Death of a River Guide

by Richard Flanagan

  Gould’s Book of Fish

  Once upon a time that was called 1828, before all fishes in the sea and all living things on the land were destroyed, there was a man named William Buelow Gould, a white convict who fell in love with a black woman and discovered too late that to love is not safe. Silly Billy Gould, invader of Australia, liar, murderer & forger, condemned to the most feared penal colony in the British Empire and there ordered to paint a book of fish.

  Once upon a time, there were miracles …

  Praise for Gould’s Book of Fish

  ‘A masterpiece.’—The Times

  ‘A brilliantly rendered work of the imagination that investigates the complex relationships among art, ordinary human life and the natural world with great intelligence and unquestionable panache … The book is full of wild hilarity, heartbreaking cruelty and suffering, and finally love, both selfless and profane … A work of significant genius.’—Chicago Tribune

  ‘A seamless masterpiece.’—The Independent on Sunday

  ‘I have read nothing finer than Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan. Lyrical and hilarious, tender and wildly angry by turns, it reimagines the grim early history of Tasmania and at the same time dazzlingly reconceives the form of the novel.’—Peter Conrad, The Observer

  ‘[Flanagan’s] writing has the unmistakeable shimmer of literary star quality.’—New Statesman

  ‘Most good novels arrive out of some quarrel with reality – an impossible romance, tragic loss, a social broadside of satirical anger. A few great ones raise an all-out war cry and trawl with abandon across all the familiar categories of fictional invention. Gould’s Book of Fish … is just such a great book, by turns bawdy and pensive, moving and abrasive, visionary and squalid, apocalyptic and confessional.’—The Washington Post

  ‘One part Rabelais, one part García Márquez, one part Ned Kelly.’—The New York Times Book Review

  ‘[Flanagan is] … one of the novel’s most ambitious talents, one whose every book … commands our attention.’—Los Angeles Times Book Review

  ‘Gould’s Book of Fish is a novel about fish the way that Moby Dick is a novel about a whale or Ulysses is a novel about the events of a single day … a wondrous, phantasmagorical meditation on art and history and nature.’—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

  ‘An astonishing masterpiece that challenges, provokes, and entertains at every turn.’—Star Tribune

  ‘This remarkable novel is a meditation on colonialism – indeed, on history itself – couched in the story of an English guttersnipe … Flanagan also supplies one of the most profound sex scenes in recent literature … A serene, chilling vision of human life as comparable to the life of fish, “swimming in vast coldness, alone”.’—The New Yorker

  ‘A work of pure brilliance.’—The Seattle Times

  ‘It ushers in a range of ideas that much contemporary writing grasps at but ends up simply nodding to … hugely original … There is so much to savour in this rolling, picaresque tale of grotesques and their progress: so much unfettered imagination, so much sly irony and comic anarchy. Passages burn with the intense pleasure of story-making, of the abandon that comes from a seething of ideas and their joyful mutation into words.’—The Guardian

  ‘Is it a masterpiece? Halfway through my second read, I know so.’—Good Reading

  ‘I became convinced that this was a truly great book that would be read by serious people long after most of the literary fiction of our time is forgotten.’—Richard Holloway, The Herald (Glasgow)

  The Unknown Terrorist

  What would you do if you turned on the television and saw you were the most wanted terrorist in the country?

  Gina Davies is about to find out.

  After spending a night with an attractive stranger, she has become a prime suspect in the investigation of an attempted terrorist attack. When police find three unexploded bombs at a stadium and her mysterious lover suddenly goes missing, Gina goes on the run and witnesses every truth of her life twisted into a betrayal.

  The Unknown Terrorist is a relentless tour de force that paints a devastating picture of a contemporary society gone haywire, where the ceaseless drumbeat of terror-alert levels, newsbreaks and fear of the unknown pushes one woman ever closer to breaking point.

