Briggs,who is Wurundjeri/Yorta Yorta heritage and won a Helpmann Award for the stage show ofThe Sapphires,said the novel had captivated him from the first read.
“If the ideas are really strong or the images are really vivid,they just pop out to me. Sometimes the way a book is structured feels like it could lend itself to some sort of film adaptation,” he said.
The novel follows August Gondiwindi as she returns for the funeral of her much-loved grandfather,Albert ″Poppy″ Gondiwindi,to her home in the fictional Australian town of Massacre Plains. Approaching his death,the strong and generous Poppy,whose voice was based on Winch’s own grandfather and father,has been quietly compiling a dictionary of Wiradjuri words,″taking pen to paper to pass on everything that was ever remembered″.
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Winch,who is of Wiradjuri heritage,grew up in Wollongong and now lives in France,said the novel “will always be the book I really wanted to write”.
“More people have realised that[language is] a portal and a way to understanding the past and to understanding where they live,” she says. “English is a foreign concept to describe our land and our country.”
Learning a language,Winch said,is “a hopeful process,you learn a new language to be able to speak with people in a future tense;it’s an intimate way of understanding where we live”.