Danny Russel, precocious child of Scottish emigrants, is a born survivor. He soon goes native in working-class Elizabeth, South Australia's new model city. In the dusty streets and playgrounds of Elizabeth, Danny and his friends learn to live by their wits. Theirs is a world of stolen pleasures and elemental violence, of endless variations on the 'battle between Good and Evil, though to us then it was more a straightforward question of whether to Kill or Be Killed'. Sometimes frightening, often funny, In Elizabeth follows Danny's progress from prepubescent revolutionary to self-styled Scribe of Elizabeth, and finally to penniless escapee. In this startling first novel, Stewart Henderson casts a bold and ironic eye over the frustrations and fantasies of growing up on the urban frontier.
Stewart Henderson was born in Scotland in 1956, and arrived in Australia in 1962, his parents following soon afterwards. He left school at fifteen, working at a variety of jobs, and avoiding working at many more. Stewart spent a decade at university in the late eighties to early nineties, obtaining a degree in French and honours degree in English. He is currently a ward of the Arts Department.