Highly Commended: IP Picks 2006, Best Fiction
In Easter at Tobruk Christianity and war collide in an Australian context. With engaging candor the novel explores changing values in our society since the Second World War.
The narrative focuses on two Easters, that of 1941 when Australian troops entered Tobruk in North Africa, and another fifty years later. The main character, Rob, finds himself caught in an improbable time-warp, breathing colour into events and characters too often rendered with historical dispassion.
IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd) –
An enticing work peppered with a glistening sense of magic realism, O’Sullivan’s novel paints lush, dimensional scenes with literary brushstrokes. Living, breathing characters crafted by archetypal essences of poet, priest, good mother and old soldier propel a storyline supported by the strong themes of war, freedom, mateship and a kind of reconciliation that transcends time and place. Easter at Tobruk quite literally bends the passage of time:
The sea drew him in an endless repetitive pattern. Early in the mornings, at sunset or late into the night he might be there, staring into the horizon. Often he’d see that place Tobruk out there, and was content to squat in a hole with uncouth fighting men, passing around the tobacco tin and reciting the soldier’s psalm.
— IP Picks 2006 Judges’ Report