''To the Islands'' is a 1958 novel by

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

n author

Randolph Stow Julian Randolph Stow (28 November 1935 – 29 May 2010) was an Australian-born writer, novelist and poet. Early life Born in Geraldton, Western Australia, Randolph Stow was the son of Mary Campbell Stow née Sewell and Cedric Ernest Stow, a ...

. It won the

Miles Franklin Award The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1 ...

for 1958 and the

ALS Gold Medal The Australian Literature Society Gold Medal (ALS Gold Medal) is awarded annually by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for "an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year." From 1928 to 1974 it was awarded by the ...

in 1959.

Plot summary

The novel is set in a remote Anglican mission in the Kimberley in the far north of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to t ...

. The protagonist is Heriot - based partially on the figure of

Ernest Gribble Ernest Richard Bulmer Gribble (23 November 186818 October 1957) was an Australian missionary. Though considered to be temperamentally unsuited to his vocation, he became a strong advocate for better treatment of Australian Aboriginal people, savin ...

- the principal chaplain of the mission, who commits an act of violence against an Aboriginal man, and who subsequently disappears into the wilderness.

Publication history

Originally published in England in 1958, and the USA in 1959, the novel was the first novel published by Penguin Australia in 1962. A revised edition appeared in 1981 published by Angus and Robertson. Audio book editions appeared in the 2000s. Text Publishing, in its republishing Australian novels, produced their edition in 2015.

Reviews

On the novel's re-issue in 2014, Suzie Gibson in ''The Conversation'' stated that "Although Stow’s novel presents us with challenging social, political and historical issues, it was never denied literary merit. Indeed the power of Stow’s prose is the equal of anyone’s from

Patrick White Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was a British-born Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, ...

Christina Stead Christina Stead (17 July 190231 March 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations. Christina Stead was a committed Marxist, although she was never a me ...

; it is exquisite in its sparseness, precision and surprising beauty. The frankness and difficulty of the subject matter is counter-balanced by the splendour of Stow’s memorable turns of phrase.""The Case for Randolph Stow", ''The Conversation'', 24 June 2014
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Awards and nominations

* 1958 - winner

* 1959 - winner

References

External links

Middlemiss.orgTom Shapcott review
from '' Australian Book Review''
Review
from Australian Public Intellectual Network 1958 Australian novels Miles Franklin Award-winning works Novels set in Western Australia ALS Gold Medal winning works Randolph Stow {{1950s-novel-stub