Alexis Wright’s award-winning classic Carpentaria: “a swelling, heaving tsunami of a novel—stinging, sinuous, salted with outrageous humor, sweetened by spiraling lyricism” (The Australian) Carpentaria is an epic of the Gulf country of northwestern Queensland, Australia. Its portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centers 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 with the white officials of Uptown and the nearby rapacious, ecologically disastrous Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright’s masterful novel teems with extraordinary characters—the outcast savior Elias Smith, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, the murderous mayor Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist Will Phantom, and above all, the rulers of the family, the queen of the garbage dump and the fish-embalming king of time: Angel Day and Normal Phantom—who stand like giants in a storm-swept world. Wright’s storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. She has a narrative gift for remaking reality itself, altering along her way, as if casually, the perception of what a novel can do with the inside of the reader's mind. Carpentaria is “an epic, exhilarating, unsettling novel” (Wall Street Journal) that is not to be missed.

Map shows also the routes of Oxley, Sturt, Mitchell, Eyre, Leichhardt, Kennedy, Gregory, Babbage, Warburton, Stuart, Burke and Walker

Originally published: Australia: Giramondo, 2013.

After Aboriginal author Alexis Wright’s novel, Carpentaria, won the Miles Franklin Award in 2007, it rapidly achieved the status of a classic. The novel is widely read and studied in Australia, and overseas, and valued for its imaginative power, its epic reach, and its remarkable use of language. Indigenous Transnationalism brings together eight essays by critics from seven different countries, each analysing Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria from a distinct national perspective. Taken together, these diverse voices highlight themes from the novel that resonate across cultures and continents: the primacy of the land; the battles that indigenous peoples fight for their language, culture and sovereignty; a concern with the environment and the effects of pollution. At the same time, by comparing the Aboriginal experience to that of other indigenous peoples, they demonstrate the means by which a transnational approach can highlight resistance to, or subversion of, national prejudices.

John Bradley's compelling account of three decades living with the Yanyuwa people of the Gulf of Carpentaria and of how the elders revealed to him the ancient songlines of their Dreaming.

p.17-22; Contacts with and comments on the Aboriginals of Torres Strait by the early explorers; p.23-25; spiritual beliefs; Laws of morality and behaviour; p.30; description of the Aborigines of Cape York by the Resident Magistrate 1866; p.33; first missionary contact with Cape York Aborigines 1867 - handicapped by great timidity; p.36-7; bad relations with police; p.41; origin of the Australian Aborigine; p.50; religious beliefs of Torres Strait Islanders - totems; p.86; church and state policy towards Aborigines 1900; p.90-93; establishment of Mitchell River Mission - native reaction; p.104-5; Roper River Mission established 1908 - problems of Aborigines walkabout; p.123; character of Aborigine compared with Papuan; p.140; improvement in the Aborigines at Roper River Mission; p.143; progress at Mitchell River; p.151; Koboberra tribe - warlike - unsympathetic to mission overtures; p.152; J.W. Chapmans contribution to Aboriginal welfare at Mitchell River Mission; p.176; Nunggubuyu tribe - coroboree grounds - sacred poles; Tribe moved to Rose River mission founded; p.197-200; statement of Government assimilation policy by Minister for Territories; Brief histories of other missions in area.

In this brilliant debut novel, Alexis Wright evokes city and outback, deepening our understanding of human ambition and failure, and making the timeless heart and soul of this country pulsate on the page. Black and white cultures collide in a thousand ways as Aboriginal spirituality clashes with the complex brutality of colonisation at St Dominic's mission. With her political awareness raised by work with the city-based Aboriginal Coalition, Mary visits the old mission in the northern Gulf country, place of her mother's and grand-mother's suffering. Mary's return re-ignites community anxieties, and the Council of Elders again turn to their spirit world.