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The Time of the Peacock

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The Punjabi migration provides the material for the first Indo-Australian literary work, first published in 1965. Set in northern New South Wales  this is something of a rural idyll, recording a cross-communal marriage and settling in to life on a sheep farm with a cast of typical bush characters. The impact lies in depictions of nostalgia for India and the organic link to traditional practices. Introduced by Tom Shapcott.

Mena Abdullah (and Ray Mathew) were being honest to their delineation, and perhaps discovery, of authentic experience. The world of that Muslim-Hindu child speaks of exile and the self, of the confines of family and its great sustaining strengths. It offers subtle lessons in alternative social environments. It also teaches us that the best writing can be powerfully moving while at the same time confronting us with issues that, over time, increase in relevance. The Time of the Peacock is a book that has more to say to more people now than it had when, in the 1950s, the stories first appeared.” Tom Shapcott, from his Introduction.

“What we first read as essentially elegant evocations of the exotic world within our own world, we now see as landmark explorations of ethnic difference and identity. The Time of the Peacock must stand with Judah Waten’s 1952 Alien Son as one of the turning points in our cultural development.

 

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