'Richard Flanagan's closing address to the 2011 Melbourne Writers' Festival struck a chord around Australia. This stirring speech has been broadcast nationally on radio and television and published in Quarterly Essay 44.
'At a moment when the ferment of Tahrir Square has spread around the world to unsettle the status quo, Flanagan's provocative ideas resonate with a new mood and a new questioning.
'Above all, Flanagan says, we need to take our compass more from ourselves and less from the powerful if we are to find hope.' (From the publisher's website.)
