Semut wins the 2022 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Australian History

The prize for Australian history went to Semut : The untold story of a secret Australian operation in WWII Borneo, by Christine Helliwell, who has worked and at times lived among the Borneo’s indigenous Dayak peoples for more than 40 years. In his review for The Australian’s Book pages, critic Ross Fitzgerald described the book as “brilliant.”

“Some Dayaks previously had never encountered Europeans, while most Allied soldiers previously had never met indigenous people,” Fitzgerald wrote. “The soldiers didn’t have any local language skills and knew little about the Dayaks other than that they had been, and possibly still were, headhunters.”

Keen readers may also remember that Ross Fitzgerald praised Semut for its meticulous research, adding that it “is superbly illustrated, well indexed and lucidly written.”

Caroline Overington,The Weekend Australian, December 17-18, 2022, Review, Books p 17 and The Australian, 14 December, 2022, p 9.