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Look, if you need any proof that I was a cultural ignoramus, it is the fact that I had no knowledge of today's guest and the work that she's done, and how famous she's now become. Hannah Kent is a South Australian lady who's written a couple of amazing books, and she's just I was reading a review in the Week in Australian and a couple of weeks ago, and I told the story of this rotary exchange student her
lands in rageavic and Iceland. Can imagine in the middle of the night that's permanently dark at that time of the yearn in the middle of winter, and there's no one there to meet. How does she negotiate that? Well, it's all written in her book, Always Home, Always Homesick, a memoir by Hannah Kent. Hannah, welcome to the program.
Thanks for coming so much for having me. It's a joy.
I couldn't imagine what it's like this Well, I think a little girl at seventeen. I don't think that's an insulting description of her.
No, I'll take it now, at the wise old age of forty. Yeah, it was definitely very young, though at the time I probably thought that was very grown up.
So your lob in Rashevi in the didn't I say it correctly?
Reykovic very close.
Well you can now speak Icelandic.
I can. Yeah, it took me a little while.
I just keep thinking of that sweetish ship on the chef, on the muffet. It must have been a difficult language to pick up.
Oh that's what it sounded like, suddenly to my years. When I first arrived, I remember I had this extraordinary experience of when I did laugh finally land in Keflabic Airport, which is about forty five minutes outside of the capital Reykuvic. It was about midnight, you know, it was dark, as you say, and when no one came to get me, I thought, well, I better do something about it. And someone very kindly gave me some coins and pointed me to a payphone because I had one phone number of
one contact in Iceland. And I remember I went over there and I put the coins in and I dialed the number and this woman picks up and she has this beautiful, melodious voice. But I couldn't understand nothing. I could and even tell the words apart from one another, and I'm sort of trying to interrupt her and say,
you know, I'm sorry, do you speak English. I'm Hannah, I'm the exchange student, and she that she hangs up with me, and then so I called the number again and that I hear the woman and I realize, of course that it's not anyone at all. It's just the Icelandic equivalent of your fault, your coal can not be connected. So yeah, that was probably the first time I ever heard Icelandic. It wasn't necessarily an auspicious beginning.
So you loved it. And I know it's because I've read but our listeners. Why the airport's closing. It's getting close to midnight. The airport's closing. You're an hour or forty five minutes away from the capital city. You don't know the airport's cleared, everyone's gone. What's going through your mind? How are you feeling?
I probably, you know, I was a very optimistic young woman, and I probably allowed about an hour before I really thought, oh, yeah, I think I've been forgotten because by that stage, as you say, there were no more flights coming in, and there was no one else there, and after I called that number, I didn't really have anything else I could do. I mean, this is two thousand and three January two thousand and three. When I arrived, I knew nothing about Iceland.
It was this It's a country now that I know many people have traveled to, and it seems to have a cultural prominence, you know, whether it's the music or the writers. People know about Iceland, But back then I really didn't. All I had to arm myself for this exchange was Burke CDs. I had listened to two Berk CDs and my aunt had also very kindly torn out six pages of a Gourmet Traveler, which was all about icelandic cod and this is what I had, you know,
So I didn't. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't. I didn't even know what the country looked like. I remember peering outside of those airport you know, windows, sliding doors, and seeing nothing. The darkness was so absolute, permanent darkness. Te yeah, well they in around that time, they have about three or four hours of I wouldn't necessarily describe it even as daylight, but sort of as a blue gloaming.
But at this time midnight it was pitch black, and so I just sort of sat there in the airport, thinking, oh, right, well, something will happen. They'll either eventually remember and come and get me, or you know, I'll just keep waiting here till morning. There was nothing else I could do. I didn't have a mobile, And eventually I do see this woman coming over to me, and I'm thinking, finally someone's here. She comes up, but she's not she's not smiling, and
I'm thinking, oh, no, what have I done? And she comes up and she speaks to me in Icelandic and I apologize again, you know, for together the talathu enscrew. You know, do you speak English? Which was the only line I knew, And then she says, oh, you can't stay here. The airport is closing. And I had no idea. I'm like, oh, sorry, should I go wait outside, you know, pointing to where I can see just these mountains of snow and she looks at me like I'm crazy. He says, no,
don't go outside's crazy? Uh do you have someone that I can call for you? And I was like, oh, yes, I have this number, and I gave it to her and she dialed it and she said, no, you're no this number isn't working, and then she said, look, you can't stay here to do that. Really well, oh, I've listened to a lot of and she says she points outside and there's a bus with someone just finally getting on, and she says, look, this bus is going to Rekkuvic.
