David Hunt

He's doing that to help in the fight against a mining company that's got its eyes on the land in that area.

And he's passing this on so it can be used in the fight against that.

And that's also something that Tara June Winch mentioned in her acceptance speech and in a lot of the media that she did.

around winning the award.

And she really went out of her way to put that recent event with Rio Tinto in the Pilbara into the forefront of people's minds saying, you know, here in 2020, we are seeing some of the world's most sacred sites being destroyed for mining interests.

So it's sort of very grounded in the past, but also with an eye on the future as well.

And that's back, David, to that point you initially made about it being very fluid in time.

Yeah, she also said in that, I mentioned the central character and I was referring to August.

And she says, oh, it's interesting you say that because people have sort of consistently said to her that they see Albert as the central character, Poppy Albert, the author of this dictionary.

He's such a strong presence, even though he's dead before the book opens.

Yeah, really interesting.

Just really uncomfortable.

What about you, Maggie?

Yeah, but it's interesting how strong the other characters are in comparison to August, who even though she's the person who is in the full peak of her life and she's carrying the narrative, essentially, she's almost waif-like because she is so lost and so traumatised.

She's broken.

Broken, yeah, that's right.

And we haven't really spoken very much about Jedha, her sister...

Gosh, you know, we talked about that scene when we first reviewed this book, Maggie.

And then, and I said, I, you know, I didn't want to give away much about it, but it was the most powerful thing I'd read in a very long time.

And then when I was interviewing Tara Jean Winch just a couple of weeks ago, I started to ask her about that scene and what she was thinking about it.