A Cultural Storm On The Rocks

The troubled birth of the Sydney Opera House has inspired an ambitious period novel.

- Charlotte Grimshaw

Shell opens in November 1960 as Paul Robeson, the American singer and activist, performs for the workers at the building site of the Sydney Opera House.

Young journalist Pearl Keogh is moved by the singing and all it represents: “It wasn’t just the building or the place Robeson had sanctified, but the labour. The valour of it. The modest hearts of workers. In his songs, in the faces of the men, was every story she had ever tried to write.”