The Swan Book - Alexis Wright

Category: Adults, Literature, Novel, Sci-Fi
Language: English
Keywords: Aboriginal Australia Dystopia

Written by Alexis Wright
Read by Jacqui Katona
Format: MP3
Bitrate: Variable
Unabridged

Original publication date: 2013
Audiobook release date: 2016
Publisher: Bolinda audio
Audiobook duration: 13:01:26

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Shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award 2014

The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginals still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change.

It follows the life of a mute teenager 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 driven from other parts of the country, 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 wild 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.