The Story Archive

Gould's Book of Fish

Richard Flanagan · 2001 CE · Novel · Australian · Contemporary

William Buelow Gould, a convict forger on Sarah Island penal settlement in Van Diemen's Land in the 1820s, is made to paint the fish of Macquarie Harbour for the commandant's naturalist. The narrative is told in twelve chapters, each headed by a different fish and written in a different ink. Taking its name and its central figure from a real convict artist, it won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

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Attributes

Genre
HistoricalAllegory
Theme
Art & CreationPower & CorruptionColonialismSuffering & EnduranceMadness
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
CreatorRebel / Outlaw
Plot type
Picaresque
Form
Frame NarrativeNonlinear / Fractured
Symbol / motif
The IslandThe PrisonThe Book / Manuscript
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
Magical RealistMetafictional
Culture / tradition
Australian

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