You just have to get on it and I'll see if I can find someone to come and get to, you know, security guard, no idea who I was. So I'm like, oh, but I don't have a ticket, and where does it go? And she's like, just get on the bus. It's going now. So I start making a run for it because I can see that the bus is closing, and you know, I get outside, it's freezing cold, and I'm just slapping my hand against the side of
the bus which has started to pull away. Eventually it stops, it lets me on and I get on, and then for forty five minutes I'm taken through this just more darkness until eventually we get some street lights and I see this quiet capital city of Reikuvik, And eventually we put up at the last stop and I'm the last person on the bus and the driver says, you know, you have to get out and so I do this empty parking lot and then I see a man in
a dressing gown waiting for me. That's going to this Land's Welcome to Iceland, Hannah, and I was sort of wide eyed, and he comes up and he says, oh, sorry, I thought you were coming next week. I just completely forgot here. So that was my first taste of Iceland.
Okay, we'll come back to that, because I was intrigued by your first host family. Why did you pick Iceland? I know you explained it in the book, but people will say, why would you pick as an exchange student? You could probably pick France or Italy or the USA and some places like even Canada, even though it was cold. Why Iceland?
You know what? I didn't pick it. It was I went on in a rotary exchange student. I was in year twelve, so I would have been sixteen years old, and I remember sitting in assembly and the counselors running through community notices and then she sort of says, oh, the local rotary club is accepting applicants for their twelve month exchange program. And at the time, you know, I was someone who had always loved writing and always loved
the arts. But being in year twelve, I had felt, you know, really strong pressure to choose a career or a vocation that would be stable, that I would be set to for life. I didn't know who I was. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And as soon as she said that, I thought, oh, that's twelve months grace then to make those decisions. I wasn't even thinking of where I would go. I came home, I told my parents, I'm going overseas for twelve months next year. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going
to take a gap year. They're sort of looking at one another and there's a bit of upbeat and then they, you know, coming straight with their support. I have an amazing family. But all through the application process, I had
no idea. I hadn't really thought about where it was that I would like to go until I had to fill out a form where we were all applicants were asked to nominate I think about five countries to be considered for, but ultimately it said, this is a courtesy, we're going to interview you, we're going to match you up with the place. And so I think at that stage I thought, well, where do I want to go. What do I want to see? And I'd never seen snow before, you know, grew up in the Adelaide Hills
and beautiful Paramount country snows. I remember one time in the year ten it snowed and then immediately melted and everyone went completely bananas. But no, I just thought that that would be pretty extraordinary to go somewhere completely different. And so I think I did list, you know, Canada, Norway, Sweden,
and I hope the committee would get the gist. But it wasn't until I was in my final interview where they were asking us questions such as, how would you feel if you know you encountered this or that problem or challenge, And I was asked how I would how I would respond if I were sent somewhere where it was dark, you know a great deal of time in the winter, and I was so enthusiastic. Without thinking, I just said, oh, that would be amazing. I would love
to experience that. And I remember the rotarian picking up his pencil and sort of doing a big cross next to my name, and that's I'm pretty sure that's why I ended up being the only person sent to Iceland that year.
Tell us about the early years. It seemed to me you were a childhood comfort or solace escape in books from an early age. I did, I did about your mum was a teacher.
Yeah, my mum was a primary school principal, and I think she saw very early on that words and stories were something that made sense to me. I was very shy child. I was very softly spoken, often didn't speak. I was quite solitary too, not in a way, not to say that I was lonely, because I don't remember ever really feeling lonely as a kid, but I was
just that little, shy, daydreaming child. And I think as I taught myself to read quite early on, probably because my parents read to me very early on, and I quickly made the correlation between those symbols on the page and the words that were being spoken, and words then became a means by which I could make sense of the world around me. It was something that felt magical
to me. As soon as I started reading, and I could read to myself silently in my head, I realized that I never really saw the words on the page. I just saw, you know, like movies in my mind, and I could completely leave whatever situation I was in or whatever emotional state I was in, and be someone else. I could go to the other side of the world. I could time travel. This was by five. I remember being I remember having this feeling. I remember being in
reception and having this response to books. It was quite it was quite early on, and I remember my frustration then at school when I had to sort of dutifully chant aloud the big books with my teacher and just the excruciating weight before she turned the page. I remember
that very clearly. But yeah, very soon after that, probably around the age six, my parents tell me that I announced that I wanted to be a writer, and I think that's because I worked out that this magical thing, you know, these magical objects were actually made by people, and I thought I want to be able to wield that kind of magic.
Have you got any of those early writings.
Oh, my gosh, I do. I have my first short story, which very clearly I already have a you know, a taste for the dramatic. Yeah, it's about a fish who wrecks vengeance on the local community when they start up a fish and chip shop locally and family start getting murdered. So yeah, it secks. It sicks. Yeah, I've still got a copy of it.
What did Your mum was a high school school principal. Your dad was principle and wanted you.
My dad worked in in finance, you know, for a long time he worked managing people's super funds.
And you went to high school at Heathville.
I did.
He thought high school country. It's not really country, but it's in the hills.
