Fiction featuring Care Experience
One Another (Novel)
Gail Jones
2024
Eminent Australian writer Gail Jones has recently published a novel in which she fictionalises the life of Care Experienced Polish-British novelist, Joseph Conrad. In One Another, Jones has a Tasmanian student, Helen, completing her PhD thesis on Conrad at Cambridge University in 1992. The novel includes Helen’s manuscript on Conrad, along with an account of Helen’s relationship with Justin. The two stories interact with each other, including Conrad’s connections with Tasmania.
Two other Care Experienced characters in the book too. Helen's mother who was in an orphanage from about the age of 9, and a friend of Joseph Conrad's, Irish nationalist Roger Casement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Casement).
Gail Jones says that Conrad & Casement "are connected by orphanhood - each raised by an uncle - and by their shock at the exploitation and cruelty they daily witness" (146) in the Congo.
Casement was executed for treason on 3 August 1916 at Pentonville Prison.