ext. 197, or 9810154256, or Shekhar Nambiar, Public Affairs Manager, tel. 26888223, ext 460. Background on the authors is attached.
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About the authors:
Peter Carey has won every major literary award in Australia, and has twice won the Booker Prize in the UK, in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. Illywhacker in 1985 also won a swag of Australian literary awards and was followed by the bestselling Oscar and Lucinda which also won the 1989 Miles Franklin Award, the National Book Council Award, the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies Award, and the 1990 Adelaide Festival Award for Literature.
In 1992 The Tax Inspector was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize amongst various other awards and this was followed by The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith which won the Age Book of the Year Award in 1994. The Big Bazoohley was a Younger Readers Honour Book in the Children's Book Council Awards in 1996. In 1997 Peter Carey's sixth novel Jack Maggs won the Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction and in 1998 was awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Miles Franklin Award . His most recent publication is the multi-award winning and bestselling True History of the Kelly Gang.
Kim Scott was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1957. He knew from an early age about his mixed heritage - both indigenous and colonial, Nyungar and English. Kim Scott's first book, True Country, was published in 1993 and is a semi-autobiographical novel, that charts the author's own experience of cultural dislocation. Scott's acclaimed second novel, Benang, won the Miles Franklin Award, and the Western Australia Premier's Award in 2000 and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Impac Award. In Benang Scott interrogates the assimilation policies of the government of the day including the enforced separation of part-Aboriginal children from their families and their internment in missions.