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The House that Was Eureka

The House that Was Eureka: Text Classics

Text Classics

Nadia Wheatley

  • awardWinner, New South Wales Premier's Children's Book Award, 1985
  • Introduction by Toni Jordan

    It’s 1981 and Evie is sixteen. She has left school but can’t find work, and her family has just moved into the run-down inner Sydney suburb of Newtown. Noel lives in the adjoining terrace house. He’s fifteen, not taking school seriously and fed up with looking after his ancient bed-ridden grandmother.

    As a friendship grows between Evie and Noel, the past is set back in motion, and the events of the 1930s Depression era begin to play out in the high-unemployment times of the early 1980s, and the house again is the centre of the Sydney anti-eviction campaign of 1931.

    Based on historical fact, meticulously researched, The House that Was Eureka is a critically acclaimed novel about a history we all share.

    Read Toni Jordan’s thoughtful introduction to this wonderful classic.

    Nadia Wheatley
    About the Author

    Nadia Wheatley is an Australian writer whose publications range from biography and history to fiction and picture books. Her biography The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift was the Age Book of the Year, Non-fiction, and is the only biography to have won the Australian History Prize, NSW Premier’s History Awards.

    Read Moreright
    Extent:
    288pp
    Format:
    Paperback
    Text publication date:
    25 September 2013
    First published:
    1985
    Region:
    NSW
    ISBN:
    9781922147189
    AU Price:
    $12.95
    NZ Price:
    $15.99
    Themes:
    unemployment, Australian history, rights, identity
    Reading age:
    12+
    Australian
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    Praise for Nadia Wheatley
    andThe House that Was Eureka

    ‘Wheatley’s book has urgency and a fierce strength…The characters from both eras are “alive and flying”, freedom fighters who are aware that they are making history.' 

    ‘An exceptional book…The House that was Eureka will establish itself as a classic in adolescent fiction.’

    ‘A fine piece of work, well researched and beautifully plotted around the Depression when people were tipped out of their houses by landlords and unemployed men took to the roads with swags.’

    ‘An absorbing and wholly convincing recreation of the Depression of the 1930s, with the traumatic experiences of the Cruise family, destitute and threatened with eviction, running parallel to the problems of today.’

    ‘Wheatley weaves in the forgotten true story of a labour riot in the 1930s, including the marginalised experience of women, and shows the similarities and differences of unemployment and its consequences in the past and present. It suits as a text for English and history.’

    Other editions ofThe House that Was Eureka
    • The House that Was Eureka
      ebook
      ISBN: 9781922148254
      25 September 2013
      Buy ebook
    Other Titles byNadia Wheatley