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y separately published work icon Journeys to the Interior selected work   essay   travel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2010... 2010 Journeys to the Interior
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Australia's centre and north are a world apart from its big coastal cities. Here one finds unique natural wonders, visionary art, original thinkers and, sometimes, distilled despair and death.

In Journeys to the Interior, Nicolas Rothwell travels deep into the northern realm, combining the storytelling flair and persistence of a journalist with the imagination of an artist

Following on from the acclaimed Another Country, this book contains haunting and perceptive portraits, of, among others, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, Ian Fairweather, Noel Pearson and Galarrwuy Yunupingu. There are explorations of the natural world - of pythons, desert oaks and magpie geese. And there are wonderful introductions to the art and artists that bring the northern landscape to life and transform it, whether through painting, dance or photography.' (From the publisher's website.)

Notes

  • Dedication: IN MEMORY OF IAN WARD

    Born in 1962 in the Gibson Desert, died 27 January 2008

  • Epigraph: Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? Or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Black Inc. , 2010 .
      image of person or book cover 1386796462872267437.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: xvii, 331p.p.
      Description: illus.
      Note/s:
      • Published: 4th January 2010
      ISBN: 9781863954624

Other Formats

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 Jennifer Osborn , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , May vol. 2 no. 2 2010;

— Review of Journeys to the Interior Nicolas Rothwell , 2010 selected work essay
Cover Notes Lucy Sussex , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 28 February 2010; (p. 21)

— Review of Journeys to the Interior Nicolas Rothwell , 2010 selected work essay
Fear and Exaltation in Northern Wilderness A. P. Riemer , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 13-14 February 2010; (p. 28-29)

— Review of Journeys to the Interior Nicolas Rothwell , 2010 selected work essay
Books Susan Hewitt , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 30 January 2010; (p. 26)

— Review of Symbols of Australia 2009 anthology essay ; Journeys to the Interior Nicolas Rothwell , 2010 selected work essay
Non-Fiction Books Gillian Bramley-Moore , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 2 - 3 Jan 2010; (p. 19)

— Review of Journeys to the Interior Nicolas Rothwell , 2010 selected work essay
Books Susan Hewitt , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 30 January 2010; (p. 26)

— Review of Symbols of Australia 2009 anthology essay ; Journeys to the Interior Nicolas Rothwell , 2010 selected work essay
Fear and Exaltation in Northern Wilderness A. P. Riemer , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 13-14 February 2010; (p. 28-29)

— Review of Journeys to the Interior Nicolas Rothwell , 2010 selected work essay
Cover Notes Lucy Sussex , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 28 February 2010; (p. 21)

— Review of Journeys to the Interior Nicolas Rothwell , 2010 selected work essay
Untitled Jennifer Osborn , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , May vol. 2 no. 2 2010;

— Review of Journeys to the Interior Nicolas Rothwell , 2010 selected work essay
The Beautiful Unknowable North Luke Stegemann , 2010 single work column
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , January no. 359 2010; (p. 6-7)
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 13 Feb 2020 12:40:05
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