Published in 2001, Earth is an early novel by Bruce Pascoe, long before Dark Emu made him a nationally prominent figure.

Set around the colonisation of Victoria, it tells its story through a shifting chorus of settlers, Aboriginal people and, unusually, the earth itself. The result is less a conventional historical novel than a polyphonic account of invasion, settlement, family, violence and survival: history heard from several positions at once, including the land that bears it.

Pascoe works heavily through dialogue and voice rather than explanatory description, moving between intimate family life and the larger machinery of dispossession. Contemporary descriptions compared its layered, voice-driven structure to Spoon River Anthology. It’s an interesting precursor to the historical arguments Pascoe would later pursue in nonfiction, but here they arrive through character, vernacular and fractured memory rather than thesis.

Magabala Books, Broome, Western Australia, 2001. First edition. Paperback. Cover photograph by Kevin Gilbert, originally published in Breath of Life: Moments in Transit Towards Aboriginal Sovereignty. Light shelf wear and rubbing to covers, with minor edge and corner wear. Internally clean and unmarked; binding firm. Very good condition.