"The writing is the best in the country, some of the best in the world; we call to mind Alexis Wright when they talk about our country’s great literary voice."
——Tara June Winch

"I’m awed by the range, experiment and political intelligence of [Alexis Wright’s] work…she is vital on the subject of land and people."
——Robert Macfarlane, The New York Times Book Review

"Monumental…Praiseworthy blew me away…If you think you know what assimilation is, you should read Praiseworthy and think again."
——Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Australian Book Review

"An abundant odyssey that contains a formidable vision of Australia’s future. This is a long journey through the imagination, a novel both urgent and deeply contemplated…The rich interrelations of ancestral spirits, larger-than-life characters, and Country all derive from the Aboriginal traditions of storytelling. But there are also signs of literary influence from every compass point on the map, including, most notably, the surrealism and magic realism of writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez."
——Jack Cameron Stanton, The Age

"Praiseworthy is Alexis Wright’s most formidable act of imaginative synthesis yet…a hero’s journey for an age of global warming, a devastating story of young love caught between two laws, and an extended elegy and ode to Aboriginal law and sovereignty."
——Preti Taneja, New Statesman

★The new novel from the internationally acclaimed, award-winning Australian author Alexis Wright.
★This is an epic set in northern Australia, with a lively language and rich imagery, continuing Alexis' famous and unique writing style.
★The novel pushes fables and language to their limits, it is an angry cry for oppression and disadvantage, and also a fable about the end of the world.
★Alexis Wright is the first writer who is awarded both Miles Franklin Literary Award and Stella Prize.
★WINNER: Miles Franklin Literary Award 2024
★WINNER: The Stella Prize 2024
★WINNER: The James Tait Black Prize – Fiction 2024
★WINNER: University of Queensland Fiction Book Award, Queensland Literary Awards 2023
★WINNER: ALS Gold Medal 2024
★SHORTLISTED: The Dublin Literary Award 2024
★SHORTLISTED: New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award – People’s Choice Award 2024
★SHORTLISTED: New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award – Christina Stead Prize for Fiction 2024
★SHORTLISTED: New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award – Indigenous Writers’ Prize 2024
★SHORTLISTED: Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance, Queensland Literary Awards 2023
★SHORTLISTED: Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award 2024
★Selected as “The 25 best Australian books of 2023” and “Best Book of April” by The Guardian.
★Rights sold to France, North America.
★Highly praised by Guardian UK, Sydney Review of Books, The Age, Australian Book Review, New York Times Book Review and other medias.

Praiseworthy is an epic set in the north of Australia, told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned. In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful. This is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.

Alexis Wright
Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The author of the prize-winning novels Carpentaria and The Swan Book, Wright has published three works of non-fiction: Take Power, an oral history of the Central Land Council; Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in the Northern Territory; and Tracker, an award-winning collective memoir of Aboriginal leader, Tracker Tilmouth. Her books have been published widely overseas, including in China, the US, the UK, Italy, France and Poland. She held the position of Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne between 2017–2022. Wright is the only author to win both the Miles Franklin Award (in 2007 for Carpentaria) and the Stella Prize (in 2018 for Tracker). Her latest novel is Praiseworthy, which received the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction in 2023. She is the inaugural winner of the Creative Australia Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature.