Requiem For A Riot
Requiem For A Riot
November 1942. From battlefront New Guinea, war correspondent Pat Kinnane lands in Brisbane, General MacArthur’s Headquarters, and finds himself in another kind of war. Amid serious Allied tension, with his guide Kay Dalberg a smart, political young woman, over nine days he liases with operational US military, befriends a desperate Kokoda veteran, edges into a complicated love triangle and is witness to the mysterious death of a soldier. The crucial personal issues of his visit reach their climax on the sultry evening of Thursday the 26th, American Thanksgiving Day, when the city’s discords boil over into the fatal street riot known to history as The Battle of Brisbane.
Written with huge zest. Echoes of Ulysses with a soupcon of Boys’ Own, and a great deal else besides. The best descriptions of Brisbane I have ever read. The way Aussies felt about the Americans at that time captured completely. The American characters pitch perfect. All the beaut little details add up - Fabulous writing.
—Gayla Reid, winner of the Canadian Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction, the CBC/Saturday Night Literary Award and the Marian Engel Award
A novel complex in narrative and character, profound in insight and passionately written. Yet perhaps the greatest character in it is Brisbane itself, pulsing with Australian and American tensions, racial and sexual.
—Barry Oakley, novelist and playwright
A moving story, Requiem For A Riot also shows how the Yanks brought us more than money, randiness and know-how. They brought a big, multicultural, sophisticated world. These invaders were also eye-openers.
—Carl Harrison-Ford, critic
Stephenson draws a riveting picture of the men of the two armies, the US forces better paid and provisioned, competing for the affections of the women of Brisbane. The book is a detailed witnessing to the lead-up to the Battle of Brisbane and its first night, based on impeccable research. It brings back to life a major episode in inter-allied relations that we forget at our peril.
—Robert O’Neill, former Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford and Australian Official Historian for the Korean War
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Available from Boolarong Press