Cirrus@Austlit

The Swan Book, Alexis Wright’s latest novel, further expands the fascinating Indigenous universe the Indigenous-Australian author of Waanyi descent has created over the past decade and a half. The Swan Book is a literary tour de force that critically engages with Western “end times” (San Roque 2007). Wright relies on the strength of her Waanyi ancestors’ oral tradition to create an apocalyptic view of Australia in the face of global warming, capitalist greed and the Indigenous fight for political power. Thus, The Swan Book is a political, economic and climatic dystopia struggling to regain the environmental and social balance the continent once enjoyed but that now has all human, animal and vegetal populations under threat, displaced and suffering. [From the journal's webpage]