The Swan Book
A Novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fraying the edges of reality, Wright mixes a dystopian future with ancient mythology and folklore to create a book charged with razor-sharp wit, linguistic acumen, and an astoundingly vivid imagination. Climate change has wreaked havoc on Australia, creating war, famine, and dust. The eccentric Bella Donna finds Oblivia Ethylene beneath a gum tree, the victim of a horrible assault. She raises the girl in the rusted-out hulk of a warship run aground in the middle of a swamp designated as a detention camp for Aboriginal Australians, and tells Oblivia stories about the swans and ghosts that inhabit the swamp. Warren Finch, the darling of society and the first Aboriginal president of Australia, visits the camp promising rights to the people of the swamp, and forcibly takes Oblivia, who's barely in her teens, to be his wife. Wright, winner of the Miles Franklin Award and a member of the Waanyi nation of the Gulf of Carpenteria, has crafted a multilayered and magical novel firmly rooted in the issues of the present day. Told in dense prose full of evocative imagery, Wright's book 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.