 First edition | |
| Author | Claire G. Coleman |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Speculative fiction |
| Published | 2017 (Hachette Australia) |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 294 |
| ISBN | 9780733638312 |
| OCLC | 1104326528 |
Terra Nullius is a 2017 speculative fiction novel by Claire G. Coleman. It draws from Australia's colonial history, describing a society split into "Natives" and "Settlers."
Judges of the Stella Prize called Terra Nullius "an arresting and original novel", [1] while a reviewer for the Sydney Review of Books described it as "a cleverly multiplicitous text" and "an ambitious mirror for settler Australia". [2]
Terra Nullius has also been reviewed by Australian Book Review , [3] Publishers Weekly , [4] Locus , [5] Antipodes , [6] The Adelaide Review , [7] ArtsHub, [8] Kirkus Reviews , [9] and Library Journal . [10]
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–1954), who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career (1901). She bequeathed her estate to fund this award. As of 2016, the award is valued at A$60,000.
Sonya Louise Hartnett is an Australian author of fiction for adults, young adults, and children. She has been called "the finest Australian writer of her generation". For her career contribution to "children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense" Hartnett won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council in 2008, the biggest prize in children's literature.
Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli-born writer, working across multiple genres. He has lived in the United Kingdom and South Africa for long periods of time, as well as Laos and Vanuatu. As of 2013, Tidhar has lived in London. His novel Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, beating Stephen King's 11/22/63 and George R. R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons. His novel A Man Lies Dreaming won the £5000 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, for Best British Fiction, in 2015. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2017, for Central Station.
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Gail Jones is an Australian novelist and academic.
The Aurealis Awards are presented annually by the Australia-based Chimaera Publications and WASFF to published works in order to "recognise the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy, horror writers". To qualify, a work must have been first published by an Australian citizen or permanent resident between 1 November of the prior year and 31 October of the corresponding year; the presentation ceremony is held the following year. It has grown from a small function of around 20 people to a two-day event attended by over 200 people.
Melissa Lucashenko is an Indigenous Australian writer of adult literary fiction and literary non-fiction, who has also written novels for teenagers.
The Aurealis Awards are presented annually by the Australia-based Chimaera Publications and WASFF to published works in order to "recognise the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers". To qualify, a work must have been first published by an Australian citizen or permanent resident between 1 January and 31 December of the corresponding year; the presentation ceremony is held the following year. It has grown from a small function of around 20 people to a two-day event attended by over 200 people.
Heather Rose is an Australian author born in Hobart, Tasmania. She is the author of the acclaimed memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. She is best known for her novels The Museum of Modern Love, which won the 2017 Stella Prize, and Bruny (2019), which won Best General Fiction in the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards. She has also worked in advertising, business, and the arts.
The Stella Prize is an Australian annual literary award established in 2013 for writing by Australian women in all genres, worth $50,000. It was originally proposed by Australian women writers and publishers in 2011, modelled on the UK's Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.
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Fiona Wright is an Australian poet and critic.
Indigenous Australian literature is the fiction, plays, poems, essays and other works authored by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 2017.
Claire G. Coleman is a Wirlomin-Noongar-Australian writer and poet, whose 2017 debut novel, Terra Nullius won the Norma K Hemming Award. The first draft of resulted in Coleman being awarded the State Library of Queensland's 2016 black&write! Indigenous Writing Fellowship.
Bren MacDibble is a New Zealand-born writer of children's and young adult books based in Australia. Bren also writes under the name Cally Black. She uses the alias to distinguish between books written for younger children and books written for young adults.
Zana Fraillon is an Australian writer of fiction for children and young adults based in Melbourne, Australia. Fraillon is known for allowing young readers to examine human rights abuses within fiction and in 2017 she won an Amnesty CILIP Honour for her book The Bone Sparrow which highlights the plight of the Rohingya people. The Bone Sparrow has been translated to stage and is set to premier in the York Theatre Royal, York, UK, from 25 February 2022.
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Terra Nullius is a cleverly multiplicitous text. The reader is an observer who must sit between two apocalyptic colonial moments (one ongoing, one possible) – analogising the latter to better appreciate the former. ... It is an ambitious mirror for settler Australia – by no means prophetic, but revelatory.
Artfully combining elements of literary, historical, and speculative fiction, this allegorical novel is surprising and unforgettable.
Coleman is not at all interested in being subtle about drawing these parallels, nor does she need to be: she gets her point across with powerful, disturbing, and often extremely violent portrayals of the subjugation of a native population that can't help but echo history.
While the outset of the book begins in a world with which we may be more familiar, the story swiftly transforms into a science-fiction sort of future in which the tensions between colonizers and colonized are explored from a distinctive perspective.
Terra Nullius is a powerful, sobering piece of writing that makes us face an Australia we try to forget, but should always remember.
A delightfully duplicitous noodle-bender that flips the script on the Indigenous Australian survival narrative.
If there's one weakness, it's the deluge of characters to accommodate. Otherwise, this promising first novel, ..., demonstrates Coleman's promise as a creative storyteller.