‘What does it mean to be on land that was taken from other people? Now that we know how the taking was done, what do we do with that knowledge?’
Kate Grenville is no stranger to the past. Her success and fame as a writer exploded when she published The Secret River in 2005, a bestseller based on the story of her convict ancestor, an early settler on the Hawkesbury River.
More than two decades on, and following the defeat of the Voice referendum, Grenville is still grappling with what it means to descend from people who were, as she puts it, ‘on the sharp edge of the moving blade that was colonisation’.
So she decides to go on a kind of pilgrimage, back through the places her family stories happened, and put the stories and the First People back into the same frame, on the same country, to try to think about those questions. This gripping book is the result of that journey.
As Grenville says, ‘I’ve been circling this book for 20 years. Researching and writing The Secret River was the start of a long journey into the past of our country. What do we do, now that we know the shameful facts about the past? It’s a question we non-Indigenous Australians find hard to look at. But until we do, we’ll go on resisting a way forward. I wanted to find a way to think about the question, and this journey through the parts of the country that my family took was my effort to do that. What I did was small-scale, personal and individual. It was open-ended and improvised. It’s not an answer, just one person’s attempt to think about the truths we have to face.’
Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s best-known authors, having published many acclaimed works with Text Publishing. As non-fiction specialists publishing books of originality and substance (recently including David Marr’s Killing for Country), Black Inc. is thrilled to acquire this insightful and deeply personal work of non-fiction for publication in 2025.
‘Unsettled is an essential work of reckoning,’ says Black Inc. publisher Chris Feik. ‘Kate Grenville takes us on an absorbing and moving journey, and Black Inc. is proud to publish this soul-searching book by one of Australia’s leading writers.’
Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place by Kate Grenville will be published on 1 April 2025.
Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Her international bestseller The Secret River was awarded local and overseas prizes, has been adapted for the stage and as an acclaimed television miniseries, and is now a much-loved classic. Grenville’s other novels include Sarah Thornhill, The Lieutenant, Lilian’s Story, Dark Places, the Orange Prize winner The Idea of Perfection, A Room Made of Leaves and, most recently, Restless Dolly Maunder, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her works of non-fiction include One Life: My Mother’s Story, The Case Against Fragrance and Elizabeth Macarthur’s Letters.
