These novels fulfil the brief of ANU’s Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, where Pandanus Press was founded in 2001, by viewing Australia and Australians from the perspectives of China and a distant island. In The Tao of Shepherding, set in the 1850s, two young Chinese men are kidnapped and sold as labourers to a Riverina sheep property, where they lose all hope of returning to civilisation. The Lost Tribe is mellower, in that the Pacific is crossed in both directions in its counter-pointed narratives, one set in the present and the other in the 1860s. These second novels, by promising Australian authors with direct knowledge of the countries depicted in them, offer insights into cross-cultural interactions, myths and religion.
The Tao of Shepherding by John Donnelly
Pandanus, $22.95 pb, 410 pp
The Lost Tribe by Jane Downing
Pandanus, $29.95 pb, 269 pp
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