Karan — B. Wongar

During the 1950s and 1960s, the British devastated the lands and the tribes of the Australian aborigines through the extensive mining of uranium and through secret nuclear tests. B. Wongar uses these shocking historical events as the starting point for this powerful novel about the destruction of a people and a culture.

 

Anawari, an aborigine, is comfortably assimilated into the white man's world. Educated in white schools, he lives with a white woman and has a good job at the Tribal Research and Assimilation Center. But one morning he awakens to find tribal identification marks mysteriously cut into his chest. To understand their meaning, he turns to information stored in the Center's computers. There he learns about the original nuclear blast, and also about the whites' intention to exterminate the last of his people: they are hunting down aborigines to use in gruesome genetic experiments.

 

Anawari's rebellion and escape - a harrowing flight through the desert to ancestral lands - gradually cleanse him of his white man's mentality and restore his 'karan', his tribal soul.

 

'Karan' is the second book of B. Wongar's highly acclaimed 'nuclear trilogy'. 'Walg' and 'Gabo Djara', the first and third books, are also available, and the trilogy has since been extended with the addition of a prequel 'Manhunt', and two further books, 'Raki' and 'Didjeridu Charmer'.