''A Kindness Cup'' (1974) is a novel by

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n author Thea Astley. It won the 1975

The Age Book of the Year ''The Age'' Book of the Year Awards were annual literary awards presented by Melbourne's ''The Age'' newspaper. The awards were first presented in 1974. After 1998, they were presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival. Initially, two awar ...

Award.

Plot summary

The novel is set in a cane-country town on the north Queensland coast. It deals with a wave of racist brutality in the 1860s and the attempts, some twenty or so years later, to rectify the wrongs caused.

Reviews

Malcolm Pettigrove in ''The Canberra Times'' was not overly impressed with the book stating: "When Miss Astley drops the prose of the stylist and begins to function simply as a writer with a tale to tell her work becomes stark, tense, and most effectively dramatic.""God and Mammon in the Cane" by Malcolm Pettigrove, ''The Canberra Times'', 31 January 1975, p9
/ref> Kate Grenville reread the book in 2018, upon it being reissued. She called Astley "ahead of her time" and that "Thirty years beforehand she had known what some of us were only just waking up to: that our own history provides a powerful engine for fiction, and that the voice of fiction can say the unspoken about that history." Steve Walker, of

Stuff Stuff, stuffed, and stuffing may refer to: *Physical matter *General, unspecific things, or entities Arts, media, and entertainment Books *''Stuff'' (1997), a novel by Joseph Connolly (author), Joseph Connolly *''Stuff'' (2005), a book by Jere ...

wrote "Astley's work is characterised by her irony and her unflinching scrutiny of social injustice. In A Kindness Cup, she was at the top of her impressive form."

Plot summary

Reviews

References

See also