Karan - Hardcover

B. Wongar

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333430123 ISBN 13: 9780333430125

Publisher: Macmillan, 1986

Synopsis

Recounts a tale of a culture on the brink of extinction, in the story of Aniwari, whose honorary title of Reverend and engagement to the white girl, Ann, place him at the interface of clashing aboriginal and white cultures

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Atomic testing in the Australian scrub has strewn death everywhere: the "rolling mist" leaves a green-smeared sky, featherless birds, and cancerous or slaughtered Aborigines. Anawari, stolen from his tribe as a child and raised to be a so-called cleric, unwillingly helps his European bosses to trap other blacks with drugged oranges, cages, and computersfor research purposes. In an act of "treason," Anawari breaks away from his false role and from his menacing white fiancee Ann, to burrow under the parched earth in quest of his origins. In this eerie, disturbing second book of a "nuclear trilogy" (after the acclaimed Walg, or "womb"), the pseudonymous B. Wongar, himself part European and Aborigine, joins mega-tech nightmare with the nature mythology of the gentle tribes who share their karan, or "spirit double," with the wise and sentient trees. The story becomes increasingly magical as Anawari literally finds his rootsaided by the sacred elder Numuruamong the people of the Blood Gum Tree. A moving transformation occurs in Anawari, and in the greening of the once-ruined land. U.K. rights: Laurence Pollinger; translation rights: ICM. November
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Like Walg , Wongar's first novel ( LJ 12/ 15/83), Karan tells the story of an ab origine, his tribal identity, and his at tempt to restore his quickly vanishing tribal lands to nature's balance. Anawari, raised and educated in the white man's world, endeavors to recap ture his ``karan'' (spirit double). He struggles against his ignorance of his people and origins and the decimation of his tribal homelands due to years of nuclear testing. The solution he finds incorporates a tribal shaman's rainmak ing magic, his own return to the bush, the entwined destinies of man and trees. Wongar's brutal descriptions of the aboriginal social condition and reli gion are effective, his characterizations less so. A helpful glossary is included. For larger fiction collections. Robert J. Dorn, Crawford Memorial Lib., Monticello, N.Y.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0333430123
• ISBN 13: 9780333430125
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 192