Capricornia

Publisher's synopsis

Spanning three generations, Capricornia tells the story of Australia’s north. It is a story of chance relationships that can form bonds for life, of dispossession, murder and betrayal.

In 1904 the brothers Oscar and Mark Shillingsworth, clad in serge suits and bowler hats, arrive in Port Zodiac on the coast of Capricornia. They are clerks who have come from the south to join the Capricornian Government Service. Oscar prospers, and takes to his new life as a gentleman. Mark, however, is restless, and takes up with old Ned Krater, a trepang fisherman, who tells him tales of the sea and the islands, introduces him to drink, and boasts of his conquests of Aboriginal women – or ‘Black Velvet’, as they are called.

But it is Mark’s son, Norman, whose struggles to find a place in the world embody the complexities of Capricornia itself.

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Xavier Herbert

Xavier Herbert was born in Port Hedland, WA, in 1901. He was educated there and in Fremantle, qualifying as a pharmacist. After World War I he travelled in Australia, reaching Darwin in 1927. There he worked as a railway fettler and visited the South Pacific, experiences that went towards his first novel, Capricornia. He continued to travel, both overseas and within Australia, until in 1946 he settled near Cairns with his wife Sadie Norden. He combined writing with a variety of casual occupations.

Capricornia was first published in 1938 and won the Sesquicentenary literary competition in the same year. He won the Miles Franklin Award for Poor Fellow My Country which was published in 1975. His other work includes Seven Emus (1959), Soldiers′ Women (1961), Larger Than Life (1963) and Disturbing Element (1963). Xavier Herbert died in 1984.

Further Details

Author Xavier Herbert

Publisher Angus & Robertson

Date of Publication 1938

ISBN 9780732296995 (print)

Category Novels