Kate Grenville in conversation with Nicole Abadee

Kate Grenville in conversation with Nicole Abadee on The Country Schoolmaster.

Rummaging around in the archives one afternoon, Kate Grenville comes across an innocuous-looking file full of letters about a schoolteacher in country New South Wales. Intrigued, she keeps reading – and discovers a tale far more curious and complex than first appears. Was Joseph Connor savagely beating the students in his care? Or was he the victim of a small-town vendetta? And what went so terribly wrong between him and his daughter?

Ultimately, Grenville simply has to know: was Connor a victim or a villain? Part colonial cold case, part locked-room mystery, part the dance of a writer's imagination among facts and semi-facts, The Country Schoolmaster is a book like no other. In it, the novelist comes to understand the seductive pleasure of story-making, but also its dangerous limitations.


Kate Grenville is one of Australia's most celebrated writers. Her international bestseller The Secret River was awarded local and overseas prizes and is now a much-loved classic. Grenville's other novels include The Lieutenant, Lilian's Story, the Orange Prize–winner The Idea of Perfection and A Room Made of Leaves. Her works of non-fiction include One Life: My Mother's Story, Elizabeth Macarthur's Letters and, most recently, Unsettled: A Journey Through Time and Place.

Nicole Abadee is an event moderator and journalist who writes for the Sydney Morning Herald and Harper’s Bazaar. She has been a literary judge, podcaster and a guest on ABC Radio. Nicole is a board member of the Eleanor Dark Foundation which runs Varuna and the Blue Mountains Writers’ Festival and the Sydney Women’s Fund Advisory Council.