Yeah, I guess regional. I'm not sure.
Renowned for its volleyball team.
Yeah, I was. I was on one. I mean I was probably the shortest person on it, but very definitely back caught. But I loved it. It was great school.
Hannah Kent, he's my guest, folks. Autobiography. I think that's the best way of describing it.
Memoir.
Memoir. That's a memoir. That's what it says, always home, always home, So a memoir. I should have seen it on the front cover back shortly, folks, My guest today and conversations is Hannah Kent, a young lady who grew up in the Adelaide Hills, had a fascination with reading and writing. Wrote her first story and first book when she was six, and she still has got it about a fish who reaped vengeance on the local community for
the for the fish and chip shop. But her memoir it's called always Home, Always Homesick, based on I guess her experiences as an rotary exchange student in Iceland. Anyway, if you just tuned in, you've been accepted to go to we haven't been accepted to go to Iceland. You're still making your decision. If you submitted your requests and someone comes along and says Iceland, and what goes through your mind.
I was shocked. I was pretty taken aback. And I remember the first thing I did when I put the phone down was, you know, the family's crowding around. We went and got the atlas, because that's what you did back then. You got out of the atlas, and we we found Iceland, and you know, there was one page half a page sort of dedicated to it, and all we can see is, you know, two dots on it.
One's down south Raykiavik, the capital, and then there's another one in ARKWADERTI and I had been told that most people who were sent to smaller sort of populations tend to be around the capitol. So I was like, oh, okay, great, you know, I'll probably be around Raykivic or Aarkuderti this other town that you know, reads a mention on the atlas.
But then about a month before I was due to leave, I was told that I was going to be sponsored by the Rotary Club of so the Croaker, which looks a lot like soda Cracker when it's written down.
I've tried. I've seen the name written and I can't fathom how you can understand all the little symbols on it and pronunciation.
I had no idea. So yeah, and we didn't know where it was. It took ages. We had to hunt it down on the internet, you know, back in the days when you unplug the phone and wait for the dial up. And eventually my mum found it. And it's this little little town right up top, right in the north, on the edge of this fjord. And I was thinking, oh my gosh, I can't get further away from home than this. My dad's saying, you know, any further and you're starting to come back home again. And eventually, yeah,
that's that's where I was sent. But I mean, I knew so little about it. It was I knew it was a fishing village, and that's all I knew. So I imagined it would be close to the sea, but I had no idea what to expect.
Any So we've heard what happened when you landed. We've heard what You've got to finally find someone in Raka because who knows you and he expects you. Then you head off to your host's family. Now i've seen the description of your host family. You're pretty brave when it comes to discussing people's.
Well, you know, I feel like that's the prerogative of the novelist and the memoirrist, I guess, but you know, well.
There's another segment here. Well, where is it? I've made a note of it. One day, I'm sheltering from the rain and the shed of k the woman who takes care of me and my sister after school. Kay is one of the first truly mean people I've ever met, loath, seminiar, open contempt for children, and who refusal to allow us the sanctuary of her warm living room when it's raining. Kay might still be alive, she's reading, she.
Might be She's had a name change, so she might know who she is, but no one else.
Oh that's not a real name.
No, And I made sure to do that because lots of people who have their real names in there. I was able to contact and I told them what I was doing and asked for their permission. But people who I'm no longer in touch with, you know, as you can imagine, Kay and I are not exactly best of friends, and.
I just not weld she might.
She might, but I stand by it. One of the wonderful things in writing this memoir was that I had a huge amount of diaries and notebooks and letters and emails home. So whenever I felt like, oh this, you know, this is not necessarily unkind because there's always grounds for it, it was always something that I had in record, you know, I could corroborate. I guess I didn't want to, you know,
say things that maybe I might later doubt. So everything, you know, all the all the sort of nuances of these particular kinds of relationships are absolutely true.
So your first host family wasn't particularly welcoming, No, I was.
It was quite an extraordinary thing I hadn't had. I had had an experience when I was traveling to Iceland of landing in Ansterdam. One of my stop over cities and seeing a rotary exchange student't be greeted by their host family. You know, there were balloons and there was a big sign and they're welcoming them and give them a big hug. And I remember thinking, oh, yeah, this looks great. I'm looking forward to this. And then when I finally you know, I didn't I have that same
reception at the airport. And then when I took this little tiny plane up to sow the Crocker and it was dark again, I couldn't even see what this town looked like. And they were there. They remembered me, but they were incredibly reserved. And I remember almost immediately thinking, oh, if I already made you know, a cultural faux pas here and they, you know, if I'd done something to annoy them, because they were so silent. And then when we finally pulled up at their house, their son was there.
