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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Elegiac and seductive, Belomor is the frontier where truth and invention meet—where fragments from distant lives intermingle, and cohere.
A man seeks out the father figure who shaped his picture of the past. A painter seeks redemption after the disasters of his years in northern Australia. A student of history travels into the depths of religion, the better to escape the demons in his mind. A filmmaker seeks out freedom and open space, and looks into the murk and sediment of herself.
Four chapters: four journeys through life, separate, yet interwoven as the narrative unfolds.
In this entrancing new book from one of our most original writers, we meet European dissidents from the age of postwar communism, artists in remote Australia, snake hunters, opal miners and desert magic healers. Belomor is a meditation on time, and loss: on how the most bitter recollections bring happiness, and the meaning of a secret rests in the thoughts surrounding it.' (Publisher's blurb)
Notes
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Dedication: In memory of Tjinawima Napaltjarri
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Epigraph:
'Vidi ego odorati victura rosaria Paesti
sub matutino cocta iacere Noto.'
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
-
Ethics of Representation and Self-reflexivity : Nicolas Rothwell’s Narrative Essays
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 20 no. 2 2020;'While many contemporary Australian writers pitch their narratives on the coastal fringes, where most Australians reside, Nicolas Rothwell returns obsessively to the interior where one senses a sense of unfinished business. The spatial instabilities that resulted from the settler colonial project act as a catalyst for unsettling prior forms of knowledge and belief. Rothwell’s works feature real-and-imagined characters caught between fiction and non-fiction, the lies in the land and the lie of the land. His narratives create a form of generic disorientation that has a political, social and epistemological purpose. Central to Rothwell’s literary project is the reminder that spatial representations influence spatial practices. The author advocates for a break from the novelistic tradition; the country has seen enough literary and legal fictions that had catastrophic consequences for the native population and the environment.
'I argue that Rothwell’s spatial and literary renegotiations culminate in the formation of a new literary genre, the narrative essay. The author decolonises place, space and literary forms to articulate ethical models of non-belonging. Rothwell offers a transformative sublime aesthetics that I analyse as an expression of Bill Ashcroft’s ‘horizonal sublime’ and Christopher Hitt’s ‘ecological sublime’. I compare Rothwell’s ethics of representation, characterised by a self-reflexive prose, narrative instability and narrative regression, to that of Anglo-German author W.G. Sebald, who uses similar techniques in his evocation of a ruined Europe. Rothwell not only presents man’s propensity for a ‘Natural History of Destruction’, he is also intent on identifying the mechanisms at work in building the future.' (Publication abstract)
-
Rothwell Longlisted for Miles Franklin
2014
single work
column
— Appears in: The Australian , 4 April 2014; (p. 3) -
Into the Void
2013-
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , April 2013;
— Review of Belomor 2013 single work prose -
Books : Nicholas Rothwell Cements His Reputation as a Fiction Writer
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekly Review , 20 March 2013; (p. 22)
— Review of Belomor 2013 single work prose -
[Review] Belomor
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 24 February 2013; (p. 14)
— Review of Belomor 2013 single work prose
-
Untitled
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 9-10 February 2013; (p. 22)
— Review of Belomor 2013 single work prose -
Completely in Charge and Utterly Invisible
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 9-10 February 2013; (p. 18-19)
— Review of Belomor 2013 single work prose -
Fragments from the Far Frontiers
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 16-17 February 2013; (p. 31)
— Review of Belomor 2013 single work prose -
Cross Currents of Cultures
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 16 February 2013; (p. 24)
— Review of Belomor 2013 single work prose -
Book Mark
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 26 January 2013; (p. 30)
— Review of Belomor 2013 single work prose -
A Pair of Ragged Claws
2013
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 2-3 February 2013; (p. 19) -
Rothwell Longlisted for Miles Franklin
2014
single work
column
— Appears in: The Australian , 4 April 2014; (p. 3) -
Ethics of Representation and Self-reflexivity : Nicolas Rothwell’s Narrative Essays
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 20 no. 2 2020;'While many contemporary Australian writers pitch their narratives on the coastal fringes, where most Australians reside, Nicolas Rothwell returns obsessively to the interior where one senses a sense of unfinished business. The spatial instabilities that resulted from the settler colonial project act as a catalyst for unsettling prior forms of knowledge and belief. Rothwell’s works feature real-and-imagined characters caught between fiction and non-fiction, the lies in the land and the lie of the land. His narratives create a form of generic disorientation that has a political, social and epistemological purpose. Central to Rothwell’s literary project is the reminder that spatial representations influence spatial practices. The author advocates for a break from the novelistic tradition; the country has seen enough literary and legal fictions that had catastrophic consequences for the native population and the environment.
'I argue that Rothwell’s spatial and literary renegotiations culminate in the formation of a new literary genre, the narrative essay. The author decolonises place, space and literary forms to articulate ethical models of non-belonging. Rothwell offers a transformative sublime aesthetics that I analyse as an expression of Bill Ashcroft’s ‘horizonal sublime’ and Christopher Hitt’s ‘ecological sublime’. I compare Rothwell’s ethics of representation, characterised by a self-reflexive prose, narrative instability and narrative regression, to that of Anglo-German author W.G. Sebald, who uses similar techniques in his evocation of a ruined Europe. Rothwell not only presents man’s propensity for a ‘Natural History of Destruction’, he is also intent on identifying the mechanisms at work in building the future.' (Publication abstract)
Awards
- 2014 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Fiction
- 2014 longlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 2013 longlisted Mark and Evette Moran Nib Award for Literature