First published in 1965, Wild Cat Falling occupies a singular place in Australian literature.

The novel's place in Australian literary history is inseparable from the history surrounding its author. Published originally under the name Colin Johnson before the author later adopted the name Mudrooroo, it was long celebrated as the first published novel by an Aboriginal Australian. That legacy was complicated in the 1990s by widely publicised disputes over Mudrooroo's claimed Aboriginal identity, prompting an ongoing re-evaluation of both the author and the work. Whatever one's position on that controversy, Wild Cat Falling endures as a landmark text whose influence on Australian writing, and on conversations around race, identity and literary authority, continues to be felt.

Told through the voice of an unnamed young man recently released from prison, it follows his uneasy movement through a society that offers neither belonging nor redemption. The novel unfolds through fragments of memory and present action, tracing a life shaped by institutional violence, racial exclusion and the persistent search for somewhere—or someone—to call home. Spare, unsentimental and sharply observant, it remains one of the defining Australian novels of alienation.