Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright | First Nations Fiction

An astonishing and monumental masterpiece from the towering Australian writer Alexis Wright whose “words explode from the page” (The Monthly)

In a small town in the north of Australia, a mysterious cloud heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors.

A crazed visionary looks to donkeys to solve the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife, seeking solace from his madness, follows the dance of butterflies and scours the internet to find out how her Aboriginal/Chinese family could be repatriated to China.

One of their sons, named Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful. 

Praiseworthy is an epic which pushes allegory and language to its limit; a unique masterpiece that bends time and reality, opening new literary vistas; a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage; and a fable for the end of days.