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Issue Details: First known date: 2001... 2001 Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Once upon a time that was called 1828, before all the living things on the land and the fishes in the sea were destroyed, there was a man named William Buelow Gould, a convict in Van Dieman's Land who fell in love with a black woman and discovered too late that to love is not safe. Silly Billy Gould, invader of Australia, liar, murderer, forger, fantasist, condemned to live in the most brutal penal colony in the British Empire, and there ordered to paint a book of fish. Once upon a time, miraculous things happened'. (Source: Trove)

Exhibitions

18388247
18387981

Notes

  • Listed in The New York Times Book Review's list of Notable Books for 2002.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Grove Press ,
      2001 .
      image of person or book cover 5040552532138566386.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 404p.p.
      Edition info: 1st US ed.
      Reprinted: 2002 (second printing)
      Note/s:
      • Originally published: Sydney : Pan Macmillan, 2001.
      ISBN: 0802117112
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Atlantic Books ,
      2002 .
      image of person or book cover 7274906014853441590.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 404p.
      Description: illus.
      ISBN: 1843541467, 1843540215(hbk)
    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Picador , 2002 .
      image of person or book cover 5131149973497526020.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 445p.
      ISBN: 0330363786 (pbk.)
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Grove Press ,
      2002 .
      image of person or book cover 8771627702380099330.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 404p.p.
      ISBN: 9780802139597, 0802139590
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Atlantic Books ,
      2003 .
      image of person or book cover 5904831889903889076.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 404p.
      Description: illus.
      ISBN: 1843540703
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Turtleback Books ,
      2003 .
      Extent: 1v.p.
      Edition info: Hardback; library ed.
      ISBN: 9781417723058, 141772305X
    • North Sydney, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Random House , 2012 .
      image of person or book cover 4390420341639362035.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 447p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 1 February 2014
      ISBN: 9781742756110 (epub)
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Vintage UK ,
      2016 .
      image of person or book cover 1659868456068388131.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 480p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 26 May 2016.
      ISBN: 9781784702892, 1784702897
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Penguin , 2023 .
      image of person or book cover 4673133563275833902.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 480p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 25 April 2023
      ISBN: 9781761048135
Alternative title: Goulds Buch der Fische : Ein Roman in zwolf Fischen
Language: German
    • Berlin,
      c
      Germany,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Berlin Verlag ,
      2002 .
      image of person or book cover 4574515578894262379.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 459p.
      Description: illus.
      ISBN: 3827004772
    • c
      Germany,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Piper Verlag Gmbh ,
      2015 .
      image of person or book cover 7449369396681833284.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 459p.p.
      ISBN: 9783492308397, 3492308392

Other Formats

  • Braille.
  • Sound recording.

Works about this Work

Mabo, History, Sovereignty : the Contemporary Postcolonial Novel Geoff Rodoreda , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;
Sublime Wilderness : Embracing the Non-Human in Richard Flanagan’s Tasmania Ben Holgate , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Climate and Crises : Magical Realism as Environmental Discourse 2019; (p. 73-94)
'Narrator Sid Hammet's opening remark in Gould's Book of Fish (2001) encapsulates a recurring theme of Richard Flanagan's fiction: the perception of human existence as something bigger than Western materialism and urban existence, of anthropic life as one element within a profound, mysterious cosmos. Flanagan conveys this transcendental awareness through a style of writing that frequently involves magical realist elements and which is inextricably tied to a philosophy based on ecology and a connection to the Tasmanian landscape, a philosophy influenced by Indigenous Tasmanians and their precolonial culture. In particular, Flanagan blends the magical and the environmental through his persistent leitmotif of wilderness, specifically Tasmania's unique and remote South-West Wilderness.' (Introduction) 
 
Rewriting History: 'Gould's Book of Fish' Bill Ashcroft , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Richard Flanagan : Critical Essays 2018; (p. 87-101)
Spatial Anxieties: Tourists, Settlers and Tasmania's Affective Economies of Belonging in 'A Terrible Beauty', 'Death of a River Guide' and 'Gould's Book of Fish' Laura A. White , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Richard Flanagan : Critical Essays 2018; (p. 73-85)
"Smashing and Singing and Sobbing and Howling": Sound and Richard Flanagan's Tasmania Joseph Cummins , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Richard Flanagan : Critical Essays 2018; (p. 59-71)
Putting on the Plum Christopher Tayler , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: London Review of Books , 31 October vol. 24 no. 21 2002; (p. 26-27)

— Review of Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish Richard Flanagan , 2001 single work novel
[Review] Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish Ann-Marie Thomas , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: JAS Review of Books , June no. 6 2002;

— Review of Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish Richard Flanagan , 2001 single work novel
Linnaeus Downunder Frances Devlin-Glass , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 2 no. 2003; (p. 179-184)

— Review of Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish Richard Flanagan , 2001 single work novel
Two Sides to the Story : For Malcolm Knox , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 29-30 November 2003; (p. 15)

— Review of Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish Richard Flanagan , 2001 single work novel
Two Sides to the Story : Against Mark Tewfik , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 29-30 November 2003; (p. 15)

— Review of Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish Richard Flanagan , 2001 single work novel
Awards Nicholas Birns , 2002 single work column
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 16 no. 1 2002; (p. 74-75)
2002 Australian Literary Society Gold Medal Award 2002 single work column
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 1 no. 2002; (p. 114-115)
Includes the judges report on the winning work.
Book Briefs - Modern Australian Classics & Some 2002 single work column
— Appears in: Blast , Winter no. 47 2002; (p. 13)
Wishing for Modernity : Temporality and Desire in Gould's Book of Fish Jesse Shipway , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 21 no. 1 2003; (p. 43-53)
Shipway's article examines Flanagan's representation of Tasmanian versions of history and modernity in Gould's Book of Fish. As one of the recurring motifs in Flanagan's writing is 'the impoverishment of the Tasmanian present, a state of affairs both enacted by, and embodied in, a failed modernity', his fiction poses the question: 'how are we to summon up hope for Tasmania's future, when its past is so overwhelmingly full of defeat?'. Shipways argues that the answer proposed in the novel is 'to radically fictionalise that past, and to imbue it with the residue of collective longing left over from the project of hydro-electrification that was aborted after the Franklin River conflicts of the early 1980s' (43). 'In Gould's Book of Fish, Richard Flanagan returns to the time of Tasmania's first modernity in order to realise his hopes and ambitions for another modernity that is yet to come. The tragic-comic failure of that fictional modernisation embodies the ambivalence he feels about the real history of Tasmanian modernity' (44).
Cover Stories Rebecca Lancashire , 2004 single work column
— Appears in: The Age , 17 July 2004; (p. 1-2)
Australian publishers believe buyers are influenced by the design and colour of book covers.
Last amended 15 Dec 2022 10:48:50
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