Jonah

Jonah is a novel by the Australian writer Louis Stone, first published in 1911. It takes its setting from the slums of Sydney at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it was one of the first Australian novels to look closely at that life.

Jonah is a hunchback and a larrikin, and he is the leader of the local Push, the street gang of the neighbourhood where he lives. He is known for his nerve and for the fear he can put into other people, and the novel begins with him established in that position.

The change comes when he becomes the father of a son. Jonah decides that he wants something different for the boy and for himself, and the novel follows his attempts to leave the world he came out of. Reviewers recognised the book's quality when it appeared, praising Stone's knowledge of his subject, his humour and his observation, and the honesty with which he handled a setting that other writers had left alone. The Sydney it describes is one of a few years before the novel was written, and the slums are treated without being idealised.