He was their sort of lenning against the doorway, and I was introduced to him. You know, this is kind of that. I think he was about eighteen years old, so just a touch a touch older than me, and he didn't say a thing. He just turned around and went back inside. And I remember I turned to my host father. I said, oh, can he speak English? And he was like, oh, yes, very well. I thought, oh again, I'm not sure what's going on, and he didn't speak to me. I don't think the entire time that I
was there. So even now I'm a bit curious as to what might have been going on with that family, because they were an incredibly silent family. Initially I thought it was just with me, but then I realized it was also amongst one another, you know, in themselves. They spent a lot of time apart, and as an adult looking back, I think, oh, you know, they probably had They probably weren't in a good position to take on an exchange student at the time, being seventeen, I'm thinking,
what have I done? You know, this is something this is on me. I'm not extroverted enough, or I don't know, not learning the language fast enough. But I've since spoken to many people within that community who have said, oh no, I think I think they had their own issues. I think they probably shouldn't have just had an exchange student.
What's it like frontic up at school the next day? You can't speak icelanding some of them they speak English. But were you confident or your nervously. What's going through your mind?
I was incredibly nervous. Yeah, I sort of landed on the weekend and then I was told I knew I would have to go to school. That was a requirement of the exchange, even though I'd finished in Australia and I thought there'd be a few more days to settle in. But the now on Monday, I was told. You know, by that stage, i'd seen a little bit of the town.
It was very small. There was this bright orange building sort of on the side of a hill, and that was pointed to me out That was pointed to me as the school, and they said, okay, Monday morning, your first class starts at eight. Off you go. Here's the timetable. So I'm there walking through the dark and the star school in the ice. Yeah, and you know, at some point I hear this cracking. I'm like, what's that noise?
Then I realized I'm walking on a body of water and I didn't realize, and it's cracking under my weight. So I'm scurrying over to the side and it's when it's dark, and I finally get into this school and it's incredibly different from Hayfield. You know, no one wears shoes, they wear socks inside, and it's comparably very modern. It feels more like a university in some ways. And I eventually find the room number that's on my timetable and
I sit there. I don't even know. I can't even read the Icelandic to know what kind of class it is. I realized it, you know, advanced mathematics, not exactly my strong suit, let alone when you have to learn it in Icelandic. And I just remember sitting there thinking, oh, I've landed in it. I don't know how I'm going to get through this year. Were you still I think? So? Yeah? You know, I feel like my family are very resilient.
They are resilient people. And even though I was, you know, quite shy, I think I really thought, no, no, this is a year where I'm going to make something of it, and I know it'll be challenging. But I think I always felt like I had that great love and supporting my family that could anchor me. So so that's what I did. I tried to make a go of it at school. School they were friendly. Yeah, I think I
wasn't sure what to expect. And it's interesting now looking back with a great love and appreciation of Icelandic culture and Icelanders. They have this wonderful thing where they're very what some people misinterpret as coldness is actually can be of just a deep respect for people's privacy and you know, things will emerge in time, and I'm not going to go do this very extroverted thing and introduce myself. It's
more like, you know, we'll give people their space. And this was also a very small town where everyone, you know, friendships groups were basically set from preschool, so it was quite hard to enter into it. And I think a lot of those early months, probably the first six months of my exchange, was me realizing that I would have to find other ways of belonging than simply just being.
There physically, and how did you do that?
I think it came about in two ways. There was one point during my exchange early on, about three months in where this host family, the ones who didn't really speak the hostad came into my room and he said, all right, we're going and I was like, no idea where? All right, sure, I'll come along, and he takes me down to sort of the industrial part of the town near the ocean, and I'm thinking, where are we going. There's no one, no one's here, it's pitch black snow.
He gets like oh. He pulls up. He's like, okay, you have to get out. He leads me up the stairs of this warehouse and I can hear people speaking in the top. He opens the door. They all turn around and stare at me, and I'm thinking what is going on? And then I hear him say okay, i'll pick you up in two hours, and Lee leaves and I'm there standing in this room with all these people walking at me, and I had to sort of say, oh, I'm sorry, I'm Hannah. Can you do you mind telling me?
You know who you all are and what you're doing? And then a woman comes over and she was like, oh, no, okay, I think I understand what's going on. You're the exchange student, because everyone knew who I was, even if they didn't
talk to me. I was like yeah. She's like, okay, so we're the local theater company and we're rehearsing this play and I think you're a host that I think he thought because you're like drama that you maybe could be part of the play, but you don't speak Icelandic, and I'm like, oh no, sorry, you know, I'm learning blah blah blah, and like just kind of look at
each other and then they go off and confer. I can hear them talking amongst one another, and eventually they come back and she's like, okay, so we can would you like to be She's searching for the English word and eventually goes, would you like to be our slave? Now, at this stage, everything's so awkward. I just yes, I'll do anything, I'll participate in any means. And then she says, because we really need somebody to, you know, mop up the blood. And I'm just go what what is going on?
