This is an auction for THE TALL MAN: DEATH AND LIFE ON PALM ISLAND by Chloe Hooper.

"In 2004, in a remote Aboriginal community in northern Australia, Cameron Doomadgee, a drunk young indigenous man, was arrested and, a few hours later, died in his prison cell. A witness claimed that the six-foot-seven-inch arresting officer beat Doomadgee to death. The officer claimed that Doomadgee fell accidentally and that the extent of his injuries (which included broken ribs and a ruptured liver) wasn’t apparent. Through the story of the manslaughter trial, Hooper lays bare Australia’s institutional racism and the grim conditions of Aboriginal life there. A novelist, she finds a muscular music even when confronting sordid truths. Describing a desolate indigenous settlement, she recalls Aboriginal myth: “beer cans lay by the river’s edge, their red-and-green aluminum shimmering in the sun; a nightmare incarnation of the Rainbow Serpent.”

• New Yorker

"Tall Man is true-crime journalism at its finest. While Hooper, who admittedly knew little about Aboriginal life before researching the topic, focuses much of the book on the manslaughter trial, she tells a much wider story about centuries of Aboriginal life, government policies, and historic injustices. Thoughtful and compassionate, the book is also fast paced as Hooper becomes immersed in the community on Palm Island, especially in the Doomadgee clan. While she didn’t have access to Hurley, she talked to his colleagues in order to try to understand all perspectives of the story."

• Bookmarks magazine (US)

Very favourable reviews on Amazon.com.

Paperback 2009.

278 pages.

Good condition.

The cost of shipping is $4.95.

There is of course no charge for shipping if you collect this book from my shop in Palmerston ?North following the auction.

Payment within seven days, please.