y separately published work icon Wings of the Kite-Hawk single work   autobiography   travel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2003... 2003 Wings of the Kite-Hawk
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Notes

  • Dedication: For my Mother, Tu fui, ego eris.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Picador , 2003 .
      Extent: 327p.
      ISBN: 0330364022
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Black Inc. , 2009 .
      Alternative title: Wings of the Kite-Hawk : A Journey to the Heart of Australia
      Extent: xviii, 327p.
      Edition info: A re-release of the book with a foreword by Pico Iyer and a new preface by Rothwell.
      Description: illus.
      ISBN: 9781863954457

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)

What I’m Reading Luke Stegemann , 2017 single work column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2017;
‘Singing Up’ the Silences : Australian Nature Writing as Disruption and Invocation Noelene J. Kelly , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology , Summer vol. 1 no. 2011;
'There is a strong, though not uncontested view, that a tradition of 'place' or 'nature' writing has, until relatively recently, been largely absent in Australia. This essay examines the veracity of this claim, and suggests reasons for this alleged gap or 'silence' in our literature. It also considers the distinctive characteristics of Australian place writing as it has emerged over more recent decades and the ways in which this writing disrupts early representations of the continent as 'empty', particularly of Indigenous presence, but also of sound, of speech, of agency. This essay also suggests the potential for Australian nature writing to function contrapuntally, as both a form of response to this lively and expressive land, and as a means by which this same land may be invoked or 'sung' into the communicative space.' (Author's abstract)
Ground Zero : Nicholas Rothwell's Natural History of Destruction Robert Dixon , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Travel Writing , June vol. 15 no. 2 2011; (p. 177-188)
'In Wings of the Kite-Hawk (2003) and The Red Highway (2009), Australian travel writer Nicholas Rothwell describes his visits to a series of archives - libraries, memorials, history and natural history collections, art galleries, and antiquarian bookshops - in his quest for evidence of the great catastrophes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: these include the ongoing contact between European and Aboriginal Australia, the apparent extinction of traditional Aboriginal languages and cultures, desertification and the mass extinction of species, and that great engine of twentieth-century destruction and dispersal, the Second World War. In this paper I examine the role of the archive in Rothwell's writing by comparison with the work of German-born novelist, W.G. Sebald. In The Rings of Saturn (trans. 1998), Sebald uses the image of debris held in Saturn's gravitational field as a metaphor of the evidence of historical catastrophe, especially the great caesura of the Second World War and the Holocaust. In comparing Sebald and Rothwell, I examine Rothwell's sense of history: are the Second World War and the European colonisation of Australia singular events or part of an ongoing 'natural history of destruction'? In examining the ethical implications of comparing these historical traumas, the article draws upon Dominick LaCapra's distinction between absence and loss, which has been influential both in work on the Holocaust and on reconciliation and the Stolen Generations in Australia.' (Author's abstract)
Homer in the Outback Pico Iyer , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Brick , Summer no. 85 2010; (p. 99-104)
Dostoyevsky on the Desert Road Mark Tredinnick , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 22 March 2003; (p. 4a)

— Review of Wings of the Kite-Hawk Nicolas Rothwell , 2003 single work autobiography ; Red Sand, Green Heart : Ecological Adventures in the Outback John Read , 2002 single work autobiography
With Interior Designs Noel Purdon , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 22-23 March 2003; (p. 10)

— Review of Wings of the Kite-Hawk Nicolas Rothwell , 2003 single work autobiography
Deep in the Revelations of the Red Centre Rod Beecham , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 22-23 March 2003; (p. 10-11)

— Review of Wings of the Kite-Hawk Nicolas Rothwell , 2003 single work autobiography
Vision of the Hawk Glyn Davis , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 5 April 2003; (p. 6)

— Review of Wings of the Kite-Hawk Nicolas Rothwell , 2003 single work autobiography
Sounding-Boards of the Heart Michael McGirr , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 250 2003; (p. 27)

— Review of Wings of the Kite-Hawk Nicolas Rothwell , 2003 single work autobiography
Page Turners Gillian Dooley , 2010 single work column
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , January no. 359 2010; (p. 27)
Ground Zero : Nicholas Rothwell's Natural History of Destruction Robert Dixon , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Travel Writing , June vol. 15 no. 2 2011; (p. 177-188)
'In Wings of the Kite-Hawk (2003) and The Red Highway (2009), Australian travel writer Nicholas Rothwell describes his visits to a series of archives - libraries, memorials, history and natural history collections, art galleries, and antiquarian bookshops - in his quest for evidence of the great catastrophes of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: these include the ongoing contact between European and Aboriginal Australia, the apparent extinction of traditional Aboriginal languages and cultures, desertification and the mass extinction of species, and that great engine of twentieth-century destruction and dispersal, the Second World War. In this paper I examine the role of the archive in Rothwell's writing by comparison with the work of German-born novelist, W.G. Sebald. In The Rings of Saturn (trans. 1998), Sebald uses the image of debris held in Saturn's gravitational field as a metaphor of the evidence of historical catastrophe, especially the great caesura of the Second World War and the Holocaust. In comparing Sebald and Rothwell, I examine Rothwell's sense of history: are the Second World War and the European colonisation of Australia singular events or part of an ongoing 'natural history of destruction'? In examining the ethical implications of comparing these historical traumas, the article draws upon Dominick LaCapra's distinction between absence and loss, which has been influential both in work on the Holocaust and on reconciliation and the Stolen Generations in Australia.' (Author's abstract)
Homer in the Outback Pico Iyer , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Brick , Summer no. 85 2010; (p. 99-104)
‘Singing Up’ the Silences : Australian Nature Writing as Disruption and Invocation Noelene J. Kelly , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology , Summer vol. 1 no. 2011;
'There is a strong, though not uncontested view, that a tradition of 'place' or 'nature' writing has, until relatively recently, been largely absent in Australia. This essay examines the veracity of this claim, and suggests reasons for this alleged gap or 'silence' in our literature. It also considers the distinctive characteristics of Australian place writing as it has emerged over more recent decades and the ways in which this writing disrupts early representations of the continent as 'empty', particularly of Indigenous presence, but also of sound, of speech, of agency. This essay also suggests the potential for Australian nature writing to function contrapuntally, as both a form of response to this lively and expressive land, and as a means by which this same land may be invoked or 'sung' into the communicative space.' (Author's abstract)
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 21 Jan 2010 10:02:00
Subjects:
  • Central desert areas, Western Australia,
  • Kimberley area, North Western Australia, Western Australia,
  • Pilbara area, North Western Australia, Western Australia,
  • Simpson Desert, Far North South Australia, South Australia,
  • Far North Queensland, Queensland,
  • South West Queensland, Queensland,
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