“The saga of the McIvors is nothing less than a grim and supremely entertaining take on colonialism in Australia and the tortured, stained hearts of all its New World cousins. A-.”—Entertainment Weekly
After his father’s death, young William is cast upon the charity of an unknown great-uncle, John McIvor. The old man was brought up expecting to marry the heiress to Kuran Station—a grand estate in the Australian Outback—only to be disappointed by his rejection and the selling off of the land. He has devoted his life to putting the estate back together and has moved into the once-elegant mansion.
McIvor tries to imbue William with his obsession, but his hold on the land is threatened by laws entitling the Aborigines to reclaim sacred sites. William’s mother desperately wants her son to become John McIvor’s heir, but no one realizes that William is ill and his condition is worsening.
The White Earth won Australia’s Miles Franklin Award for 2005 and was selected as Book of the Year (2004) by The Age and the The Courier-Mail.
Praise for The White Earth
Winner of the 2005 Miles Franklin Literary Award
Winner of the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize
Winner of 2004 The Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction
Winner of the 2004 Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award
Shortlisted for the 2004 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards
Shortlisted for the 2006 Dymocks Bookseller Award for Fiction
Longlisted for the 2006 International Dublin Literary Awards
“The saga of the McIvors is nothing less than a grim and supremely entertaining take on colonialism in Australia and the tortured, stained hearts of all its New World cousins. A-.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“McGahan scrutinizes his characters without puppetry, and his prose moves with grace, smoothness and a gift for setting.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Absorbing, disturbing, almost gothic, by turns, as McGahan depicts the inextricability of family and the primal hunger for finding and naming home.”
—Valerie Miner, The Boston Globe
"The White Earth is an enjoyable epic of the struggle for land Down Under."
—The Millions
"Impressive . . . A well-wrought, meditative reflection on Australia's colonialist demons."
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"A great Australian story embracing national themes that should engage us all."
—Lucy Clark, The Sunday Telegraph
"The contemporary setting notwithstanding, these characters have a timeless quality and could have stepped from the pages of a Dickens novel."
—The Age
"The glue that holds it all together is McGahan's tremendous narrative skill. The White Earth is a long book, but there is nothing sprawling about it. It is a lean, intelligent and incisive novel."
—The Sydney Morning Herald
