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Poor Fellow My Country
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Poor Fellow My Country
Poor Fellow My Country is a Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Xavier Herbert. At 1,463 pages, it is the longest Australian work of fiction ever written, and the longest single-volume novel to have been written in the English language. Poor Fellow My Country won the 1976 Miles Franklin Literary Award (for books published in 1975), Australia's most prestigious such award. It was Herbert's final novel.
The novel takes place between 1936 and 1942, with a brief epilogue set in 1974, and is set primarily in Australia's Northern Territory. Three social outcasts - Prindy, a half-Indigenous boy; Jeremy, his white grandfather, well-known for his outspoken rants against bigotry and conservatism; and Rifkah, a female Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany - find themselves facing oppression as Australia faces a war and ongoing questions about its place in the world.
Subtitle: "Blackman's Idyll Despoiled by White Bullies, Thieves, and Hypocrites"
1936. Jeremy Delacy is a middle-aged Anglo-Australian who owns a property, Lily Lagoons, in the Northern Territory. Jeremy is an outspoken critic of Australian government and culture. His views often set him apart from his fellow white Australians, especially on the subject of Australian nationalism, as he rejects Australia's fealty to the British Empire, and on the subject of the treatment of Aboriginal Australians. Jeremy supports land rights and reparations to Aboriginal Australians, as he believes that it is morally and culturally wrong to expect them to "integrate" with white society and be reliant on welfare and a culture that is not their own. Jeremy's first wife, Rhoda, and his adult sons are pillars of society in the fictional town of Beatrice (modelled on towns such as Katherine). However Jeremy's second wife, Nanago, is Indigenous, and they live a life largely separated from society.
Jeremy has a grandson, Prindy, on the cusp of adolescence, whose mother is Indigenous and whose father is Jeremy's son, Martin. Prindy is technically a ward of the state, like all Aboriginal Australians, and is torn between his two cultures. Prindy is not fully accepted by white society, although because of his light skin and his unusual musical abilities he is often seen as a figure of fascination by white people. At the same time, because he has a white father and has not been raised in Aboriginal culture, he is disconnected from this world also. One of the elders of Prindy's tribe, Bobwirridirridi (known as the Pookarakka), takes the boy to initiate him properly into the tribe. But Prindy's mother Nell and her Chinese husband, who believe that white culture is superior for the boy, pursue them into the bush. In the confrontation, Nell's husband is killed and Bobwirridirridi is arrested for the crime. As a result, Nell is placed into an institution for Indigenous women while Prindy is taken by the state and relocated to Port Palmerston, a fictional version of Darwin. Jeremy causes a scene at Bobwirridirridi's trial, complaining that the trial is a farce given that the defendant doesn't speak fluent English and has not been provided with an interpreter.
In Palmerston, Prindy bonds with his new schoolmistress, Mrs Alfrieda "Alfie" Candlemas, although her progressive views on Aboriginal education see her trade blows with many of the locals. Jeremy joins forces with Alfie and her husband Frank to embarrass Lady Rhoda and the other members of conservative white society. Alfie is attracted to Jeremy, and one night she stays at Lily Lagoons with the intention of seducing him. Jeremy rejects her, and it becomes clear that - despite her progressive views - Alfie still regards Indigenous people, such as Jeremy's second wife Nanago, as inferior. Ultimately Alfie leaves the Territory to go back to Sydney, convinced that integration of Aboriginal people has to be the goal, rather than the self-determination which Jeremy believes in.
Nell escapes her institution and finds Prindy. The two plan to get back to Jeremy, with the help of two other Indigenous people, Queeny and "King George", and they undergo a lengthy and dangerous journey. En route, the women realise they have been betrayed by King George. He plans to take Prindy to a secret location in the bush to continue the initiation process. As this is "men's business", the women are not permitted to be involved. Nell and Queeny do not want Prindy to be initiated into the tribe, as they want him to have the chance of a life in white society, and they track the men. In a violent confrontation, all three adults die, and Prindy wanders alone until he is rescued by an Indian travelling salesman, Ali Barbu, whose young daughter Savitra quickly falls for the boy.
