Helen Dale

A daughter of British immigrants, Darville was educated at Redeemer Lutheran College in Rochedale, a suburb of Brisbane. While studying English literature at the University of Queensland, she wrote The Hand that Signed the Paper, a novel about a Ukrainian family who collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust. In 1993, the novel won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. Dale published her book in 1994 under the pseudonym Helen Demidenko and won the Miles Franklin Award, becoming the award's youngest winner. The following year, she was the subject of a major Australian literary controversy because she had falsely claimed Ukrainian ancestry as part of the basis of the book (and her pseudonym). The misrepresentation has been described as a "literary hoax" in The Sydney Morning Herald. The novel was subsequently reissued under her legal name, then Helen Darville. It won the 1995 Australian Literary Society Gold Medal.