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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Once upon a time that was called 1828, before all the living things on the land and the fishes in the sea were destroyed, there was a man named William Buelow Gould, a convict in Van Dieman's Land who fell in love with a black woman and discovered too late that to love is not safe. Silly Billy Gould, invader of Australia, liar, murderer, forger, fantasist, condemned to live in the most brutal penal colony in the British Empire, and there ordered to paint a book of fish. Once upon a time, miraculous things happened'. (Source: Trove)
Notes
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Listed in The New York Times Book Review's list of Notable Books for 2002.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Braille.
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Sublime Wilderness : Embracing the Non-Human in Richard Flanagan’s Tasmania
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Climate and Crises : Magical Realism as Environmental Discourse 2019; (p. 73-94) 'Narrator Sid Hammet's opening remark in Gould's Book of Fish (2001) encapsulates a recurring theme of Richard Flanagan's fiction: the perception of human existence as something bigger than Western materialism and urban existence, of anthropic life as one element within a profound, mysterious cosmos. Flanagan conveys this transcendental awareness through a style of writing that frequently involves magical realist elements and which is inextricably tied to a philosophy based on ecology and a connection to the Tasmanian landscape, a philosophy influenced by Indigenous Tasmanians and their precolonial culture. In particular, Flanagan blends the magical and the environmental through his persistent leitmotif of wilderness, specifically Tasmania's unique and remote South-West Wilderness.' (Introduction)
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Rewriting History: 'Gould's Book of Fish'
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Richard Flanagan : Critical Essays 2018; (p. 87-101) -
Spatial Anxieties: Tourists, Settlers and Tasmania's Affective Economies of Belonging in 'A Terrible Beauty', 'Death of a River Guide' and 'Gould's Book of Fish'
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Richard Flanagan : Critical Essays 2018; (p. 73-85) -
"Smashing and Singing and Sobbing and Howling": Sound and Richard Flanagan's Tasmania
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Richard Flanagan : Critical Essays 2018; (p. 59-71) -
Greening a Narrative Mode: Antipodean Magical Realism and Ecocriticism in Richard Flanagan's Fiction
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Richard Flanagan : Critical Essays 2018; (p. 43-57)
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Putting on the Plum
2002
single work
review
— Appears in: London Review of Books , 31 October vol. 24 no. 21 2002; (p. 26-27)
— Review of Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish 2001 single work novel -
[Review] Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish
2002
single work
review
— Appears in: JAS Review of Books , June no. 6 2002;
— Review of Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish 2001 single work novel -
Linnaeus Downunder
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 2 no. 2003; (p. 179-184)
— Review of Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish 2001 single work novel -
Two Sides to the Story : For
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 29-30 November 2003; (p. 15)
— Review of Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish 2001 single work novel -
Two Sides to the Story : Against
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 29-30 November 2003; (p. 15)
— Review of Gould's Book of Fish : A Novel in Twelve Fish 2001 single work novel -
Awards
2002
single work
column
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 16 no. 1 2002; (p. 74-75) -
2002 Australian Literary Society Gold Medal Award
2002
single work
column
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 1 no. 2002; (p. 114-115) Includes the judges report on the winning work. -
Book Briefs - Modern Australian Classics & Some
2002
single work
column
— Appears in: Blast , Winter no. 47 2002; (p. 13) -
Wishing for Modernity : Temporality and Desire in Gould's Book of Fish
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 21 no. 1 2003; (p. 43-53) Shipway's article examines Flanagan's representation of Tasmanian versions of history and modernity in Gould's Book of Fish. As one of the recurring motifs in Flanagan's writing is 'the impoverishment of the Tasmanian present, a state of affairs both enacted by, and embodied in, a failed modernity', his fiction poses the question: 'how are we to summon up hope for Tasmania's future, when its past is so overwhelmingly full of defeat?'. Shipways argues that the answer proposed in the novel is 'to radically fictionalise that past, and to imbue it with the residue of collective longing left over from the project of hydro-electrification that was aborted after the Franklin River conflicts of the early 1980s' (43). 'In Gould's Book of Fish, Richard Flanagan returns to the time of Tasmania's first modernity in order to realise his hopes and ambitions for another modernity that is yet to come. The tragic-comic failure of that fictional modernisation embodies the ambivalence he feels about the real history of Tasmanian modernity' (44). -
Cover Stories
2004
single work
column
— Appears in: The Age , 17 July 2004; (p. 1-2) Australian publishers believe buyers are influenced by the design and colour of book covers.
Awards
- 2002 winner Australian Publishers Association Awards — Publishing Project of the Year Award
- 2002 winner ASAL Awards — ALS Gold Medal
- 2002 winner Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Prize for Fiction
- 2002 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2002 winner Commonwealth Writers Prize — Overall Best Book Award
Last amended 15 Dec 2022 10:48:50
Settings:
- Van Diemen's Land (1803-1856), Tasmania,
- Tasmania,
- 1803-1831
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