AustLit

'I first read the fiction of Alexis Wright when I was writing a thesis on transgenerational trauma for my doctorate at Western Sydney University. I was exploring the ways in which literature testifies to transmissions of psychic trauma, which, in Unclaimed Experience (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), Cathy Caruth defines as the impact of an unassimilated event or experience that makes its presence known belatedly and often illogically. In Carpentaria, Wright’s second novel, I found a prime example of such testimony: a fierce epic that both honours Indigenous sovereignty and culture and attests to the ravages wrought by colonisation.' (Introduction)