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The new novel by Alexis Wright, whose previous novel Carpentaria won the Miles Franklin Award and four other major prizes including the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year Award. The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginals still living under the Intervention in the no...rth, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change. It follows the life of a mute teenager called Oblivia, the victim of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousands of black swans driven from other parts of the country, to her marriage to Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia, and her elevation to the position of First Lady, confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city. The Swan Book has all the qualities which made Wright's previous novel, Carpentaria, a prize-winning best-seller. It offers an intimate awareness of the realities facing Aboriginal people; the wild energy and humour in her writing finds hope in the bleakest situations; and the remarkable combination of storytelling elements, drawn from myth and legend and fairy tale.
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Alexis Wright is one of Australia's finest Aboriginal writers. Carpentaria is her second novel, an epic set in the Gulf country of north-western Queensland, from where her people come. The novel's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on ...the powerful Phantom family, leader of the Westend Pricklebush people, and its battles with old Joseph Midnight's renegade Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, farce and politics. The novel teems with extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, the queen of the rubbish-dump Angel Day and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stride like giants across this storm-swept world.
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Bestselling author The new novel by Alexis Wright, whose previous novel Carpentaria won the Miles Franklin Award and four other major prizes including the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year Award.The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginals still living under the Inte...rvention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change. It follows the life of a mute teenager called Oblivia, the victim of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousands of black swans driven from other parts of the country, to her marriage to Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia, and her elevation to the position of First Lady, confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city. The Swan Book has all the qualities which made Wright's previous novel, Carpentaria, a prize-winning best-seller. It offers an intimate awareness of the realities facing Aboriginal people; the wild energy and humour in her writing finds hope in the bleakest situations; and the remarkable combination of storytelling elements, drawn from myth and legend and fairy tale.
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Winner of the 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Simultaneous release in the USA. Carpentaria is Alexis Wright's second novel, an epic set in the Gulf country of north-western Queensland. The novel's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres... on the powerful Phantom family, leader of the Westend Pricklebush people, and its battles with old Joseph Midnight's renegade Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, farce and politics. The novel teems with extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, the queen of the rubbish-dump Angel Day and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stride like giants across this storm-swept world. Wright breaks all the rules of grammar and syntax to sweep us along on a great torrent of language that thrills and amazes with its inventiveness and humour and with the sheer power of its storytelling. It's brutal and confronting and it's sad and funny at the same time. Like the Gulf Country itself, this is big enough to lose yourself in. Sydney Morning Herald. a swelling, heaving tsunami of a novel: stinging, sinuous, salted with outrageous humour, sweetened by spiralling lyricism and swaggering with the confident promise of a tale dominated by risk, roguery and revelation. - The Australian
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Published as a creative response to and historical document of QAGOMA's 2019/20 blockbuster exhibition 'Water', this publication explores water in all its states, highlighting the precious resource through contemporary artworks from across the globe that range from immersive expe...riences to smaller-scale works. Artists and artworks include Olafur Eliasson's Riverbed 2014, a stream relocated to the ground floor of GOMA; Cai Guo-Qiang's Heritage 2013 in a smaller installation; William Forsythe's The Fact of the Matter 2009; Angela Tiatia's performance video Holding On 2015 as well as Judy Watson's reflections on the long cultural traditions of the Maiwar (Brisbane River). In addition to informative short texts on each of the artists featured, the publication includes an introductory text by the curator, Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow; Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith writing on water's role in evolution and the beginning of life on Earth; Professor Don Henry AM on the life-giving force of water; as well as excerpts from Alexis Wright's Carpentaria (2006) and her evocative article on effects of climate change originally published by the Guardian online in 2018. An indispensable guide to this major exhibition at GOMA this summer.
