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Ursula Dubosarsky

The Blue Cat

YEAR: 2017

COUNTRY: Australia

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Title of the work

The Blue Cat

Country of the First Edition

Original Language

English

First Edition Date

2017

First Edition Details

Ursula Dubosarsky, The Blue Cat. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2017, 169 pp.

ISBN

9781760292294

Genre

Fiction
Novels

Target Audience

Children

Cover

Courtesy of the publisher.


Author of the Entry:

Elizabeth Hale, University of New England, ehale@une.edu.au

Peer-reviewer of the Entry:

Miriam Riverlea, University of New England, mriverlea@gmail.com

Daniel A. Nkemleke, University of Yaounde 1, nkemlekedan@yahoo.com 

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Leaf pattern

Title of the work

The Blue Cat

Country of the First Edition

Original Language

English

First Edition Date

2017

First Edition Details

Ursula Dubosarsky, The Blue Cat. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2017, 169 pp.

ISBN

9781760292294

Genre

Fiction
Novels

Target Audience

Children

Cover

Courtesy of the publisher.


Author of the Entry:

Elizabeth Hale, University of New England, ehale@une.edu.au

Peer-reviewer of the Entry:

Miriam Riverlea, University of New England, mriverlea@gmail.com

Daniel A. Nkemleke, University of Yaounde 1, nkemlekedan@yahoo.com 

Courtesy of the Author.

Ursula Dubosarsky (Author)

Ursula Dubosarsky is an Australian writer of children’s and young adult fiction. Born in Sydney in 1961, she received an education in classical languages and literature at the University of Sydney (1982). She has a PhD in English Literature from Macquarie University (2008). She travelled to Israel and worked on a kibbutz, where she met her Argentinian husband. Her work is influenced by her travel, by an enjoyment of word play, intertextual referents, and an empathy with her child characters. Her child characters tend to be intelligent, intense, and observant loners. She is also very fond of guinea-pigs, which appear in many of her works.


Source:

Official website (accessed: September 4, 2020).



Bio prepared by Margaret Bromley, University of New England, brom_ken@bigpond.net.au and Elizabeth Hale, University of New England, ehale@une.edu.au


Summary

The Blue Cat is set in Sydney, 1942, and filtered through the observations of a dreamy child, Columba. Ellery (Elias), a new boy, arrives at Columba’s school: he either does not speak English or cannot speak. He is from Europe (You-rope) and may be a German-Jewish refugee. His mother is missing, and no longer sends letters. "Hitler killed her", says Columba’s brash friend, Hilda. As Columba observes the changes affecting Sydney during the war (curfews, air-raid drills, the presence of war ships in the harbour, the news from Darwin, the fall of Singapore), she is also fascinated by Ellery, by a blue cat that has also appeared at the same time, and the mystery of his missing mother. Interspersed through this story are historical documents from the period, including news items, pages from a book about cats, snatches from a German translation of Treasure Island, and images from Virgil’s Aeneid. Columba’s father has read The Aeneid in the original. The flight from Troy, and of Aeneas carrying Anchises from Troy, are part of these images.

Analysis

A hallmark of Dubosarsky’s work is delicate intertextuality. Here, references to the flight from Troy underscore the emotional resonance of Elias’s story, his flight with his father from Germany, the missing mother/wife, the sense of a civilisation in peril. The name, Columba, is late Latin for "dove", and the character reflects on its connection with ideals of peace. Dubosarsky comments in an afterword about the resonance of historical documents, and in the conversation has commented about a pervading interest in ‘lost’ aspects of history, and a sense of cultural antiquity and continuity in Latin and Greek literature.


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