person or book cover
Image courtesy of Text Publishing
y separately published work icon Belomor single work   prose   travel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2013... 2013 Belomor
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'A spellbinding meditation on art and life that travels from Eastern Europe to Northern Australia, from World War II to the present.

Elegiac and seductive, Belomor is the frontier where truth and invention meet—where fragments from distant lives intermingle, and cohere.

A man seeks out the father figure who shaped his picture of the past. A painter seeks redemption after the disasters of his years in northern Australia. A student of history travels into the depths of religion, the better to escape the demons in his mind. A filmmaker seeks out freedom and open space, and looks into the murk and sediment of herself.

Four chapters: four journeys through life, separate, yet interwoven as the narrative unfolds.

In this entrancing new book from one of our most original writers, we meet European dissidents from the age of postwar communism, artists in remote Australia, snake hunters, opal miners and desert magic healers. Belomor is a meditation on time, and loss: on how the most bitter recollections bring happiness, and the meaning of a secret rests in the thoughts surrounding it.' (Publisher's blurb)

Notes

  • Dedication: In memory of Tjinawima Napaltjarri
  • Epigraph:

    'Vidi ego odorati victura rosaria Paesti

    sub matutino cocta iacere Noto.'

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Text Publishing , 2013 .
      person or book cover
      Image courtesy of Text Publishing
      Extent: 246p.
      Note/s:
      • Publication date: 30/01/2013
      ISBN: 9781922079749

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)

Rothwell Longlisted for Miles Franklin Stephen Romei , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian , 4 April 2014; (p. 3)
Into the Void Kim Mahood , 2013- single work review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , April 2013;

— Review of Belomor Nicolas Rothwell , 2013 single work prose
Books : Nicholas Rothwell Cements His Reputation as a Fiction Writer Corrie Perkin , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekly Review , 20 March 2013; (p. 22)

— Review of Belomor Nicolas Rothwell , 2013 single work prose
[Review] Belomor Andrew Fuhrmann , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 24 February 2013; (p. 14)

— Review of Belomor Nicolas Rothwell , 2013 single work prose
Untitled Angela Young , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 9-10 February 2013; (p. 22)

— Review of Belomor Nicolas Rothwell , 2013 single work prose
Completely in Charge and Utterly Invisible Debra Adelaide , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 9-10 February 2013; (p. 18-19)

— Review of Belomor Nicolas Rothwell , 2013 single work prose
Fragments from the Far Frontiers A. P. Riemer , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 16-17 February 2013; (p. 31)

— Review of Belomor Nicolas Rothwell , 2013 single work prose
Cross Currents of Cultures A. P. Riemer , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 16 February 2013; (p. 24)

— Review of Belomor Nicolas Rothwell , 2013 single work prose
Book Mark Patrick Allington , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 26 January 2013; (p. 30)

— Review of Belomor Nicolas Rothwell , 2013 single work prose
A Pair of Ragged Claws Stephen Romei , 2013 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 2-3 February 2013; (p. 19)
Rothwell Longlisted for Miles Franklin Stephen Romei , 2014 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian , 4 April 2014; (p. 3)
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 7 Aug 2020 11:24:05
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