A strange, sharp novel that sits inside colonial Australia but refuses to stabilise into historical fiction.

Told through the figure of Wooreddy, it follows the encounter between Indigenous life and the grinding imposition of European systems, distorting reality as it does.

What makes it work is its tone: detached, observant, almost clinical at times. The “end of the world” here is administrative, incremental, and often banal. Survival becomes less about resistance in the heroic sense and more about adaptation, interpretation, and enduring structures that were never built to include you.

There’s a quiet brutality to it. Not loud, not sentimental—just persistent.