Carpentaria is a 2006 novel by Alexis Wright about the tortured relations between white settlers and the Aboriginal Black community in the remote mudflats of the Gulf of Carpentaria, in northern Queensland, Australia. The novel centers around Aboriginal resistance to an international mining company that is causing violence and damaging the environment.
Author Alexis Wright, a member of the Aboriginal Australian Waanyi people, published Carpentaria in 2006. In 2007, the novel won Australia's premier literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award. Carpentaria was the first novel written by an Aboriginal author to win this prize outright, since another Aboriginal author had previously shared the award. Carpentaria also won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal.
When Wright sought to publish Carpentaria in 2006, every major Australian publisher rejected the novel, which has a highly unique storytelling style. Eventually, the independent small press Giramondo published it. At first, Carpentaria, Wright's second novel, was not stocked by many bookstores, since it was published by a small press and many saw the novel as too difficult stylistically. However, the novel subsequently experienced widespread success and has been reprinted multiple times.