And then eventually, through you know, very you know, some translation and some miming and across the language barrier, I realized that this play is about six people who are murdered on stage and then finish the play as ghosts. And that's comedy, would you believe? And they need someone hilarious, They need someone to mop up the blood from when everyone dies on stage. So that's that's how I started learning. I was learning by doing that.
Hannah Kent is my guest folks, Always Home, Always Home. Seeker Memoir is her book. It's not her first book. That first book has created an enormous interest. I'm sure we'll get to it. I'm just not sure when back. Shortly walking back, everybody, now look, if you just tuned in, we're chatting with Hannah Kent. Hannah Kent's a local writer and I'm ashamed that I didn't realize Hannah's fame before
I read a review on the Weekend Australia. We're talking about her book, Always Home, Always Home, s going to look It starts basically, even though we talked about her early days growing up in the Adelaide Hills. But she goes as an exchange student to Iceland and then it's an adventure, an adventure which forms the basis of her first novel, which isn't the memoir. But I'm still fascinated
how she integrates into society. But she's introduced into a drama group where she can't speak Icelandic, they can't speak English. But that was the icebreaker, wasn't.
That was the icebreaker? Once I agreed to be their props girl, I realized pretty quick smart that I would need to be able to understand what I was hearing with what was in the script. So I started learning Icelandic like a mad thing, just to be able to do my job at the theater.
How hard is that? One? It's French and Italian. We can Spanish, we can probably we've heard a bit before, We've never heard Icelandic.
I was pretty studious by that stage. ID started making a few friends at school, and there was one girl in particular who started to stop buy and help me translate it. And around this time too, I actually changed host families. I moved to a completely different family, you know. The first one very quiet. Everyone was an adult. Second family, pretty young couple, and they had four kids under ten. And these kids, I mean, the elder speaker spoke a
little bit of English, but the rest didn't. And so I, you know, just being surrounded by their chatter and they're sort of, you know, not complicated Icelandic, it was wonderful. I just felt so completely embraced by this family, and I really wanted to speak with the kids. And I had a one year old who was learning too, so for a while we learned at the same pace, you know. But that's really what changed.
Are you really fluent now?
I'm super rusty because, as you might imagine. I don't get many opportunities to practice, you know, over here, But I spent about two or three days in Icelandic comes flooding back, and I dream still in Icelandic sometimes really, and I'm always more fluent than I am in my waking hours too, so I know it's there somewhere. It's just a matter of, you know, tapping those neural pathways.
We're going to have to jump ahead of it because your first novel, Burial Rights, was based on the story of an Icelandic farm girl who was beheaded, executed, accused and convicted of murdering the farmer.
Yes and yeah. Another man who was at the farm as a guest for the name.
Well, how did you come across the I'm going to try and Agnes.
Almost Agnes Magnus Dott. What's her name?
I have no chance of saying, So how did you come across this story of Agnes let's call.
I had lots of incredible stories when I was in Iceland. It's an amazingly storied country. And I remember one day I was driving being driven down south to Recuvik along the Ring Road, and we went we're still in the north and we went through around this corner and we entered this sort of valley country and there was this extraordinary sort of mouth, valley mouth, just filled with hundreds and almost thousands of tiny hills and it, you know,
it looked weird. I've never seen anything. Hell oh, probably as big as a standard ceiling, maybe some of them smaller, various sizes. They looked. I didn't know anything about it. I thought they mounds, but you know, some of them you got to really climb up. And then I thought, well, are they Viking Perial Mounds? And I remember asking the people I was with, and they said, no, this is they were caused by an avalanche hundreds of years ago.
But it's interesting you mentioned this place. And they pointed to three of the hills set apart from the others, and they said, well, over there is the sight of Iceland's last execution. And then throughout the rest of my exchange, I kept hearing about this woman, Agnes Magnus Dotty, who was in her early thirties when she was beheaded, and I was so curious about her, and everything that I heard didn't really seem to satisfy that curiosity. I started
dreaming about her. She was someone who was often spoken of in you know, kind of stereotz as a stereotype. She was spoken to someone who was sort of you know, evil or bad, and that's why she'd done what she had done. But when I tried to ask about her early life, for her circumstances, I could find very little. And I think, you know, I really don't think anyone
is all good or all bad. I think, you know, so maybe some there's probably, but I think most people, you know, we're often the most people often with the you know, we're formed by our circumstances, and we're shaped by the times and the places that we lived in, and sometimes we do terribly bad things. But I was interested in the ambiguity. I think I was interested in her humanity and I couldn't find it.
But you eventually did. I mean, I read about the research that you did to try and find about what you could about Agnes. You must have been at some stage frustrated to the point where it's too hard. You described as historical fiction, where there's the framework is other facts, but the fiction is the narrative around the facts. Perhaps you know the vocabulary of the or the language. But tell tell us about some of the research that you eventually did.
