About
An impressive, urgent novel by a talented and courageous writer' Mohsin Hamid
How do you mourn a person you loved who did terrible things?
After many years abroad, Harun and Roz return to Malaysian Borneo for the funeral of their palm-oil baron father, Yusuf - and to reckon with their inheritance. Yusuf might be a hero to many, but his children know that not only has he built the family's immense wealth by destroying huge tracts of rainforest, but also that he was involved in the violent disappearance of a man who stood in his way.
Harun is a successful tech entrepreneur in Los Angeles while Roz is an artist struggling to stay afloat in Sydney, and both are determined to return something their father stole from the forests of their homeland. In their quest for redemption they grapple with the legacy of power and corruption and are haunted - by the ghosts of colonialism, the ghosts of family, the ghosts of language, and the ghosts of the forest itself.
A trailblazing journey across the globe, Fierceland is a language-bending story that weaves the past and the present into an emotionally powerful family saga that plays out at a mythical scale.
'The forest may be disappearing, but in Musa's words it still grows: fierce, alive, untameable' Guardian Australia Omar Musa is an author, visual artist, rapper and poet. He has released four poetry books (including Killernova), a book of short stories (The Vape Lord of Queanbeyan), four hip-hop records and two acclaimed plays, Since Ali Died and The Offering. Fierceland won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction and was longlisted for Australia's most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award.
Musa has had several solo exhibitions of his woodcut prints, including The Hurt Business, and has performed at venues such as the Brixton Academy in London, Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City and The National Museum in Brasilia, Brazil. The globe-spanning epic of power, corruption, inheritance and family secrets from the Miles Franklin listed author, Omar Musa This is a brilliant and complex novel about power, language, complicity, environmental destruction, Islamophobia, corruption and censorship. With the nostalgia and accessible readability that is rooted in character of something like Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow plus the lyricism and literary collaging of times, voices and contexts of books like Exit West and When I Sing, Mountains Dance. Omar has a great UK profile and connections. He was also mentored by Max Porter on this and has gained so many amazing quotes on this novel already. He was profiled by Service95 here recently as well and the Australian and South East Asian press for Fierceland has been great. Has scores of amazing endorsement quotes from authors, poets, translators and press: 'An impressive, urgent novel by a talented and courageous writer' Mohsin Hamid 'Omar Musa writes with great energy, a poetic force. Fierceland is a whimsy, time-travelling magical tale, a playful anti-colonial novel for our times. Do not sleep on the fierce talents of Omar Musa' Raymond Antrobus
How do you mourn a person you loved who did terrible things?
After many years abroad, Harun and Roz return to Malaysian Borneo for the funeral of their palm-oil baron father, Yusuf - and to reckon with their inheritance. Yusuf might be a hero to many, but his children know that not only has he built the family's immense wealth by destroying huge tracts of rainforest, but also that he was involved in the violent disappearance of a man who stood in his way.
Harun is a successful tech entrepreneur in Los Angeles while Roz is an artist struggling to stay afloat in Sydney, and both are determined to return something their father stole from the forests of their homeland. In their quest for redemption they grapple with the legacy of power and corruption and are haunted - by the ghosts of colonialism, the ghosts of family, the ghosts of language, and the ghosts of the forest itself.
A trailblazing journey across the globe, Fierceland is a language-bending story that weaves the past and the present into an emotionally powerful family saga that plays out at a mythical scale.
'The forest may be disappearing, but in Musa's words it still grows: fierce, alive, untameable' Guardian Australia Omar Musa is an author, visual artist, rapper and poet. He has released four poetry books (including Killernova), a book of short stories (The Vape Lord of Queanbeyan), four hip-hop records and two acclaimed plays, Since Ali Died and The Offering. Fierceland won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction and was longlisted for Australia's most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award.
Musa has had several solo exhibitions of his woodcut prints, including The Hurt Business, and has performed at venues such as the Brixton Academy in London, Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City and The National Museum in Brasilia, Brazil. The globe-spanning epic of power, corruption, inheritance and family secrets from the Miles Franklin listed author, Omar Musa This is a brilliant and complex novel about power, language, complicity, environmental destruction, Islamophobia, corruption and censorship. With the nostalgia and accessible readability that is rooted in character of something like Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow plus the lyricism and literary collaging of times, voices and contexts of books like Exit West and When I Sing, Mountains Dance. Omar has a great UK profile and connections. He was also mentored by Max Porter on this and has gained so many amazing quotes on this novel already. He was profiled by Service95 here recently as well and the Australian and South East Asian press for Fierceland has been great. Has scores of amazing endorsement quotes from authors, poets, translators and press: 'An impressive, urgent novel by a talented and courageous writer' Mohsin Hamid 'Omar Musa writes with great energy, a poetic force. Fierceland is a whimsy, time-travelling magical tale, a playful anti-colonial novel for our times. Do not sleep on the fierce talents of Omar Musa' Raymond Antrobus