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A revamped Magabala classic by Miles Franklin award-winning author Alexis Wright. First published in 1997, this vivid portrayal of how the Indigenous people of Tennant Creek worked together to achieve community-wide alcohol restrictions, is more relevant now than ever. A searing ...account of what transpired over 25 years ago, Grog War provides historical context and Indigenous-led solutions to the challenges still confronting communities and towns throughout Australia. In the '90s, Wright was commissioned by the Julalikari Council of Tennant Creek to write Grog War, to document how Aboriginal Elders and leaders dealt with the invasion of grog on Warumungu land and the enormous struggle it took to introduce simple alcohol restrictions in the town. Grog War traces an Indigenous-led movement of self-determination that shifted the blame from Aboriginal people for public drunkenness to looking at the way grog is pushed and sold, in turn challenging the town and government to share responsibility. Aboriginal Elders and community advisors in Tennant Creek fought for years to put alcohol restrictions in place and they are still fighting. Their courage and tenacity is an inspiration for other towns in Australia who are battling against the tide of alcohol abuse and resistance from licencees and the broader community. Grog War is essential reading for all those working towards and interested in Indigenous self-determination, for community leaders, legislators, health workers, social workers - and for our young people - so that all Australian children might grow up with a better understanding of what Indigenous people have fought hard to achieve in this country.
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Winner of the 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award. Simultaneous release in the USA. Carpentaria is Alexis Wright's second novel, an epic set in the Gulf country of north-western Queensland. The novel's portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres... on the powerful Phantom family, leader of the Westend Pricklebush people, and its battles with old Joseph Midnight's renegade Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright's storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, farce and politics. The novel teems with extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and above all, the queen of the rubbish-dump Angel Day and her sea-faring husband Normal Phantom, the fish-embalming king of time - figures that stride like giants across this storm-swept world. Wright breaks all the rules of grammar and syntax to sweep us along on a great torrent of language that thrills and amazes with its inventiveness and humour and with the sheer power of its storytelling. It's brutal and confronting and it's sad and funny at the same time. Like the Gulf Country itself, this is big enough to lose yourself in. Sydney Morning Herald. a swelling, heaving tsunami of a novel: stinging, sinuous, salted with outrageous humour, sweetened by spiralling lyricism and swaggering with the confident promise of a tale dominated by risk, roguery and revelation. - The Australian
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This powerful novel about the Gulf country works on many levels and registers. At its centre is Norm Phantom, an old man of the sea and custodian of indigenous lore, his wife Angel Day, and their son Will, who is involved in a deady fight for land rights against the shadowy propr...ietors of the huge Gurfurit mine.
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Bestselling author The new novel by Alexis Wright, whose previous novel Carpentaria won the Miles Franklin Award and four other major prizes including the ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year Award.The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginals still living under the Inte...rvention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change. It follows the life of a mute teenager called Oblivia, the victim of gang-rape by petrol-sniffing youths, from the displaced community where she lives in a hulk, in a swamp filled with rusting boats, and thousands of black swans driven from other parts of the country, to her marriage to Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia, and her elevation to the position of First Lady, confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city. The Swan Book has all the qualities which made Wright's previous novel, Carpentaria, a prize-winning best-seller. It offers an intimate awareness of the realities facing Aboriginal people; the wild energy and humour in her writing finds hope in the bleakest situations; and the remarkable combination of storytelling elements, drawn from myth and legend and fairy tale.
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New book by celebrated Aboriginal author Alexis Wright, author of Carpentaria and The Swan Book A collective memoir of one of Aboriginal Australia's most charismatic leaders and an epic portrait of a period in the life of a country, reminiscent in its scale and intimacy of the wo...rk of Nobel Prize-winning Russian author Svetlana Alexievich Miles Franklin Award-winning novelist Alexis Wright returns to non-fiction in her new book, Tracker Tilmouth, a collective memoir of the charismatic Aboriginal leader, political thinker, and entrepreneur who died in Darwin in 2015. Taken from his family as a child and brought up in a mission on Croker Island, Tracker Tilmouth returned home to transform the world of Aboriginal politics. He worked tirelessly for Aboriginal self-determination, creating opportunities for land use and economic development in his many roles, including Director of the Central Land Council. He was a visionary and a projector of ideas, renowned for his irreverent humour and his anecdotes. The memoir was composed by Wright from interviews with Tilmouth, as well as with his family, friends, and colleagues, weaving his and their stories together into a book that is as much a tribute to the role played by storytelling in contemporary Aboriginal life as it is to the legacy of a remarkable man.
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