Harmless book trailer and activity

Harmless might be an interesting resource to consider when exploring the cross-curriculum priority: Asia and Australia’s relationship with Asia. The free book club notes include an author interview and discussion questions. Or try this teaching activity for Year 10.

About the book
Internationally acclaimed novelist Janette Turner Hospital said ‘… the whole canvas of Australian life — its ethnic diversity, its violence, its growing divisions of class and economic status, its convoluted history of linkage with South East Asia — is made vivid in this remarkable novella.’

Full of suspense, Harmless is the tightly woven story of eight-year-old Amanda, whose father is in prison, and Rattuwat, a Thai man burying his daughter in a strange land. Abandoning their broken-down car on the way to the prison’s visiting hour, Amanda and Rattuwat venture into the trackless scrub of Australia’s outer suburbs. As the day heats up, the sense of menace intensifies and each of them enters the no-man’s-land between safety and peril.