  Praise for The Unknown Terrorist

  ‘Stunning … an armature for a brilliant meditation on the post-9/11 world … it does a dazzling job of limning its subject, conjuring up the postmodern, post-sci-fi world of globalised terror and trade … [Flanagan’s] written a book that deserves to win him the sort of readership enjoyed by two much better-known novelists with whom he has much in common: Don DeLillo and Martin Amis.’—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

  ‘Anyone can do grandeur, but it takes a special literary skill to make squalor grand … [Flanagan] aspires to transmute the dangerous lunacy of today into art … Brilliantly Flanaganian at moments … Here is the vitally vicious Flanagan who can stop a reader’s breath.’—Melvin Jules Bukiet, Los Angeles Times

  ‘Australia’s sun-kissed streets become as sweaty and oppressive as the Algerian beach in Camus’ The Stranger.’—Entertainment Weekly

  ‘A beginning so brilliant it suggests [Flanagan] could be the next John le Carré if he makes his shift to pulp fiction permanent … The writing has the pizzazz you’d expect from the award-laden author of Gould’s Book of Fish, and the political and social satire is incisive.’—The Sunday Times

  ‘Like Showgirls written by Don DeLillo instead of Joe Eszterhas.’—Matt Thorne, Literary Review

  ‘Flanagan’s tightly crafted narrative is akin to the oppressive power of Kafka’s Trial, or Capote’s In Cold Blood, stark realism revealing underlying sickness.’—David Masiel, The Washington Post

  ‘A tightly riveted, almost classic thriller … This is a damn good story delivered with the glittering prose that only the rage of just moral anger can achieve.’—The Times

  ‘Nothing short of brilliance. Read this novel now, before it’s too late for any of us to understand its message.’—Scotland on Sunday

  ‘The fast-paced narrative builds to a fittingly bloody crescendo, and Flanagan drops astutely cynical observations along the way … A true page-turner as well as a timely, pithy critique of celebrity culture and the politics of fear-mongering.’—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  ‘Flanagan’s writing is a brilliant reflection of Gina’s world. Full of steamy sex, drugs and violence, with a touch of high-status voyeurism, packaged into short chapters perfect for readers with limited attention spans, The Unknown Terrorist mocks the thriller genre even as it fulfils its expectations.’—Uzodinma Iweala, The New York Times Review of Books

  ‘A funny, filmic and gripping writer, [Flanagan’s] a novelist and philosopher of our time.’—Daily Mail

  ‘A terrific novel, maintained at fever heat but never straying beyond the bounds of possible or even the likely.’—James Buchan, The Guardian

  ‘Captivating … A masterpiece in craft and structure. Convincing as both thriller and tragedy … Like all great stories it transports the reader to a particular place in time and space.’—Philip Kopper, The Washington Times

  ‘Once in a while a thriller of genuine importance comes along, fired by passionate concern.’—Toby Clements, The Daily Telegraph (UK)

  Wanting

  1841. In the remote penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land, a barefoot Aboriginal girl sits for her portrait in a red silk dress. She is Mathinna, the adopted daughter of the island’s governor, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, and the subject of a grand experiment in civilisation – one that will determine whether science and reason can be imposed in place of savagery and desire.

  Years pass. Sir John Franklin has disappeared, along with his crew and two ships, on an expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage. England is horrified as reports of cannibalism filter back from search parties, no one more so than the most celebrated novelist of the day, Charles Dicke
ns, for whom Franklin’s story becomes a means to plumb the frozen depths of his own soul.

  As several lives become entwined by unexpected events and tragedies, Wanting transforms into a novel about the ways in which desire – and its denial – shape us all.

  Praise for Wanting

  ‘One of the best novels of the year.’—The Times

  ‘In Wanting, Richard Flanagan has written an exquisite, profoundly moving, intricately structured meditation about the desire for human connection in its many forms – that commingling of compassion, curiosity, care, lust, attraction, intrigue, selfishness and selflessness that is clumsily grouped under that most perilous of all abstract nouns: love.’—Los Angeles Times

  ‘What a voice! … This is the best novel I have read this year or expect to read for several more … Dickens would have applauded Flanagan’s style … There can be no author more passionate or unfettered than Flanagan.’—The Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘Richard Flanagan’s Wanting reminds us that he is one of the most exciting novelists working anywhere, full stop.’—Kevin Rabalais, The Age

