Rodney Hall’s Vortex is the 13th novel in a long and distinguished career that includes two Miles Franklin Literary Awards for his earlier novels Just Relations (1982) and The Grisly Wife (1994). It is a historical novel, but with a particular sense of history in mind.
We are accustomed to regarding history as linear, punctuated by moments, events and personages, with all of us conveyed inexorably into a future that we cannot quite see but are confident is awaiting us. What if this is not what is happening?
