The Fringe Dwellers

Set in a remote area of Western Australia, The Fringe Dwellers is the story of two part-Aboriginal sisters, Noonah and Trilby, who live in a family camp on the fringe of white society. Noonah accepts her position, but Trilby refuses to.

First published in 1961, The Fringe Dwellers is a landmark novel in Australian literature. It was made into an internationally acclaimed film in 1986 by Bruce Beresford. This edition has an introduction by Melissa Lucashenko.

Nene Gare was born in 1919 in Adelaide, and educated there and in Perth, where she moved in 1939. In addition to her best known book, The Fringe Dwellers, she wrote a number of other novels and many short stories. She was also an artist, for which she won a series of prizes in the 1970s. She died in 1994.

Melissa Lucashenko is of European and Murri heritage, and lives between Brisbane and the Bundjalung nation. She has published four novels: Steam Pigs, which won the Dobbie prize, Killing Darcy, Hard Yards and Too Flash. Her fifth novel will be published by UQP.

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