By the Scruff of the Neck by Henri Licht - book launch

Friday 1 May, 6.30pm, Museo Italiano, 199 Faraday Street, Carlton

Free event

RSVP: [email protected]; 93499021 

Another multicultural author emerges

Henri Licht, author of By the Scruff of the Neck – a suitcase of memories, was born in Holland and as a young lad of nine migrated to Australia in 1952. He sailed aboard theFairsea (SitmarLine) and spent some time in Bonegilla Migrant Camp before shifting to Tasmania. Like so many other immigrants, his family too moved around looking for work and a roof over their head. The book explores his family’s trials and tribulations during World War Two, a rather fraught Catholic upbringing, the reasons for migrating to Australia and the difficulties of the early years in the 1950s.

Barry Jones MP and ex Minister of Science, in his introduction to the book said “By the Scruff of the Neck is a remarkable achievement, and I read it with mounting admiration. It is a laceratingly honest, tough minded and often very funny account of a Dutch family who lived through the Nazi occupation […] this is an important piece of social and personal history. It should be taken up by bookshops, reviewed, and widely read.”

This account should appeal to migrants and native-born Australians alike. Most significantly, perhaps, the book describes in comical detail the family’s interactions with their migrant experiences. And as the great Italian playwright Ugo Betti said, “I think the family is the place where the most ridiculous and least respectable things in the world go on.”

 A wonderful, earthy read, full of surprises. And as Arnold Zable said about the book “another piece in the great mosaic that is contemporary Australia.”