Awarded Book of the Year, People's Choice, and the
Christina Stead Prize for Fiction: NSW Premier's Literary Award 2020
Awarded the Australian Bookseller's Choice Fiction Book 2020
Awarded the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2020
Awarded The Voss Literary Prize 2020
Awarded the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction 2020
Awarded the Kate Challis RAKA Award for Literature 2021
Awarded the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature for Fiction and the Premier's Award 2022
Shortlisted for The Stella Prize 2020
Shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award 2020
Shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction 2020
Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction 2020
Shortlisted for the ABIA Awards for Literary Fiction Book of the Year, Audiobook of the Year 2020
About The Yield
A young Indigenous Australian woman searches for her grandfather's dictionary, the key to halting a mining company from destroying her family's home and ancestral land in this exquisitely written, heartbreaking, yet hopeful novel of culture, language, tradition, suffering, and empowerment in the tradition of Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, and Amy Harmon.
Knowing that he will soon die, Albert “Poppy” Gondiwindi has one final task he must fulfill. A member of the indigenous Wiradjuri tribe, he has spent his adult life in Prosperous House and the town of Massacre Plains, a small enclave on the banks of the Murrumby River. Before he takes his last breath, Poppy is determined to pass on the language of his people, the traditions of his ancestors, and everything that was ever remembered by those who came before him. The land itself aids him; he finds the words on the wind.
After his passing, Poppy’s granddaughter, August, returns home from Europe, where she has lived the past ten years, to attend his burial. Her overwhelming grief is compounded by the pain, anger, and sadness of memory—of growing up in poverty before her mother’s incarceration, of the racism she and her people endured, of the mysterious disappearance of her sister when they were children; an event that has haunted her and changed her life. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by a mining company. Determined to make amends and honor Poppy and her family, she vows to save their land—a quest guided by the voice of her grandfather that leads into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river.
Told in three masterfully woven narratives, The Yield is a celebration of language and an exploration of what makes a place "home." A story of a people and a culture dispossessed, it is also a joyful reminder of what once was and what endures—a powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language, storytelling, and identity, that offers hope for the future.
Reviews
'A testament to the saving grace of language itself, and to the corrosive consequences when it falls out of use and disappears' Wall Street Journal
'Unmissable.' The Guardian Australia
'Winch has built her novel with subtlety and strength. This is a complex, satisfying book, both story and testimony. The Yield works to reclaim a history that never should have been lost in the first place.' Erica Wagner, The Guardian UK
'A lyrical, courageous storyteller, Winch redefines Australia in this generational tale of reclamation and hope.' The Times
'A groundbreaking novel for black and white Australia.' Richard Flanagan
'The Yield is a fine novel, and one not without hope' Joy Williams, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Quick and the Dead
'Mesmerising and important.' Melissa Lucashenko
'The Yield sings up language, home, blood - all the important stuff.' Paul Kelly
'A work of immense scope and sensitivity.' Jessie Cole
'A beautifully written novel that puts language at the heart of remembering the past and understanding the present.' Kate Morton
'Nothing short of a landmark Australian novel, simultaneously timeless and yet urgently a story for now, with sentences that’ll knock the wind out of your gut.' Benjamin Law