Praiseworthy

In Praiseworthy, Alexis Wright has written a saga revolving around an Aboriginal community, Praiseworthy, situated near the sea in northern Australia. The main characters in this story are Cause Man Steele, also referred to as Widespread and Planet, his wife with Chinese ancestry who was known as Dance and their two sons, seventeen year old Aboriginal Sovereignty and eight year old Tommyhawk Steele.

It takes 723 pages of small print to tell this allegory of Aboriginal people striving to exist in their own country under rules devised by white men. This results in the creation of a confused no man's land where plans and ideas keep changing depending on the mood. To add to the challenges a huge haze has descended on the area where Praiseworthy is situated. Widespread is convinced that this is the result of global warming and he is determined to find his own solution.

Around the town are many feral donkeys and Widespread decides that he needs to round up as many donkeys as he can to form a business enterprise delivering and carrying goods and people when transport using fossil fuel is no longer available. However he needs a special flagship donkey for this enterprise and spends much of the book traipsing around the country in a broken down car looking for the perfect donkey to be the mascot for the enterprise. When he finds a contender the donkey travels back to the community with him in his car. 

Dance lives in her own world and is obsessed with moths and butterflies which live in the area in abundance. As her relationship with Widespread diminishes she decides to try and find a way to travel to China as a refugee - to return to the country of part of her family. Widespread and Dance live on land in the local cemetery and are convinced that they are traditional owners of this land which does not impress the other inhabitants of the area.

 The two sons of Widespread and Dance do not get on and live different lives though each is aware of the other's presence at different times during the book. 

Aboriginal Sovereignty marries the girl who had been promised to him as a wife since they were children. He is seventeen but she is fifteen. This is OK according to Aboriginal law but not according to white man's law. The girl is sent away to the city for 'safety'. When Aboriginal Sovereignty is arrested he escapes from custody and is last seen disappearing into the sea, a place where many local young people commit suicide.

Tommyhawk is obsessed with social media which he accesses on his phone and other devices. He regularly follows all the reports on white men's views about life in Aboriginal communities including how the communities are inhabited by pedophiles. Tommyhawk wants to leave Praiseworthy to live in safety with white people in Canberra. It is Tommyhawk who reports his brother marrying an underage girl to authorities.

When Aboriginal Sovereignty disappears the local people form search parties to search for him along the beach and in the nearby waters. They are watched over by the spirits of the past who reflect on life in general and changes since their time. From this point Aboriginal Sovereignty becomes a theme of the book as well as the name of a character.

Praiseworthy is also full of churches representing a variety of sects who also try to have an influence in the community. Aboriginal elders, past and present also have words to say about what is happening in Praiseworthy and environs.

As well as Aboriginal Sovereignty, some of the themes in the book include attitudes to the effect of white man's laws and regulations on Aboriginal communities, the development of many Aboriginal communities relying on Canberra for handouts for projects, 'bridging the gap', abuse of children, global warming and care of the environment in general. 

There are several stories meandering through the novel as the plot is revealed through a river of time, often reversing on itself. There is humour in many places, often dark humour, as the author attempts in this saga to encourage the reader to think about the impact of colonisation on the life of the Aboriginal people.

Praiseworthy is the winner of the 2024 Stella Prize, the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award and also the 2023 Queensland Literary Awards — Fiction Book Award. The novel also won the 2024 James Tait Black award for fiction (awarded by the University of Edinburgh) and also the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative literature.

Think of the Children - Sydney Review of Books - 5 June 2023 

Praiseworthy by Alix Wright - How can one novel contain so much? - The Guardian 28 April 2023.