Marshlands

Marshlands by Matthew Olshan


ISBN
9780374535056
Published
Released
02 / 03 / 2015
Binding
Paperback
Pages
176
Dimensions
136 x 201 x 12mm

After years alone in a cell, an aging prisoner is released without explanation, expelled into a great city now utterly unfamiliar to him. Broken by years of brutality at the hands of the prison guards, he scrounges for scraps, sleeping wild, until a museum curator rescues him from an assault. The museum has just opened its most controversial exhibit: a perfect replica of the marshes, an expansive wilderness still wracked by conflict. There the man had spent years as a doctor among the hated and feared marshmen, who have been colonized but never conquered.

Then Marshlands reveals one of its many surprises: It is written in reverse. The novel leaps backward once, twice, returning to the marshes and unraveling time to reveal the doctor's ambiguous relationship to the austerely beautiful land and its people. As the pieces of his past come together, a great crime and its consequences begin to take shape. The true nature of the crime and who committed it will be saved for the breathtaking ending - or, rather, for the beginning.

In the tradition of Wilfred Thesiger's The Marsh Arabs and J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, Marshlands explores a culture virtually snuffed out under Saddam Hussein, and how we cement our identities by pointing at someone to call "other." Elegant, brief, and searing, Matthew Olshan's Marshlands shivers with the life of a fragile, lost world.
Christmas Catalogue 2024 x BookFrenzy
19.54
RRP: $22.99
15% off RRP


This product is unable to be ordered online. Please check in-store availability.
Instore Price: $22.99
Marshlands is Out of Print

You might also like

A Little Life
22.99
17.99
22% Off
Norwegian Wood
22.99
19.54
15% Off
My Policeman
22.99
9.99
57% Off
The Lovely Bones
32.99
14.99
55% Off
The Satanic Verses
22.99
19.54
15% Off
The Poisonwood Bible
24.99
21.24
15% Off
Montana 1948
16.95
14.41
15% Off
March
24.99
21.24
15% Off
The Summer Garden
22.99
19.54
15% Off
Atonement
22.99
19.54
15% Off
The Dressmaker
14.99
12.74
15% Off
The Elephant Vanishes
22.99
19.54
15% Off

RRP refers to the Recommended Retail Price as set out by the original publisher at time of release.
The RRP set by overseas publishers may vary to those set by local publishers due to exchange rates and shipping costs.
Due to our competitive pricing, we may have not sold all products at their original RRP.