  ‘Flanagan sets his novel in the wilds of nineteenth-century Tasmania and evokes its inhabitants with exquisite precision … Flanagan forges … an entirely unified meditation on desire, “the cost of its denial, the centrality and force of its power in human affairs.”’—The New Yorker

  ‘Flanagan is a novelist of such gifts that a recitation of his plot is only a hint of the layered pleasures of his prose, in which action and voices and dreams and hints all swirl in a blunt yet lyrical style utterly his own.’—The Oregonian

  ‘[Flanagan’s] prose is strong and precise, and the depiction of desire’s effects is sublime.’—Publishers Weekly

  ‘Acclaimed Tasmanian author Flanagan explores the pursuit and denial of desire as it affects individual lives, even history, in his fifth novel … Masterful probing of emotion with his vibrant prose.’—Booklist

  ‘Flanagan skilfully combines several partially known historical events to create complex and riveting fiction … Everything dovetails beautifully … as the richly imagined multiple narrative arrives at its several sorrowful conclusions. An ingenious, thoughtful and potent demonstration of this assured author’s imaginative versatility.’—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  ‘Moving seamlessly through time, across two continents and between three storylines, Wanting is a marvel of precision and cohesion … Flanagan knows even the strongest yearning can mean nothing against the tides of fate. His beautifully bleak riffs on this universal theme make Wanting one of the finest novels of the year.’—The Sun-Herald

  ‘In dense, poetic prose, Flanagan characterises something that exists across human experience, above and beyond historical particulars and cultural differences: “The way we are denied love. And the way we suddenly discover it being offered us, in all its pain and infinite heartbreak.”’—The Guardian

  ‘A beautifully constructed fugue on desire and its denial, on the protean forms assumed by passionate natures wrestling with 19th-century dictates of reason and duty.’—The Times Literary Supplement

  ‘Wanting is a novel you never want to end. As a reader, I can offer no greater accolade.’—The Canberra Times

  And What Do You Do, Mr Gable?

  ‘And what do you do, Mr Faulkner?’ asked Clark Gable after being introduced to William Faulkner at a party.

  ‘I write,’ replied Faulkner.

  ‘And what do you do, Mr Gable?’

  Collected here for the first time are the very best of Richard Flanagan’s wide-ranging, free-wheeling writings on everything from a near-fatal kayak trip to directing film and writing novels; from baking bread to bushfires to art to war; from refugees on the run to Jorge Luis Borges to his celebrated essay on the rape of Tasmania’s forests, credited as a key to halting Gunns’ two-billion-dollar pulp mill.

  Sparkling, moving and always surprising, this is exhilarating reading from one of Australia’s finest writers.

  Praise for And What Do You Do, Mr Gable?

  ‘Richard Flanagan examines the quotidian – and the extraordinary – in a welcome collection of his writings … Few can match his eloquence, unflinching honesty and capacity to surprise, as this potent collection attests.’—Bron Sibree, The Courier-Mail

  ‘What unites all the pieces, from 1995 to 2010, is a care for the precision of words not to dazzle but to carry a strong and infectious feeling for the subject … This collection proves that at least a portion of what passes through our hands each day is worth bottling, cellaring and revisiting as it gets better with the years.’—Malcolm Knox, The Saturday Age

  ‘The well-tempered prose of sweet reason. Highly recommended.’—Ian McFarlane, The Canberra Times

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Death of a River Guide

  Published by Random House Australia 2012

  Copyright © Richard Flanagan 1994

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  A Vintage book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3,100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW, 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices

  First published by McPhee Gribble in 1994

  First published by Vintage Australia in 2012

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Flanagan, Richard, 1961 - Death of a river guide [electronic resource]/Richard Flanagan

  ISBN 9781742756127 (ebook: epub)

  Drowning victims - Fiction.

  Franklin River Region (Tas.) - Fiction.

  Franklin River (Tas.) - Fiction.

  Tasmania - Fiction.

  A823.3

  Cover images: hands © Luca Pierro PHOTOGRAPHY/Getty Images; background © Maarten Wouters/Getty Images

  Cover design by Gayna Murphy

  Author photograph by Colin MacDougall

  There’s so much more at randomhouse.com.au