Telling Tennant’s Story by Dean Ashenden | Black Inc.

Telling Tennant’s Story: The Strange Career of the Great Australian Silence

Awards for Telling Tennant’s Story

  • Winner, 2022 Australian Political Book of the Year Award
  • Longlisted, 2022 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award

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About the author

Dean Ashenden has worked as an academic and a political adviser, and in journalism. He is the author of Telling Tennant’s Story, winner of the 2022 Australian Political Book of the Year Award. He has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, …

More about Dean Ashenden



Praise for Telling Tennant’s Story

‘A drily elegant, bracing work from a pained and open heart’ —Helen Garner

‘Moving ... filled with insights on the presence of a past right in front of our eyes’ —Jay Winter

‘A graceful, unostentatiously scholarly, wise (and highly readable) book on a subject of overwhelming and enduring significance for all Australians.’ —Robert Manne

‘Refreshing and original. A unique window on Australia’s past and its barbed resonance today … Essential reading for anyone interested in the challenge of truth-telling.’ —Mark McKenna

‘Lucid, succinct, eminently readable … A compelling, beautifully written, and essential contribution to the project of constructing a culture that makes room for all of us.’ —Kim Mahood, Australian Book Review

‘Ashenden has written this book in a frank, collegial voice. He has an economical way of writing that takes no side-steps and delivers his message with a good deal of power’ —Dr Emma Dortins, Professional Historians Australia

‘I think our winner was absolutely superb, and would inform people massively going into the referendum … It's absolutely a superb read and I'd really recommend it.’ —Laura Tingle

‘... don’t wait. Buy this wonderful mix of personal memoirs about a childhood in Tennant Creek and the history of the Great Australian Silence.’ —Nicholas Gruen, Lateral Economics

‘In his excellent book Telling Tennant’s Story: The Strange Career of the Great Australian Silence, Dean Ashenden chronicles the terrible consequences of colonisation for Indigenous peoples … Anyone who reads Ashenden’s book without feeling angry or ashamed has lost all humanity.’ —Niki Savva, The Sydney Morning Herald