The Swan Book by Alexis Wright
A hypnotic and astonishingly inventive (O, The Oprah Magazine) novel about an Aboriginal girl living in a future world turned upside down--where ancient myths exist side-by-side with present-day realities. Oblivia Ethelyne was given her name by an old woman who found her deep in the bowels of a gum tree, tattered and fragile, the victim of a brutal assault by wayward local youths. These are the years leading up to Australia's third centenary, and the woman who finds her, Bella Donna of the Champions, is a refugee from climate change wars that devastated her country in the northern hemisphere. Bella Donna takes Oblivia to live with her on an old warship in a polluted dry swamp and there she fills Oblivia's head with story upon story of swans. Fenced off from the rest of Australia by the Army, its traditional custodians left destitute, the swamp has become the world's most unknown detention camp for Indigenous Australians. When Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia invades the swamp with his charismatic persona and the promise of salvation, Oblivia agrees to marry him, becoming First Lady, a role that has her confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city. In this multilayered novel, winner of the Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal, Wright toys with the edges of the world we live in and deftly highlights the racial and cultural politics facing Australia's indigenous people in a story that defies genre. It is a challenging and heartbreaking story that illuminates the culture and struggles of an often overlooked people (Publishers Weekly).
Wright, Alexis: - Alexis Wright is one of Australia's finest writers, a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her books inlcude Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in the outback town of Tennant Creek, and the novel Plains of Promise, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize, the Age Book of the Year Award and the NSW Premier's Award for Fiction, and translated into French as Les Plaines de l'espoir.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781501124792 |
| ISBN 10 | 150112479X |
| Title | The Swan Book |
| Author | Alexis Wright |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Washington Square Press |
| Year published | 2018-01-16 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |