VPLA 2026 A Piece of Red Cloth

Title: A Piece of Red Cloth
Authors: Leonie Norrington, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, Djawa Burarrwanga and Djawundil Maymuru
Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Shortlist: Fiction

It's early in the wet season. A flock of crested terns sweeps into the bay and dives towards Batjani. The birds are saying the foreigners are coming, as they do every year, but why are they so full of menace?

Batjani's beloved granddaughter Garritji is on the cusp of womanhood, about to go through the rituals preparing her for marriage. Batjani uses all means at her disposal to protect her granddaughter from the visiting Macassan trepang fishers, but she is betrayed. Can Garritji be saved?

This powerful and unique novel is based on oral history and told through Yolngu eyes, with ancestors as the Yolngu remember them: proud, strong, resilient people in control of their world and interacting with foreigners on their own terms.

Judges’ Report

Reading A Piece of Red Cloth transports the reader to another world, another time, and an achingly painful history many of us know nothing about. The novel, importantly, documents the oral and collective experiences of the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land, the impact on their culture of the Dutch East India company in the 1600s, and the murderous disruption of generations of harmonious trading between the Yolngu and the Macassans of Indonesia. This history is made personal, close and vivid through the masterfully sustained story of Garritji, a young girl on the cusp of womanhood, whose fate seems increasingly, tragically, sealed. This is a deeply moving novel, and the generosity of its experiential offering is profound.