Wings of the Kite-hawk: A Journey Into the Heart of Australia

AUSTRALIANA

  Wry and knowing, Wings of the Kite-Hawk is a set of linked journeys into the Australian landscape: its past and present, its people and its half-remembered secrets. In each chapter, Nicolas Rothwell takes a precursor and follows him. His guides are not only the famous explorers from the past, Leichhardt, Sturt, Strehlow and Giles, but also anthropologists and Hell’s Angels: rodeo riders and artists. Vivid characters weave in and out of the story, intersecting, leading him on. Conversations move through light, laughter and sadness, while the overlapping explorations examine the different states of mind and heart. This is a book unlike any other written about inland Australia. As much fable as memoir, as much poem as momentary record., it resonates with strangeness and bitter-sweetness, with all the hidden patterns and suddenly revealed depths of life.

• 327 p. ; 23 cm. #270124 (Light age tanning, some light pencil scoring.))