Praiseworthy

Winner of the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Winner of the 2024 Stella Prize

Winner of the 2024 ALS Gold Medal

Praiseworthy is an epic set in the north of Australia, told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned.

In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called 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. This is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.

Accompanied by new editions of Wright's classic novels, Carpentaria and The Swan Book, to be released by Giramondo in May 2023.

Also Winner of the 2023 Queensland Literary Awards: The University of Queensland Fiction Book Award