For several years now, Nicolas Rothwell has travelled the length and breadth of Northern and Central Australia. This book collects published and unpublished writing from that time. It contains sundry tales of marvellous places, told in an inimitable style. There are profiles of mystics and artists, explorers and healers, accounts of desert journeys, ground-breaking pieces on art, politics, landscape and much more.
Many of the pieces concern WA subjects, such as the Pilbara region, the Jirrawun and Tjulyuru arts movements, the Gibson Desert and more.
It is also a book which coheres into a multifaceted unity, forming a literary portrait of places and communities – at once a kind of occasional travelogue and an evocation, a set of stories, an introduction to some recent Aboriginal art and a clear-eyed account of some unfolding catastrophes.
Shortlisted for the 2008 NSW Premier's Literary Award and the 2008 Colin Roderick Award
‘The astonishing thing about Another Country is not how often Rothwell is defeated by the difficulty of reconciling two radically different ways of seeing, it is how tantalisingly close he comes to pulling it off … To these accounts, Rothwell brings all his considerable descriptive and analytic skills to bear.’ —Geordie Williamson, The Australian
‘Rothwell is a stylist of talent … his style seems peculiarly suited to the Territory, a place of grand hopes and failures, full of the “sweet bite” of nostalgia. His portraits of Aboriginal artists and elders have this same elegiac, haunting tone. He is acutely sensitive to the sadness in Aboriginal art …’ —Stephen Gray, Sydney Morning Herald
‘This book represents a substantial journalistic inquiry. It deserves to be read because it goes so far beyond the average Australian’s comprehension of their own country.’ —Martin Flanagan, The Age
‘Rothwell writes vividly about characters of the Outback and … picks his way deftly through the maze of small-town politics to the big picture of 360-degree horizons.’ —Tim Lloyd, Advertiser
‘Subtle, elegant and disciplined.’ —Nicholas Jose, Australian Book Review
