The quiet rise of Outback Noir
No Australian woman has ever won the Booker Prize — and yet in the stylish genre called Outback Noir, women reign supreme. Of these, the queen is Jane Harper. Her 2016 debut, The Dry (successfully filmed with Eric Bana), marked the start of a new kind of detective fiction that has gained an international following. Some of this may be due to the way we love this version of Down Under. Forget about Sydney, Melbourne or Perth. Portraits of small societies where embattled individuals get swallowed up by the big bad bush, parched or flooded, give an apocalyptic, Mad Max edge to a distinctly Australian setting. Arthur W.
