Cirrus@Austlit

Sophie Cunningham's debut novel. Geography (2004) opens with its protagonist Catherine watching a green sea turtle covering its eggs on a beach in Tangalla, Sri Lanka. His anxiety about the turtle's unborn young concentrates around her own fears and insecurities: -It is hard, but necessary, to feel hopeful that It will survive- (1-2). In Sri Lanka, Catherine befriends fellow traveller Ruby. to whom she recounts the long story of her damaged life throughout the novel. Tanaka is not only the starting point of the narrative, but also of a cathartic process of healing. forgiveness and sexual discovery that shifts constantly between Australia. the United States, India and Sri Lanka in a vast geography of desire signalled by the novel's title. Today Cunningham is regarded as a preeminent ecological author. combining serious concerns about the degradation of the planet with a political awareness of the "geographical articulations' (30), as Edward Said puts it. that define the contested space created by the legacy of colonisation. These ideas are framed by an affective topology articulated long before she began writing about ecology, and it is the refinement of these ideas over time that this essay sets out to explore.' (Introduction)