Yeah, I didn't. I mean when I went home from Iceland, I had made up my mind to write that was something that Iceland helped me realized, and so I went to Universe and did that. But it wasn't until I finished my undergraduate degree that I thought I would write a book about this woman. And the reason was really because I kept dreaming about her. I kept writing poetry which I realized was in her voice. But by the time I was doing my thesis, I thought, Okay, yeah,
I need to write about her. And I realized, even though I knew Iceland, I didn't know nineteenth century Iceland. So I knew I had to research that world and what it was like back then, and I knew I needed to research her life. And I did as much as I could from Australia. But eventually I got a grant to go over to Iceland, where I was able to go to the National Archive.
So this is part of your thesis, yes, your PhD.
Yeah, by this stage, yes, And so I had an incredible time. Really, I managed to find her as a six year old in a census, and I managed to find poetry that she had written. I realized that she was born illegitimate, which was quite a significant crime back then and really sort of limited her opportunities. She was someone who would have been laboring from about that age
as well. And I started to get this real picture of a woman who even the people who absolutely hated her and who thought that she was completely responsible for this crime, was totally evil, had planted out. Even they spoke about her intelligence and often as reason of that's why she did it, but they also spoke about her
love of literature. And I started to get this sense that there was more to the story and that the versions that had been told of it were very much skewed in terms of their prejudice and bias, And yeah, a whole the other different stories started to emerge. It was fascinating.
It was difficult finding researching it. Tell us about that there was a moment where you were presented with a book.
Oh yeah, that was extraordinary.
That's such a coincidence.
That the whole process was just completely riddled with extraordinary coincidences. I before I had gone to Iceland, once I knew I got the funding, I had a list of things I wanted to access there, and one of them was a book, and I could see that it had a whole chapter about Agnes, which was more than anything I had found. And then when I got to Iceland, I went to all the libraries where I knew it would be. First one they couldn't find it on the shelf, second
one they said, no, we've never had it. Third one apparently had been burned in a fire. At any rate, I couldn't find a single one, and I was really disappointed, so I had to go back to the primary sources. But eventually, after I'd spent ages in all the archives and I had all this info, I thought, well, I want to go somewhere pretty isolated and I just want to sit with it and work out how I'm going to, you know, build the fiction into it, how I'm going
to turn it into a novel. And I found a hostel right in the middle of nowhere on the Vatsnas Peninsula in the north and when I got there it was I realized it was a dairy and a barley farm, and the farmer just rented out an old barn for people in the summer. But this wasn't somewher this was autumn. And he comes up to me and he's like, oh, do you mind me asking you know what brings you at here? I was like, oh, well, I'm writing the book. You see, I'm writing. Have you heard of Agnes Maactus
dot here? And he sort of takes a step back and gives me a strange look and thinks, yeah, I've heard of her. So you're writing a book, that's what you're here for. And next minute they put me in a little summer cabin and his mom's like dragging a desk from their actual house so I can write out so accommodating, so welcoming and generous. And then later that night I get a knock on the door of the cabin and it's k the farmer, and he says, I'm
so sorry to interrupt you. I know that you're you have to write the book, but I was thinking about you know, you're writing about Agnes Magnustott, and they thought maybe you might like to read this. And he gives me a copy of the book that I've been looking for, and not only that, he tells me that he'd never read it before until the week prior. So when I show up in the middle of the blue and say that I'm writing about Agnes Magnustot it. It was an incredible coincidence for him as well.
So you write the book, you see the spot where Agnes is beheaded, you see the ax that was used to be head. As gruesome as that sounds, they retrieve her bones, do they not. Yeah.
She was buried at the site after the execution and the heads were set on stakes. Their heads disappeared in the night, and everyone thought that a local farm woman had arranged for them to be buried in consecrated ground. But the bodies were just buried, so no one knew where they were. And then about one hundred years later there's an extraordinary, extraordinary circumstances of happening. Another coincidence, Another coincidence. Yeah, a psychic, a woman who actually was very secretive about
her psychic abilities. She was a housewife in Reykovik started writing, you know, automatic writing where you just can't it's not your voice, what's coming out in the page. And she realized that it was the voice of this woman Agnos Magnes did she shouldn't do anything about it. I think it kind of spooked to her. But it went on for three years and the voice was becoming increasingly insistent,
saying I want my bones moved to consecrated ground. And so eventually she contacted someone and said, look, you know, this is what's been happening, and I think maybe we should move the bones. And he said, yeah, well I'm not quite sure if it's true, but we probably should move the bones. That's probably a good thing to do. But the problem is no one knew where they were. No one knew where they were buried. There was no
record whatsoever. And so the psychic said, well, I'll ask Agnes, and so she comes back with these directions based on you know, physical locations and where the sun comes up, and she says in the Agnes in the voice of the psychic, says, go to this farm up north and look for a man called Magnus, and he'll help you. He'll prove to be a good searcher. And she also says, by the way, the heads aren't in thingate our churchyard there at the site, and I still have a piece
of the steak in my skull. Anyway, it's very it's very spooky, very gruesome. But the man goes up north, he finds a man called Magnus at this farm. Didn't think there would.
