Praiseworthy

In a small Aboriginal town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out a solution to the global climate crisis. Praiseworthy is a novel that pushes allegory and language to its limits, and is both a sharp satire and a thoughtful fable for the end of days.

Winner of the 2024 James Tait Black Prize – Fiction

Winner of the 2024 Stella Prize

Shortlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award

Winner of the 2023 Queensland Award for Literary Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2023 Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance, Queensland Literary Awards

Longlisted for the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Longlisted for the Climate Fiction Prize

In a small Aboriginal town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both ecological disaster and a gathering of the ancestors, Cause Man Steel is chasing a mad vision: a national donkey transport scheme that will guarantee his people’s independence forever. He finds, however, as he bundles feral donkeys into his Ford Falcon and dumps them en masse in the cemetery, that not all of Praiseworthy agrees. Outrage ferments at his desecration of traditional land, while Cause’s wife Dance seeks refuge with butterflies and dreams of moving their family to China. Bad feelings reach fever pitch when citizens catch wind of the suicide of Aboriginal Sovereignty, Cause’s eldest son. All are distraught – all, that is, except eight-year-old Tommyhawk Steel, who, with his brother gone, gleefully pursues his dream of becoming white and powerful. Told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned, Praiseworthy is a marvel of explosive sentences, a shock to allegory, an outraged cry against oppression, and a biting satire for the end of days.

‘I’m awed by the range, experiment and political intelligence of Alexis Wright’s work. She is vital on the subject of land and people.’ Robert Macfarlane, New York Times Book Review

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