• Banjawarn

  • By: Josh Kemp
  • Narrated by: Steve Shanahan
  • Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (3 ratings)

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Banjawarn  By  cover art

Banjawarn

By: Josh Kemp
Narrated by: Steve Shanahan
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Publisher's summary

Winner of The 2021 Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript

Garreth Hoyle is a true crime writer whose destructive love affair with hallucinogenic drugs has sent him searching for ghosts in the unforgiving mallee desert of Western Australia. Heading north through Kalgoorlie, he attempts to score off old friends from his shearing days on Banjawarn Station. His journey takes an unexpected detour when he discovers an abandoned ten-year-old girl and decides to return her to her estranged father in Leonora, instead of alerting authorities. Together they begin the road trip from hell through the scorched heart of the state’s northern goldfields.

***

Love, friendship and hope are often found in the strangest places, but forgiveness is never simple, and the past lies buried just beneath the blood red topsoil. The only question is whether Hoyle should uncover it, or run as fast as his legs can take him.

Banjawarn is an unsettling debut from Josh Kemp. Echoing Cormac McCarthy’s haunting border trilogy and narrative vernacular that recalls the sparse lyricism of Randolph Stow and Tim Winton, this is a darkly funny novel that earns its place amongst the stable of Australian gothic literature.

The conflation of violence and justice here is very like a western, as the boundaries between good and evil shimmer and dissolve.

Kemp writes with a compelling voice, the kind you want to follow into dark places, no matter how gruesome things get.

—Jennifer Mills, Australian Book Review

©2023 Josh Kemp (P)2023 Spotify Audiobooks

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Raw, Gritty, and Exceptional

An exceptional story of significant suffering and perseverance. It wasn't an easy story to listen to but was extremely satisfying. I realize it is not fair to compare writers and stories, but I appreciated this story much like I did Tim Winton's Shepard's Hut.

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