Awards

• Long-listed for CAL Waverley Library Award for Literature ('The Nib') 2013.
• Long-listed for Miles Franklin Literary Award 2014 (Australia)
• Long-listed for Miles Franklin Literary Award 2014.
• Long-listed for The Nib: Waverley Library Award for Literature 2013 (Australia)
• Short-listed for Prime Minister's Literary Award 2014 (Australia)
• Shortlisted for Prime Minister's Literary Awards (Australia) 2014.

Overview

Elegiac and seductive, Belomor is the frontier where truth and invention meet-where fragmentsfrom distant lives intermingle, and cohere. A man seeks out the father figure who shaped hispicture of the past. A painter seeks redemption after the disasters of his years in northernAustralia. A student of history travels into the depths of religion, the better to escape the demonsin his mind. A filmmaker seeks out freedom and open space, and looks into the murk and sedimentof herself. Four chapters- four journeys through life, separate, yet interwoven as the narrative unfolds. Inthis entrancing new book from one of our most original writers, we meet European dissidentsfrom the age of postwar communism, artists in remote Australia, snake hunters, opal miners anddesert magic healers. Belomor is a meditation on time, and loss- on how the most bitterrecollections bring happiness, and the meaning of a secret rests in the thoughts surrounding it.

Full Product Details

9781922079749

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Masterful and unforgettable.' Pico Iyer 'A caster of spells.' Australian Book Review 'I found myself completely captured by the lucid detachment and uncanny atmosphere of Nicolas Rothwell's Belomor, four narratives that range from exquisitely shaped nuggets of art history to suggestive character studies of eccentrics and esoteric quests, and from European cities in the midst of destruction to the hidden world of the Australian bush...The potency and oddness of the prose constantly slow you down; you feel as if imbibing too much at once might be awfully dangerous.' -- Alex Clark Times Literary Supplement, Best Books 2013 'Melancholy, singular, exhilarating, Belomor reads like a haunted history of the world.' -- Delia Falconer 'Belomor is exhilarating, challenging and draining...The existence of a final page, a final sentence, presupposes some sort of climax, but Belomor would be better suited to looping back and beginning all over again.' Adelaide Advertiser 'Rothwell's writing resists easy description. He roams the borderlands between memoir and fiction and insinuates himself into gaps between time and place...His prose is lush and often beautiful.' Weekend Australian 'At a time when writers and publishers shy away from the obscure and the oblique, Rothwell's ambition and the intricacy of his book must be acknowledged.' Sydney Morning Herald 'Thoughout these pages, Rothwell proves adept at navigating the cross-currents of European cultural history. Nevertheless, the main emphasis of Belomor falls elsewhere, on the physical, cultural and spiritual complexion of a seemingly very different world: the vast, enigmatic spaces of the north of Australia that Rothwell has traversed for many years. This frequently oblique but almost always compelling book seeks to reconcile those apparently opposed worlds, tracing subtle but significant affinities between Europe's historically determined self-consciousness and what might be called the Dreamtime.' Saturday Age, Canberra Times, Sydney Morning Herald 'A peculiar and bewitching work of Australian literature...a hymn of praise to the north and its inhabitants.' Herald Sun 'A quiet, meditative journey through the empty ruins of the world, Nicolas Rothwell's Belomor is by turns ravishing and dismaying, a novel which is also an essay on art and a chantepleure on meaning and impermanence.' Australian Book Review, Best Books 2013

'Masterful and unforgettable.' Pico Iyer 'A caster of spells.' Australian Book Review 'Melancholy, singular, exhilarating, Belomor reads like a haunted history of the world.' -- Delia Falconer 'Belomor is exhilarating, challenging and draining...The existence of a final page, a final sentence, presupposes some sort of climax, but Belomor would be better suited to looping back and beginning all over again.' Adelaide Advertiser 'His writing wafts across the consciousness like smoke, so it's fitting that the title of Rothwell's book is also a Russian cigarette.' Qantas magazine 'Rothwell's writing resists easy description. He roams the borderlands between memoir and fiction and insinuates himself into gaps between time and place...His prose is lush and often beautiful.' Weekend Australian 'At a time when writers and publishers shy away from the obscure and the oblique, Rothwell's ambition and the intricacy of his book must be acknowledged.' Sydney Morning Herald 'Thoughout these pages, Rothwell proves adept at navigating the cross-currents of European cultural history. Nevertheless, the main emphasis of Belomor falls elsewhere, on the physical, cultural and spiritual complexion of a seemingly very different world: the vast, enigmatic spaces of the north of Australia that Rothwell has traversed for many years. This frequently oblique but almost always compelling book seeks to reconcile those apparently opposed worlds, tracing subtle but significant affinities between Europe's historically determined self-consciousness and what might be called the Dreamtime.' Saturday Age, Canberra Times, Sydney Morning Herald 'A peculiar and bewitching work of Australian literature...a hymn of praise to the north and its inhabitants.' Herald Sun

`Masterful and unforgettable.' * Pico Iyer * `A caster of spells.' * Australian Book Review * 'I found myself completely captured by the lucid detachment and uncanny atmosphere of Nicolas Rothwell's Belomor, four narratives that range from exquisitely shaped nuggets of art history to suggestive character studies of eccentrics and esoteric quests, and from European cities in the midst of destruction to the hidden world of the Australian bush...The potency and oddness of the prose constantly slow you down; you feel as if imbibing too much at once might be awfully dangerous.' -- Alex Clark * Times Literary Supplement, Best Books 2013 * 'Melancholy, singular, exhilarating, Belomor reads like a haunted history of the world.' -- Delia Falconer 'Belomor is exhilarating, challenging and draining...The existence of a final page, a final sentence, presupposes some sort of climax, but Belomor would be better suited to looping back and beginning all over again.' * Adelaide Advertiser * 'Rothwell's writing resists easy description. He roams the borderlands between memoir and fiction and insinuates himself into gaps between time and place...His prose is lush and often beautiful.' * Weekend Australian * 'At a time when writers and publishers shy away from the obscure and the oblique, Rothwell's ambition and the intricacy of his book must be acknowledged.' * Sydney Morning Herald * 'Thoughout these pages, Rothwell proves adept at navigating the cross-currents of European cultural history. Nevertheless, the main emphasis of Belomor falls elsewhere, on the physical, cultural and spiritual complexion of a seemingly very different world: the vast, enigmatic spaces of the north of Australia that Rothwell has traversed for many years. This frequently oblique but almost always compelling book seeks to reconcile those apparently opposed worlds, tracing subtle but significant affinities between Europe's historically determined self-consciousness and what might be called the Dreamtime.' * Saturday Age, Canberra Times, Sydney Morning Herald * 'A peculiar and bewitching work of Australian literature...a hymn of praise to the north and its inhabitants.' * Herald Sun * 'A quiet, meditative journey through the empty ruins of the world, Nicolas Rothwell's Belomor is by turns ravishing and dismaying, a novel which is also an essay on art and a chantepleure on meaning and impermanence.' * Australian Book Review, Best Books 2013 * 'If you're sad that W.G. Sebald only managed to complete four novels in his lifetime, and you've read them all and you wish there were more, read Belomor...This is an excellent, excellent book.' * Conversational Reading *

'Masterful and unforgettable.' Pico Iyer 'A caster of spells.' Australian Book Review 'Rothwell's calm wondering...left me with a feeling of enchantment.' Robert Dessaix

Author Information

Nicolas Rothwell is the award-winning author of Heaven and Earth, Wings of the Kite-Hawk, Another Country, The Red Highway and Journeys to the Interior. He lives in Darwin, and is the Australian’s roving northern correspondent.

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