 | |
| Author | Martin Flanagan |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Nada Backovic |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Historical novel |
| Publisher | Allen & Unwin, One Day Hill |
Publication date | 1998 |
| Media type | Paperback |
| Pages | 181 pp |
| ISBN | 0-9757708-0-2 |
| OCLC | 154632077 |
The Call is a historical novel by Australian writer Martin Flanagan. It was first published by Allen & Unwin in 1998. [1]
It was adapted into a stage play for Malthouse Theatre in 2004. [2]
The novel follows the life of Tom Wills, considered a founder of Australian rules football. Here he is the coach of the Australian Aboriginal cricket team in England in 1868 which was the first cricket tour of England by any Australian team.
Writing in The Age Jack Hibberd commented: "While The Call deploys fictional devices, such as extensively scarred old red gums symbolically embodying the mutilated blacks, and a helmeted Nek Kelly surreally "emerging from the soft white skin of a young woman's shoulder," it does not quite have the deep knit of a novel. Nor does it quite knit as biography and history...This formal irresolution does not, howver[ sic?], detract from the pleasures in this book: the vivid evocations of our colonial and Aboriginal past, of city and country, of sporting wizardry, and of the strangely soulful narrator's search for heroes in an empty culture." [3]
Thomas Wentworth Wills was an Australian sportsman who is credited with being Australia's first cricketer of significance and a founder of Australian rules football. Born in the British penal colony of New South Wales to a wealthy family descended from convicts, Wills grew up in the bush on stations owned by his father, the squatter and politician Horatio Wills, in what is now the state of Victoria. As a child, he befriended local Aboriginal people, learning their language and customs. Aged 14, Wills went to England to attend Rugby School, where he became captain of its cricket team and played an early version of rugby football. After Rugby, Wills represented Cambridge University in the annual cricket match against Oxford, and played at first-class level for Kent and the Marylebone Cricket Club. An athletic bowling all-rounder with tactical nous, he was regarded as one of the finest young cricketers in England.
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 (1879–1954), who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career (1901). She bequeathed her estate to fund this award. As of 2016, the award is valued at A$60,000.
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In 1868, a cricket team composed of Aboriginal Australians toured England between May and October of that year, being the first organised group of Australian sportspeople to travel overseas. It would be another ten years before an Australian cricket team classed as representative left the country.
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This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1998.