Red Dog - Hardcover

Louis De Bernieres; Illustrated By Alan Baker

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0436256177 ISBN 13: 9780436256172

Publisher: Secker & Warburg, 2001

Synopsis

Red Dog is a West Australian, a lovable friendly red kelpie who found widespread fame as a result of his habit of travelling all over Western Australia, hitching rides over thousands of miles, settling in places for months at a time and adopting new families before heading off again to the next destination and another family—sometimes returning to say hello years later.

While visiting Australia, Louis de Bernières heard the legend of Red Dog and decided to do some research on this extraordinary story. After travelling to Western Australia and meeting countless people who’d known and loved Red Dog, Louis decided to spread Red Dog’s fame a little further. The result is an utterly charming tale of an amazing dog with places to go and people to see.

‘Life enhancing.’ —Literary Review

About this title

Review

Red Dog is a book by a writer in love. While passing through a town in the Australian outback, novelist Louis de Bernières discovered a statue of a dog. Intrigued, he made inquiries, and was swamped by locals with tales of a wildly charismatic creature named Tally Ho. De Bernières, author of Corelli's Mandolin, has fashioned a charming picaresque of Tally's misdeeds and misadventures, not least of which involve the animal's enormous appetite (complemented by an equally enormous flatulence). "Tally," he writes, "was the most notorious canine dustbin in the whole neighbourhood. With apparent relish he ate paper bags, sticks, dead rats, butterflies, apple peel, eggshells, used tissues and socks." De Bernières' enchantment with this "dustbin" is a reflection of a larger rapture: here is a writer who has fallen for Australia itself. He wittily captures the country's cadences, its landscape, its weakness for the (literal) underdog. --Claire Dederer

From the Inside Flap

In 1998, Louis de Bernieres?acclaimed author of Corelli?s Mandolin?came upon a bronze statue in a town on Australia?s northwestern coast and was immediately compelled to know more about ?Red Dog.? He did not have to go far: everyone for hundreds of miles in every direction seemed to have a story about Red Dog. He was a Red Cloud Kelpie, a breed of sheepdog known for its energy and cleverness. But Red Dog was a kind of ultra-Kelpie, energetic and clever enough for an entire breed in himself.

Dubbed a ?professional traveler? rather than a stray, Red Dog established his own transportation system, hitchhiking between far-flung towns and female dogs in cars whose engine noises he?d memorized and whose drivers he?d charmed. The call of the wild was matched by the call of the supper dish; Red Dog?s appetite was as legendary as his exploits. Everyone wanted to adopt him (one group of workers made him a member of their union), but Red Dog would be adopted by?or, more precisely, he would adopt?only one man: a bus driver whose love life quickly began to suffer and who never quite recovered from Red Dog?s relentlessly affectionate presence.

Independent, clever, sly, stubborn, courageous and foolhardy, impatient with boredom and the boring, Red Dog endeared himself to (almost) everyone who crossed his path. These funny, surprising, and touching stories of his life are certain to endear him to every reader.

About this edition

• Publisher: Secker & Warburg
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0436256177
• ISBN 13: 9780436256172
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128
• Illustrator: Alan Baker