Wake in Fright tells of a young teacher, John Grant, who becomes stranded in the outback mining town of Bundanyabba, or 'the Yabba' - scorchingly hot, eerily desolate and drowning in alcohol, sex and secrets Wake in Fright was made into a film in 1971, arguably the greatest film ever made in Australia. It starred Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty and Jack Thompson in his first screen role.

Author Biography

Kenneth Cook was born in Sydney. Wake in Fright, which drew on his time as a journalist in Broken Hill, was first published in 1961 when Cook was thirty-two. It was published in England and America, translated into several languages, and a prescribed text in schools. Cook wrote twenty-one books in a variety of genres, and was well known in film circles as a scriptwriter and independent film-maker. He died in 1987 at the age of fifty-seven.