The predicament of Australian-born Japanese civilians in an Australian internment camp seems a natural subject for the Vogel's Literary Award winner, Christine Piper, when you know her own complex background.
Piper, 35, just met the age limit for the $20,000 prize for unpublished manuscripts by young writers, which has launched novelists Tim Winton, Kate Grenville, Mandy Sayer and Gillian Mears among many others. Her debut novel, After Darkness, is published this week by Allen & Unwin as part of the award after five years' work ''from vague concept to final PDF''.
Written as part of her doctorate of creative arts at the University of Technology, Sydney, the novel is narrated by a Japanese doctor in the World War II camp at Loveday, South Australia, who has lived in Broome among the Japanese pearl divers, and is filled with regret about his medical work in Japan.
Piper's Australian father and her Japanese mother met in Japan when he was an exchange student and married years later. Their daughter was born when they were working in South Korea and the family moved here when she was one. ''I remember saying I wanted to be a writer from at least the age of 10,'' Piper said.
With a bachelor of media from Macquarie University she wrote and edited for magazines but ''got serious'' about creative writing with fellowships in the US and published short stories in journals and anthologies. ''When I was growing up in Australia I had a sense that I was an outsider,'' she said. ''When I had finished high school at 17 I went on exchange to Japan and thought I would find my identity. But I found that my identity is made up of my friends and the people I surround myself with. I am Australian and I was more of an outsider there. I'm a writer so it's always like that.''
Researching her novel, she was drawn to reports about the 100-odd Australian-born and half-Japanese interns among 4300 civilians who were locked up in three camps during the war.
''They were caught between two cultures and welcomed by neither,'' she said. ''They were very proudly Australian and one man served in the Australian Army and was discharged for being Japanese; he seemed a softly spoken, lovely young man and I felt for him.''
Such people were also picked on by nationalistic Japanese leaders in the camps. But Piper worked to create empathy for all her characters and a believable setting, drawing on interviews with former child internees and an unpublished diary translated with help from her mother.
Piper will soon return to New York, where she and her Australian fund-manager husband moved recently after winning US green cards on their fourth attempt. There's another ingredient for the mixing pot of her next novel.
