Alexis Wright has been travelling in India to promote her Miles Franklin Award winning novel Carpentaria, and to deliver a lecture at Jadavpur University department of English, in Calcutta.
The book, she admits, is no easy read. "I wanted to take Australian literature and throw it over the boundary... I always credit my own people for teaching me how to read and write in the first place, and not the universities I have been to." Carpentaria is very much about "giving something back to my own people", in as authentic a way as possible, without giving away that which is sacred to the Aboriginal peoples.
