With a sold out crowd of more than 200 people, tonight we launched Edenglassie, the extraordinary new novel by the legendary Melissa Lucashenko with the superstar team of Avid Reader Bookshop and publishers University of Queensland Press.
This book is a tour de force that has the potential to change the way we think about Australia. It is fierce and funny, wise and heartbreaking. It’s everything about where we have come from as a nation, and a call to where we could go.
Edenglassie is an epic novel set in a Brisbane when First Nations people still outnumber the colonists, award-winning Goorie author Melissa Lucashenko tells two extraordinary stories set five generations apart.
When Mulanyin meets the beautiful Nita in Edenglassie, their saltwater people still outnumber the British. As colonial unrest peaks, Mulanyin dreams of taking his bride home to Yugambeh Country, but his plans for independence collide with white justice.
Two centuries later, fiery activist Winona meets Dr Johnny. Together they care for obstinate centenarian Granny Eddie, and sparks fly, but not always in the right direction. What nobody knows is how far the legacies of the past will reach into their modern lives.
In this brilliant epic, Melissa Lucashenko torches Queensland’s colonial myths, while reimagining an Australian future.