The Swan Book

The Swan Book is the third novel by the Indigenous Australian author Alexis Wright. It met with critical acclaim when it was published, and was short-listed for Australia's premier literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award.

The Swan Book is set in the future, with Aboriginal people still living under the Intervention in the north, in an environment fundamentally altered by climate change. It follows a girl who is pulled from a tree as a child after having been lost and gang-raped, and how she grows up raised by a European immigrant and seemingly guided by swans. After the death of her guardian, she is betrothed to a boy who grows up to become the first Indigenous President of Australia (Prime Minister has been abandoned in this future), and later marries him, despite retaining a childlike mind even as an adult.