ABSTRACT
Critics have deftly explored the use of historical themes by Australian writers, whereas there has been little attention paid to the way in which contemporary historical fictions have articulated with the political and historiographical debates of the history wars. In an effort to address this critical lacuna, this chapter considers the way that fictional work has participated in the broader practice of witnessing to Australia's history of Aboriginal dispossession. It uses Grenville's work as a starting place to reflect on how non-Indigenous writers have used their work to witness to Australia's history of Indigenous dispossession. The chapter considers Grenville's two Secret River texts alongside each other, a parallel reading that illustrates the extent to which the two overlap and are intertwined. Searching is not simply a companion piece to The Secret River.