Subtitle: "Whiteman's Ideal Sold Out by Rogues and Fools"
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Poor Fellow My Country
Poor Fellow My Country is a Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Xavier Herbert. At 1,463 pages, it is the longest Australian work of fiction ever written, and the longest single-volume novel to have been written in the English language. Poor Fellow My Country won the 1976 Miles Franklin Literary Award (for books published in 1975), Australia's most prestigious such award. It was Herbert's final novel.
The novel takes place between 1936 and 1942, with a brief epilogue set in 1974, and is set primarily in Australia's Northern Territory. Three social outcasts - Prindy, a half-Indigenous boy; Jeremy, his white grandfather, well-known for his outspoken rants against bigotry and conservatism; and Rifkah, a female Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany - find themselves facing oppression as Australia faces a war and ongoing questions about its place in the world.
Subtitle: "Blackman's Idyll Despoiled by White Bullies, Thieves, and Hypocrites"
1936. Jeremy Delacy is a middle-aged Anglo-Australian who owns a property, Lily Lagoons, in the Northern Territory. Jeremy is an outspoken critic of Australian government and culture. His views often set him apart from his fellow white Australians, especially on the subject of Australian nationalism, as he rejects Australia's fealty to the British Empire, and on the subject of the treatment of Aboriginal Australians. Jeremy supports land rights and reparations to Aboriginal Australians, as he believes that it is morally and culturally wrong to expect them to "integrate" with white society and be reliant on welfare and a culture that is not their own. Jeremy's first wife, Rhoda, and his adult sons are pillars of society in the fictional town of Beatrice (modelled on towns such as Katherine). However Jeremy's second wife, Nanago, is Indigenous, and they live a life largely separated from society.
Jeremy has a grandson, Prindy, on the cusp of adolescence, whose mother is Indigenous and whose father is Jeremy's son, Martin. Prindy is technically a ward of the state, like all Aboriginal Australians, and is torn between his two cultures. Prindy is not fully accepted by white society, although because of his light skin and his unusual musical abilities he is often seen as a figure of fascination by white people. At the same time, because he has a white father and has not been raised in Aboriginal culture, he is disconnected from this world also. One of the elders of Prindy's tribe, Bobwirridirridi (known as the Pookarakka), takes the boy to initiate him properly into the tribe. But Prindy's mother Nell and her Chinese husband, who believe that white culture is superior for the boy, pursue them into the bush. In the confrontation, Nell's husband is killed and Bobwirridirridi is arrested for the crime. As a result, Nell is placed into an institution for Indigenous women while Prindy is taken by the state and relocated to Port Palmerston, a fictional version of Darwin. Jeremy causes a scene at Bobwirridirridi's trial, complaining that the trial is a farce given that the defendant doesn't speak fluent English and has not been provided with an interpreter.
In Palmerston, Prindy bonds with his new schoolmistress, Mrs Alfrieda "Alfie" Candlemas, although her progressive views on Aboriginal education see her trade blows with many of the locals. Jeremy joins forces with Alfie and her husband Frank to embarrass Lady Rhoda and the other members of conservative white society. Alfie is attracted to Jeremy, and one night she stays at Lily Lagoons with the intention of seducing him. Jeremy rejects her, and it becomes clear that - despite her progressive views - Alfie still regards Indigenous people, such as Jeremy's second wife Nanago, as inferior. Ultimately Alfie leaves the Territory to go back to Sydney, convinced that integration of Aboriginal people has to be the goal, rather than the self-determination which Jeremy believes in.
Nell escapes her institution and finds Prindy. The two plan to get back to Jeremy, with the help of two other Indigenous people, Queeny and "King George", and they undergo a lengthy and dangerous journey. En route, the women realise they have been betrayed by King George. He plans to take Prindy to a secret location in the bush to continue the initiation process. As this is "men's business", the women are not permitted to be involved. Nell and Queeny do not want Prindy to be initiated into the tribe, as they want him to have the chance of a life in white society, and they track the men. In a violent confrontation, all three adults die, and Prindy wanders alone until he is rescued by an Indian travelling salesman, Ali Barbu, whose young daughter Savitra quickly falls for the boy.
Subtitle: "Whiteman's Ideal Sold Out by Rogues and Fools"