The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island - Couverture souple

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0241015375 ISBN 13 : 9780241015377

Synopsis

Book by Hooper Chloe

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Palm Island may be the most beautiful tropical island in Australia, but its name is synonymous with violence. It is home to one of the country's largest Aboriginal communities, descendants of people torn from their own lands, their clans and their families in the era of the Stolen Generation.

In 2004 Cameron Doomadgee, a 36-year-old resident of the island, was arrested for swearing at a white police officer and locked in the cells.Within forty-five minutes he was dead. The police claimed he'd tripped on a step, but the Government pathologist later said that his injuries were consistent with a car or plane crash.The community rioted and burnt down the police station. The main suspect was Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley, a tall, handsome, charismatic cop with long experience in Aboriginal communities and decorations for his work.

Chloe Hooper's The Tall Man: Life and Death on Palm Island recounts this story with the pace of a thriller. Following Hurley's trail to some of the wildest and most remote parts of Australia, she explores Aboriginal myths and history and uncovers buried secrets of white mischief. Atmospheric, gritty and original, The Tall Man is an absorbing and moving account of the lives of people of Palm Island, of the Doomadgee family as they struggle to understand what happened to their brother, and of the complex, enigmatic figure, Hurley.

Hooper combines reportage with a novelist's command of character to tell a story that takes readers not only inside the courtroom and the notorious Queensland police force, but into Australia's indigenous communities-and to the heart of a struggle for power, revenge and justice.

Revue de presse :

"Chloe Hooper's masterful book of reportage is a kind of moral thriller about power, wretchedness and violence" (Philip Roth)

"Life springs from every page of this enthralling book...It is first-class reportage, meticulously researched, studded with superbly observed human detail - and all the more moving for its intense restraint" (Helen Garner)

"The Tall Man follows in the tradition of classic non-fiction novels like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood as Hooper brings lyrical power to actual events. The result is a real-life Heart of Darkness in the Asutralian badlands" (Luke Benedictus Time Out, Sydney)

"This book is everything it should be: a sad, beautiful, frightening account of one man's pointless death, interwoven with the brutal history of Palm Island and a golden thread of Aboriginal mythology. Every sentence is weighty, considered, even, restrained. Every character is explored for their contradictions, every situation observed for its nuances, every easy judgement suspended... It is The Tall Man's triumph that Hooper finds the common humanity in the accused and the accuser, the police officer and the street drinker, the living and the dead." (Mark Dapin Good Weekend Magazine, Sydney Morning Herald / Age)

"It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this book." (Peter Carey)

À propos de cette édition

• ISBN 10: 0241015375
• ISBN 13: 9780241015377
• Reliure: Broché