Empire Day
About this ebook
A heart-warming novel in the tradition of CLOUDStREEt and tHE HARP IN tHE SOUtH Empire Day, 1948. A back street in Bondi is transformed as the fireworks of Cracker Night cast a magical glow over its humble cottages. But Australia as a whole is being transformed in this postwar era and the people of Wattle Street know that life will never be the same again. the 'reffos' have moved in, and their strange ways are threatening the comfortable world of salt-of-the-earth locals like Pop Wilson, deserted mum Kath and sharp-tongued Maude McNulty. With suspicious and disapproving eyes, the Australians observe their new neighbours - mysterious Mr Emil, fragile young Lilija and all the other Europeans starting their lives afresh. Mistrust and misunderstandings abound on both sides. to Hania, an angry teenager struggling to cope with her hysterical mother, and to Sala, an unhappily married woman trying to blot out her traumatic wartime past, the Australians appear enviably carefree. But behind closed doors, Old as well as New Australians suffer secret heartaches. As the smoke of fires past and present gradually disperses and the lives of the two groups entwine, unexpected relationships form that bring passion and tragedy for some, and forgiveness and resolution for others. EMPIRE DAY is a dramatic and heart-warming novel in the tradition of CLOUDStREEt and tHE HARP IN tHE SOUtH. It confirms Diane Armstrong as one of our most gifted and compelling storytellers.
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About the author
Diane Armstrong is a child Holocaust survivor who arrived in Australia from Poland in 1948. An award-winning journalist and bestselling author, she has written seven previous books.Her family memoir Mosaic: A chronicle of five generations, was published in 1998 and was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction as well as the National Biography Award. It was published in the United States and Canada, and was selected as one of the year's best memoirs by Amazon.com. In 2001, The Voyage of Their Life: The story of the SS Derna and its passengers, was shortlisted in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Her first novel, Winter Journey, was published in 2004 and shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. It has been published in the US, UK, Poland and Israel. Her second novel, Nocturne, was published in 2008 and won the Society of Women Writers Fiction Award. It was nominated for a major literary award in Poland. Empire Day, a novel set in post-war Sydney, was published in 2011, and The Collaborator, set in Hungary and Israel, was published in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom in 2019. Dancing With the Enemy, set in Second World War Jersey was published in 2022. Diane has a son and daughter and three granddaughters. She lives in Sydney. Photo credit: Jonathan Armstrong
