Published April 2022
A bomb of righteous fury and sisterly solidarity that detonates with a force comparable to Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things.
The Saturday Paper
A History of Dreams is, ultimately, a book about imagination, and about the ways in which the imagination operates, and what its purpose or power might be in politically bleak and oppressive times…imagination – and the ability to shape or direct it –[is] at the very heart of human action, political power, and change.
Sydney Review of Books
In the 1930s in Adelaide, sisters Margaret and Esther Beasley and their friend Phyllis O’Donnell are learning to be witches. Their guide is Audrey Macquarie, a glamorous, Communist schoolmate who was taught the art of changing dreams by her suffragette great-aunt. This subtle magic, known only to spinsters, has been passed from aunt to niece for generations. Now this group of young women is using it to power their own small revolution, undermining a system that wants them married, uneducated and at home.
As Europe begins falling to fascism, these women – the Semaphore Supper Club – stumble on a nest of Nazi sympathisers in the poetry salons of Adelaide. The poets’ political connections help them rise in power, until the Club finds they aren’t just fighting chauvinist writers but have taken on Australia’s new authoritarian government.
As the government discovers it too can harness dreams, Margaret, Esther, Phyl and Audrey face an overwhelming force they cannot defeat. Each of them must decide whether – and how – to continue the struggle in the face of almost certain failure.
A History of Dreams explores female friendship, the power of finding a vocation, and the importance of joy in a time of political darkness. It asks what our responsibilities are when faced with an unjust government, particularly when we have the privilege to look the other way.
Longlisted for the Tasmanian Literary Awards Premiers Prize for Fiction
Rawson’s novel reminds us that although fascism is always with us, so is our capacity for solidarity – and powerful dreaming.
The Conversation
A History of Dreams is a profoundly unsettling allegory; a timely satire; a scathing indictment of life in twenty-first century Australia.
Australian Book Review
Deliciously deviant
Australian Women’s Weekly
Even the darkest sections convey characteristic underlying wit which alleviates the gloom. The multifaceted literary and philosophical factors of A History of Dreams will delight readers from the first sentence to the last. This book is a gem.
Arts Hub
Reading this book is like absorbing one of the young women’s own witchy dream-nightmares slipped into a cup of tea: lightly refreshing, highly readable and intermittently charming, but with a delayed effect that you feel only after you have drunk the brew.
Sydney Morning Herald
ISBN: 9781922598608