Based on the oral histories of the Darug people, Julie Janson has said that her ambitious and illuminating new novel, Benevolence, was written as an Aboriginal response to The Secret River. Muraging – a character inspired by Julie’s own great-great-grandmother – is given over to the Native Institution as a pupil by her father, a “benevolent” institution providing Christian discipline and education, and thereby becomes the first person in the novel to be sacrificed to the good intentions of the waibala.

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