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The Swan Book (old edition)
Winner, ALS Gold Medal
Winner, Kate Challis RAKA Award
A new edition of The Swan Book was released in May 2023. Find it here.
The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginal peoples still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change. It follows the life of a mute young woman 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, 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 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, has Oblivia Ethylene in the company of amazing characters like Aunty Bella Donna of the Champions, the Harbour Master, Big Red and the Mechanic, a talking monkey called Rigoletto, three genies with doctorates, and throughout, the guiding presence of swans.
A sprawling, magnificent achievement, a remarkable imaginative vision of Australia as it was and is, and will be…The novel is full of mythologies and soaring imagery…at the same time, [it] launches a devastating critique of Australia’s treatment of Indigenous people: condemning the Federal government’s Intervention, and showing us the many ways in which a militarised colonialism has shaped, and continues to shape, Indigenous lives in Australia’s north and across the nation.
Kate Challis RAKA Award, judges’ citation
If Wright’s last novel Carpentaria – the winner of the 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award – was operatic in its scope and language, then The Swan Book is even more so. Rich and deep in its imagery, fearless in its linguistic acrobatics and sweeping in its imaginative power, The Swan Book is at once a futuristic dystopia, a gorgeous artefact, and an urgent call to action.
The Stella Prize, judges’ citation
In its intelligence and originality, in the imaginativeness of its storytelling and in its distinctive voice, The Swan Book might very well be one of the most important Australian novels yet.
Sydney Morning Herald
