The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

On the shores of Botany Bay lies an oil refinery where workers are free to come and go - but they are also part of an unrelenting, alienating economy from which there is no escape. In the first of his three Miles Franklin Award-winning novels, originally published in 1971, David Ireland offers a fiercely brilliant comic portrait of Australia in the grip of a dehumanising labour system. Ireland states: 'It has been my aim to take apart, then build up piece by piece, this mosaic of one kind of human life, to remind my present age of its industrial adolescence.'

Reviews

'A harsh and remarkable work...it will leave you shaken mildly or terribly according to your life experience.' National Times 'David Ireland offers a fiercely brilliant comic portrait of Australia in the grip of a dehumanising labour system.This almost prophetic book has been written to recognise these unknown industrial prisoners.' M/C Reviews 'When I think of my favourite Australian novels, two 1970s works by David Ireland are near the top of the list: The Unknown Industrial Prisoner and The Glass Canoe.' Stephen Romei 'There had been nothing like it in Australian literature before, and the only thing like it since was Ireland's second great proletarian fiction, The Glass Canoe (1976).' Peter Pierce

Author Bio

Authors Bio, not available