Datsun Angel

'This is a tale that never takes its foot off the accelerator . . . Part
journey into the dark heart of Australia, part love story, this electric,
defiant, darkly funny memoir is fuelled by the outsized passions of youth and
tempered by the retrospective wisdom of age.' Sydney Morning Herald

'Hilarious, terrifying and fun - much like the 80s, only smarter.' ANNA FUNDER

'Fiercely funny. This is a road trip of danger, love and hope. Brilliant!'
JULIA ZEMIRO

'Witty, brave, honest and wise. Mad Max meets 1980s feminism, fuelled by
undergraduate outrage and hedonism.' CATHERINE LUMBY

'A fascinating insight into the 1980s, as well as contemporary Australia.'
Canberra Weekly

Datsun Angel is a turbo-charged adventure into the savage heart of 1980s
Australia: a place completely alien, yet frighteningly similar, to today.

EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK HAPPENED . . .

At seventeen, Anna Broinowski is precocious, naive and convinced she knows how
the world works. But O-Week at Sydney University changes that. She's suddenly
in a hyper-masculine caste system, where future captains of industry terrorise
freshers and invade dorms in naked, screaming packs.

Nothing is what she thought it'd be . . . until Anna finds her people. New
dreams are made. Playing violin, auditioning for NIDA, losing her virginity.
Then Peisley, a gentle giant, talks of a hitchhiking trip up north. And, after
agreeing on three rules - never split up, remain platonic, accept every lift
that gets them closer to Darwin - Anna decides to go.

Hitchhiking the highways leads her into a dystopian dustbowl on society's hard
edges, where outsiders must adapt or perish, and women teeter on an
existential knife edge. In this flyblown asylum, love and danger collide with
the toxic misogyny in the guts of the Australian soul. Anna will learn that
the line between victim and survivor can be as cruel as luck and as random as
a shiny blue Datson on a red dirt road.

Based on her battered travel diary, Datsun Angel is a savage, darkly funny
memoir of sex, drugs and violence-fuelled adventure through the brutal 1980s
Australian outback. It is a feminist On the Road, told through a #MeToo
filter.

'Reconstructed from the travel diary the author kept at the time, the
adventure is everything you could possibly hope for in a road trip - provided
you (or your daughter) aren't the one taking it . . . Datsun Angel proves the
old adage about time and tragedy making for champagne comedy. A book that
delivers on the promise to take its reader "inside the savage heart of 1980s
Australia", and one that never forgets its chief purpose along the way either
- to entertain.' The Conversation