Be don't tell me he finds the heads.
They find the heads within fifteen minutes following these times, I believe. And there's ten centimeters of wood inside one of the skulls.
Hallah Cant is my guest, Folks. That's part of a book of burial Rights. But her memoirs called Always Home, Always Homesick, talks about that, of course in there will come back and talk about the first novel she writes and the funeral that it creates. Back shortly, folks. My guest on conversations is Hannah Kent, who's a local who grew up in the Adelaide Hills, went to Heathfield High and is now a world famous author. Her memoir is
called Always Home, Always Homesick. But if you just tuned in, she didn't exchange rotary exchange to in Iceland and became fascinated with this story about the young farm girl who was executed after being found guilty of murdering a farmer and I guess a farm hand, but had a fascinated Hannah to the point where she had to write about it, and her first book, Burial Rights, is the story of
I can't even say the surname Hannah An Thank you Hannah. Anyway, so you get all this story, So you wrote your complete your thesis based on this narrative.
Yeah. I never ended up submitting my my my entire thesis, so you know, I can't call myself doctor. But I did finish the book as part of that thesis.
So how did it come to be a novel?
Well? I am once I finished writing it. You know, it was incredibly emotional experience. I always thought that when I'd finished my first book, i'd be celebrating, you know, a glass of bubbles. I wept. I wept as soon as I finished this story. By that stage, I was so invested in the lives of these characters and in this particular story that I think I went through a period of grief. I remember I printed out the Man No,
I think, I'm not sure. I think it was just because I realized how sad so much of this story was, and I had really experienced it, you know, obviously vicariously, but emotionally. I'd been in that place, and so I printed it out and I put it under my desk and I didn't do anything with it until one of my one of my lecturers and a friend said to me, you know there's a local competition, unpublished Manuscript award you should enter, And I said that she was one of them.
Eight root Starkey incredible, incredible support and guide to me. This was another friend who suggested Kylie Cardell, who still works at Flinders, and she suggested to me, you should enter this award now unpublished manuscript, unpublished manuscript award.
So you send it off in what form? Like, just a type of form.
I spent a week cutting about twenty thousand words, mostly adjectives, and then I sent it off about ten minutes.
Writers scared of adjectives.
Oh, I'm not scared of them. I think I just used too many. Honestly, what's wrong with adjectives? I love adjectives. I already I already had too many in there. About just choosing the best ones, I think. But yeah, I send it off and yeah, next thing I know, I got a call saying that I'd won.
And then there's a there's a publishing war for your for the rights to it.
Yeah, that was completely unexpected. As a result of winning the publishing competition, I got a literary agent and she sent it out and then very soon after that it leaked overseas to you know, similar companies, similar publishing companies, and people started offering rights, and my agent said, look, I know it would be really tempting to say yes, but we're going to say no. We're going to wait and see what people come up with. And eventually, yeah,
eventually it kind of went everywhere. It was publishing right, publishing rights. Yeah, it turned into a bit of a bidding war, and I got to meet with a lot of different publishers, and eventually I met Alex Craig Picket or Australia, who I think really understood it and ended up being published here and in the UK and US simultaneously.
What's going through your mind when all was this happening.
Oh, it's just a continuous pinch me moment. You know. I thought maybe my examiners and my mum would read it. I had no idea this was going to happen. I never thought that it would be published, so it was an extraordinary It was an extraordinary time for me.
Did you have a real job before then?
Oh, I don't know. I've always had about six different jobs.
You know.
I've worked as an editor, and as a teaching assistant and as a as a tutor. I've you know, my first job was in a butcher's, so you know, I've been working since I was fifteen years old.
Just did that.
They needed some little hands, you know, skin chickens. So I've worked in all sorts of places, but this was probably the moment where I thought, oh wow, I'm going to I signed a two book deal, so I thought, okay, I can probably have a crack at this writing caper. Now I can see how far I can take it.
Do I give you advances on your books? I mean we read the stories of the writer gets the advances and he's stuck with writing block and he's under pressure to reproduce because he's already received the money. It is a bit like that.
I think they can be true, particularly for nonfiction, maybe for some other genres. I think I think for literary fiction and a lot of fiction, they just want you to come up with the goods first. Then they'll offer you an advance and would you have to earn out through sales.
There was an article in the Financial Review about the sort of money that was being offered to Did that take you by surprise?
Well, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean I think the average income for a writer in Australia. Back then it was even less, but now it's about eighteen thousand dollars. And so when I saw how much people were offering, I thought, well, you know, I should be able to get away with this for a little while.
Yet. Have the movie rights been Yeah.
