Carpentaria

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.

About the Author :
Alexis Wright is a multi-award-winning Australian author and a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The author of the prize-winning novels Praiseworthy, Carpentaria and The Swan Book, Wright has also published three works of non-fiction: Take Power, an oral history of the Central Land Council; Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in the Northern Territory; and Tracker, an award-winning collective memoir of Aboriginal leader, Tracker Tilmouth. Wright's books have been published widely overseas, including in China, the US, the UK, Italy, France and Poland. Wright has won a number of literary awards, including the Miles Franklin Literary Award twice – for Carpentaria in 2007 and for Praiseworthy in 2024. Praiseworthy also won the 2024 James Tait Fiction Prize and the 2023 Queensland Literary Award for Fiction, and was also shortlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award, one of the world’s richest literary prizes. Wright is the first author to win the Stella Prize twice – for Tracker in 2018, and for Praiseworthy in 2024. She held the position of Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne, and was honoured with the title of Distinguished Professor at Western Sydney University. She is the inaugural winner of the Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. Isaac Drandich is of the Nyungah (southwest WA) on his mother's side and Croatian on his father's side. He graduated from WA Academy of Performing Arts (WAPPA) in 1999, completing the Indigenous Theatre Course. He has worked with the following companies: Kooemba Jdarra, Black Swan Theatre, Griffin, SA Opera, Playbox, Malthouse, Ilbijerri, HotHouse, Melbourne Workers Theatre and has toured the country telling stories through theatre.

Review :
"Rarely does an author have such control of her words and her story: Wright's prose soars between the mythical and the colloquial." "A literary sensation." "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." "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." “Narrator Isaac Drandich's broad Aussie accent and facility with intonation and pace allow for a clear presentation of this complex tale of the aboriginal people of Queensland. The epic is peopled with characters who represent a wide range – from ancients living in dream mists to contemporary youths fighting to keep their country's people and resources from being exploited. Drandich convincingly presents these characters, giving each a distinguishable voice, without ever sounding contrived or forced: a real listening pleasure. His performance is an excellent complement to native author Alexis Wright's award-winning novel, which reflects the mysticism, superstition, and harsh reality that define the political and cultural landscape of Australia.”