Richard Flanagan: Critical Essays

(Paperback)

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Richard Flanagan: Critical Essays is the first book to be published about the life and work of this major world author. Written by twelve leading critics from Australia, Europe and North America, these richly varied essays offer new ways of understanding Flanagan's contribution to Tasmanian, Australian and world literature.

Flanagan's fictional worlds offer empathetic, often poignant, renderings of those whose voices have been lost beneath official accounts of history, stories from a small region that have made their mark on a global scale. Considering his seven novels as well as his non-fiction, journalism and correspondence, this collection examines the historical and geographical factors that have shaped Flanagan's representation of Tasmanian identity.

This collection offers new insights into a determinedly regional writer, and the impact he has had on a local, national and global scale.

Reviews

Among the things we learn from the dozen scholarly essays that make up this monograph, remarkably the first extended study of Flanagans writing, is that the Tasmanians career has been built by reversing that current of indifference and oversight [of mainland Australians deleting Tasmania from the map]. -- Geordie Williamson * Weekend Australian *
Apart from reviews, there were a few articles scattered in academic journals but no easily accessible, book-length study. So this new collection of essays on his work, edited by Robert Dixon, is a welcome addition to the ongoing discussion of our latest literary superstar. -- Susan Lever * Australian Book Review *
'This thoughtful and erudite collection is a worthy addition to a growing body of work on a writer whose prose is profoundly humane and who has much yet to show us.' -- Joanne Curry * mETAphor *

Author Bio

Robert Dixon is professor of Australian literature at the University of Sydney and general editor of the Sydney Studies in Australian Literature series. His previous books include Alex Miller: The Ruin of Time, and Photography, Early Cinema and Colonial Modernity.