Reading and thinking about Tom Waits and the art of being someone else made me think of Helen Demidenko. Demidenko burst onto the Australian literary scene at the age of 22 in 1994 with her novel The Hand That Signed The Paper. Prior to its publication the novel won the Australian/Vogel award for a manuscript by a young author. After publication in 1995 it won the Miles Franklin, Australia's most prestigious literary gong. The novel, purporting to be drawn from stories told to the author by her Ukrainian refugee family, dealt with the cycle of violence between Ukrainians and Jews It blamed Jews for the Ukrainian famine of the late 1930s (for which, incidentally, the Russian Communist Party was actually responsible) and subsequent Ukrainian involvement in the holocaust was portrayed as a consequence of this prior crime. The book's reception at the hands of Australia's literary establishment can't have been hindered by its charismatic author. A ta
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson