y separately published work icon Heaven and Earth single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1999... 1999 Heaven and Earth
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Notes

  • Dedication: In memory of my father. Vita mortuis consolatio vivis.
  • Author's note: This is a work of fiction, yet it lies within the arms of recent history. The public dimension of the plot conforms to the record of events; things happen when and where they happened a decade ago. Real human beings are portrayed alongside fictional ones.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording.

Works about this Work

Ethics of Representation and Self-reflexivity : Nicolas Rothwell’s Narrative Essays Stephane Christophe Cordier , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 20 no. 2 2020;

'While many contemporary Australian writers pitch their narratives on the coastal fringes, where most Australians reside, Nicolas Rothwell returns obsessively to the interior where one senses a sense of unfinished business. The spatial instabilities that resulted from the settler colonial project act as a catalyst for unsettling prior forms of knowledge and belief. Rothwell’s works feature real-and-imagined characters caught between fiction and non-fiction, the lies in the land and the lie of the land. His narratives create a form of generic disorientation that has a political, social and epistemological purpose. Central to Rothwell’s literary project is the reminder that spatial representations influence spatial practices. The author advocates for a break from the novelistic tradition; the country has seen enough literary and legal fictions that had catastrophic consequences for the native population and the environment.

'I argue that Rothwell’s spatial and literary renegotiations culminate in the formation of a new literary genre, the narrative essay. The author decolonises place, space and literary forms to articulate ethical models of non-belonging. Rothwell offers a transformative sublime aesthetics that I analyse as an expression of Bill Ashcroft’s ‘horizonal sublime’ and Christopher Hitt’s ‘ecological sublime’. I compare Rothwell’s ethics of representation, characterised by a self-reflexive prose, narrative instability and narrative regression, to that of Anglo-German author W.G. Sebald, who uses similar techniques in his evocation of a ruined Europe. Rothwell not only presents man’s propensity for a ‘Natural History of Destruction’, he is also intent on identifying the mechanisms at work in building the future.' (Publication abstract)

Untitled Anamaria Beligan , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: Quadrant , October vol. 43 no. 10 1999; (p. 84)

— Review of Heaven and Earth Nicolas Rothwell , 1999 single work novel
Foreign Correspondent Requires More Blood Peter Corris , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: Courier Mail , 4 October 1999; (p. 8)

— Review of Heaven and Earth Nicolas Rothwell , 1999 single work novel
Foreign Correspondent Requires More Blood Peter Corris , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: Courier Mail , 4 October 1999; (p. 8)

— Review of Heaven and Earth Nicolas Rothwell , 1999 single work novel
Untitled Anamaria Beligan , 1999 single work review
— Appears in: Quadrant , October vol. 43 no. 10 1999; (p. 84)

— Review of Heaven and Earth Nicolas Rothwell , 1999 single work novel
Ethics of Representation and Self-reflexivity : Nicolas Rothwell’s Narrative Essays Stephane Christophe Cordier , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 20 no. 2 2020;

'While many contemporary Australian writers pitch their narratives on the coastal fringes, where most Australians reside, Nicolas Rothwell returns obsessively to the interior where one senses a sense of unfinished business. The spatial instabilities that resulted from the settler colonial project act as a catalyst for unsettling prior forms of knowledge and belief. Rothwell’s works feature real-and-imagined characters caught between fiction and non-fiction, the lies in the land and the lie of the land. His narratives create a form of generic disorientation that has a political, social and epistemological purpose. Central to Rothwell’s literary project is the reminder that spatial representations influence spatial practices. The author advocates for a break from the novelistic tradition; the country has seen enough literary and legal fictions that had catastrophic consequences for the native population and the environment.

'I argue that Rothwell’s spatial and literary renegotiations culminate in the formation of a new literary genre, the narrative essay. The author decolonises place, space and literary forms to articulate ethical models of non-belonging. Rothwell offers a transformative sublime aesthetics that I analyse as an expression of Bill Ashcroft’s ‘horizonal sublime’ and Christopher Hitt’s ‘ecological sublime’. I compare Rothwell’s ethics of representation, characterised by a self-reflexive prose, narrative instability and narrative regression, to that of Anglo-German author W.G. Sebald, who uses similar techniques in his evocation of a ruined Europe. Rothwell not only presents man’s propensity for a ‘Natural History of Destruction’, he is also intent on identifying the mechanisms at work in building the future.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 3 Jul 2018 16:02:00
Subjects:
  • Eastern Europe, Europe,
  • Berlin Wall, Berlin,
    c
    Germany,
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
Settings:
  • 1988-1989
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