AustLit

'When Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man was published in 2008 it became an instant Australian classic. It was a compelling and confronting book about the worst of colonial Australia: police brutality, racial and judicial injustice, dispossession and the enduring trauma of colonialism. The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire (Hamish Hamilton) is Hooper’s first non-fiction book since then (she published a novel, The Engagement in 2012) and displays all the sensitivity, nuance and lyricism that readers found in The Tall Man. ' (Introduction)