Movie right's the soul. They were sold pretty early on before the book came out, and now they're still with Sony and I just actually quite recently heard some news about that. So you know, there's been the writers' strike and COVID and whatnot. It's been delayed for a bunch of different reasons, and I understand these things take time. But yeah, hopefully, hopefully we'll see something in the next year.
But there's other There's been a couple of other books they have. Have they been just as successful.
Yeah, they have. Nothing's been quite as mad as Burial Rights. And I think you know that being a debut to felt particularly significant. But I've been very very fortunate, I think here in Australia to have very loyal and faithful readers. I'm very very lucky to still be able to write a lot of the time. You know, occasionally I'll take on other work and jobs. But yeah, I get to spend a lot of my time writing, which has always been the dream.
What's the Run Rabbit Run story? I mean, I know never saw a novel called Run Rabbit Run, but you were obviously involved in the screenplay of that. Yeah, and there was who was going to play the lead role and ended up being serious nuke. Did you have any saying who plays who? No?
No, I didn't get any casting. Yeah, this was probably so. My two other novels are The Good People in Devotion and I Think Good People. The Good People had just come out and I was approached by these two producers Carver Films that they made. They'd made Snowtown, which I had seen, and they said, you know, we think you're writing has a visual sensibility. Would you be interested in maybe writing for screen one day? And I thought, oh, yeah,
that'd be great. I'd love to try that. Love the challenge and how to go And over time we sort of, you know, developed this this contemporary film, the sort of psychological drama, and it ended up being made. And yes, Sarah did us the great honor of playing the lead. She was amazing.
What sort of influence does the screenplay writer have a on a movie.
Well, I was very lucky in that I was able to be involved from the very early stages. So in terms of story quite a lot. And then Dana Read, a tremendous Australian director, probably most recently well known for The Handmaid's Tale. She came on board and she would give me direction and then I would incorporate it, so she'd be you know, we need another beat here, or I'm a bit unsure about here, so you go away and you do your thing. So she put a lot of faith in me as a writer in terms of
the story and the characters, so that was great. But in terms of all the you know, the logistics, that's that's the producers, in terms of how it's shot, that's you know, the cinematographer and the director of photography, that's the that's the director. So you're part of a big team.
How's the how's your memoir been received? It's been out for months or sign out? Has it been amazing?
It's been incredible. I was really nervous about it because you know, it's different to what I normally do, and you know things can be interesting to you in your own life, but you're not sure if they're going to
be interesting to other people. But I've just been I've just come back from Melbourne Writer's Festival and just had the most wonderful reception I think people have, you know, received it really warmly, and it's made me realize too that one thing that I love about fiction that you can see so much of your own life and your
own experiences in it. That happens too with memoir. So I've been incredibly I'm kind of yeah, I'm a bit dumbfounded and very grateful with the way it's been received, which has been overwhelmingly positive.
Well, that leads to an obvious question, how much of fiction is based on your own life?
Well, I used to think very little, you know, certainly until this point where the memoir is very much my own life. But I mean, one of the reasons I loved writing fiction was a chance to sort of leave my own life behind and be interested in other people.
But it's funny how things sneak in, and I find that even if I think there's nothing of myself or my life in my books, I often have friends or even family be like, oh, I know, I know that that happened, and you've sort of you know, snuck that into your novel, and I think, oh, my gosh, so I did so. I think it's quite an unconscious thing. But of course, you know, everything you write is limited by the way that you see the world and your own frame of reference.
What's been your mom and dad's reaction to this? You found fame?
Oh, they're they're so great. They keep me grounded. I'd really never wake up and think, oh, I'm famous. I still don't think I do I ever do that. But no, they're they're incredibly supportive. I think I feel very, very lucky and I and I think I can credit them a great deal with my writing career, just from them recognizing so earlier that it was important to me and
encouraging me. And also they're, you know, just the support the way that they've you know, taken me back in when I've been broke and let me write at home, to reading early drafts. They're they're amazing. And I have a wonderful sister too, my little sister. I couldn't I couldn't ask for a better family.
Do they critique yourself?
I don't think they dare.
Honestly, You've got two young kids, I do how do you handle all of that.
Oh, you know, it's I used to be really disciplined. I don't used to like get up, goes straight to the computer, write uninterrupted. And of course with little children, you've you know, you're caring for them, and you continually interrupted. So it's taken me a while to get used to writing with that. But I love it, and I love I love the way that they're now old enough to find their names and the acknowledgments and to be excited
for me. And they're both actually, funnily enough, coinciding with this book coming out, they've both released their own books, which we've also had to have little family publication parties for us.
So it's very kidding, well hand, it's a great story. Well done with your success. I promise to recognize all the good things you've done rather than be surprised by them. So I hope your book goes really well for you. I'm sure it will so much.
Come and see. It's been a pleasure.
Hannah Canned was my guest, folks. Her book is called Always Home, Always Homesick, a memoir. It is a picadoor publication. Thank you for joining us,