Capricornia

Product Description

A saga of life in the Northern Territories & the clash of white & Aborigine cultures
- one of Australia's all-time best-selling novels & an inspiration for Baz Luhrmann's lavish film 'AUSTRALIA'. Capricornia has been described as one of Australia's 'great novels', a sharply observed chronicle about life in the Northern Territory of Australia & the inhumane treatment suffered by Aborigines at the hands of white men. The story is immense & rambling, laced with humour that is often as bitter & as harsh as the terrain in which it is set, & follows with irony the fortunes (and otherwise) of a range of Outback characters over a span of generations. Through their story is reflected the story of Australia, the clash of personalities & cultures that provide the substance on which today's society is founded. Above all, however, this is a novel of protest & of compassion
- for the Aborigines & half-bloods of Australia's 'last frontier'. Sprawling, explosive, thronged with characters, plots & sub-plots, Capricornia is without doubt one of the best known & widely read Australian novels of the last 70 years. When it was first published it was acclaimed as 'a turning point', an 'outstanding work of social protest'. Its message is as penetrating today as it was in the 1930s when Herbert himself was official ' Protector of Aborigines' at Darwin.