As writer George Santayana said, “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. You may disagree, but the place of fiction in giving us history lessons is, in my view, vital. I am 100% against this and I feel it is extremely important to read novels which depict racism so that we can learn from the lessons of the past. There are calls at the moment to ban books and films that are not politically correct. When I first read the book as a teenager, I failed to notice the racism in it, it reflects so clearly the way Aboriginal people were treated in 1950s Australia that you get a strong sense of how taken for granted racist attitudes were. I have loved learning more about the background, the author and the real stories which inspired it as I prepared this Guide.Ī Town Like Alice was published in 1950 and generally, I think it has stood the test of time really well. So much has changed – much of it for the better – but you can still recognise outback towns of today in the descriptions of the buildings, the willingness of locals to help each other in an emergency, and the resilience needed to live in inhospitable and lonely places. On a first reading of A Town Like Alice you focus on the exciting story, but when you re-read the novel, you slow down to enjoy the details and its picture of Australia seventy years ago. ‘The Story of an African Farm’ – Olive Schreiner.‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ – Muriel Spark.‘The Leopard’ – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.‘The Doll’s House’ – Katherine Mansfield.‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ – Alexandre Dumas.‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ – Thomas Hardy.‘Seven Little Australians’ – Ethel Turner.‘Little Red Riding Hood’ – The Brothers Grimm.

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