When Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia invades the swamp with his charismatic persona and the promise of salvation, Oblivia agrees to marry him, becoming First Lady, a role that has her confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city. Fenced off from the rest of Australia by the Army, its traditional custodians left destitute, the swamp has become 'the world's most unknown detention camp' for Indigenous Australians. Bella Donna takes Oblivia to live with her on an old warship in a polluted dry swamp and there she fills Oblivia's head with story upon story of swans.

These are the years leading up to Australia's third centenary, and the woman who finds her, Bella Donna of the Champions, is a refugee from climate change wars that devastated her country in the northern hemisphere. Oblivia Ethelyne was given her name by an old woman who found her deep in the bowels of a gum tree, tattered and fragile, the victim of a brutal assault by wayward local youths. It is a challenging and heartbreaking story that illuminates the culture and struggles of an often overlooked people” ( Publishers Weekly).'An inventive, cacophonous novel about an Aboriginal girl living in a future world turned upside down-where ancient myths exist side-by-side with present-day realities. In this multilayered novel, winner of the Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal, Wright toys with the edges of the world we live in and “deftly highlights the racial and cultural politics facing Australia's indigenous people in a story that defies genre. Fenced off from the rest of Australia by the Army, its traditional custodians left destitute, the swamp has become “the world’s most unknown detention camp” for Indigenous Australians.

These are the years leading up to Australia’s third centenary, and the woman who finds her, Bella Donna of the Champions, is a refugee from climate change wars that devastated her country in the northern hemisphere.īella Donna takes Oblivia to live with her on an old warship in a polluted dry swamp and there she fills Oblivia’s head with story upon story of swans. A hypnotic and “astonishingly inventive” ( O, The Oprah Magazine) novel about an Aboriginal girl living in a future world turned upside down-where ancient myths exist side-by-side with present-day realities.

The swan book by alexis wright