Poor Fellow My Country

The novel takes place in the years before and during World War II, telling the story of Prindy, a young half-Aboriginal boy, and his white grandfather Jeremy Delacy. The novel is partly a Bildungsroman detailing Prindy's growth from boy to man as he navigates his role with both his white and black families, attempting to find his cultural heritage. He is aided by a female Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, Rifkah, who seeks new connections with Prindy's Aboriginal community. Jeremy, meanwhile, holds strong patriotic and nationalistic views of an Australia separate to the British Empire and providing reparations to Aboriginal Australians, putting him at odds with strongly British-sympathising and quasi-Fascist groups rising in the lead-up to the War.

The three outcasts - Prindy, Jeremy, and Rifkah - find themselves on the edge of society as Australia faces a war and ongoing questions about its place in the world.

Herbert conceived of the novel as early as 1936 and - after the publication of his first novel, Capricornia (1938) - he applied for a grant from the Commonwealth Literary Fund to write his new novel, then titled Yellow Fellow.[4] By 1940 Herbert was struggling to make progress [5] and Herbert continued with his career, publishing two further novels and an autobiography.

In 1964, Herbert returned to the abandoned draft.[6] He drew extensively on his own life experiences and those of interesting people he had met around Australia, especially in the Northern Territory.[7] Herbert's interest was in portraying the stories of disadvantaged and displaced people, with an especial interest in Aboriginal Australians. His first book, Capricornia, had been deliberately released in the same year (1938) as the country's sesquicentenary, when Aboriginal groups in New South Wales held the first Day of Mourning in protest at colonialism and racist policies by the Australian government.[8] By the 1960s, as Herbert wrote Poor Fellow My Country, Aboriginal rights were a key topic in Australia, with a 1967 referendum receiving 90.77% of the vote in favour of recognising Aboriginal Australians in the country's population (they had been excluded in the Constitution of Australia) and raise the expectations of the country as to the welfare of Aboriginal Australians.[9] Herbert intended his novel to be a key statement on contemporary Australian politics.[10]

The novel was completed (except for the epilogue) by Boxing Day 1973.[11]

Herbert refused to commit to a publisher while writing the novel, enjoying being courted by the major Australian publishing houses. Among those considered were Angus & Robertson, represented by his longtime friend and literary advisor Beatrice Deloitte Davis, whom he rejected due to growing animosity over their usage of the copyright for his earlier novels,[12] and the University of Queensland Press, represented by Craig Munro, whom he rejected when Munro gave him honest feedback including suggesting the novel be published in three volumes due to its size.[13] In July 1974, Herbert signed a contract with William Collins, Sons.[14] The publication process ran into some troubles when a Jewish project manager, Alan Rein, attempted to point out some inaccuracies with the scenes of Jewish life in the novel, to which Herbert - not Jewish himself - took exception.[15]

By the time of the novel's publication, the Australia Council for the Arts had been founded, with rapidly increasing amounts of funding available for Australian artists and writers. On the strength of Herbert's name, Poor Fellow My Country was awarded over $20,000 in subsidies to assist with typing and printing, allowing the novel to be sold at $20 - a low amount for a book weighing more than 4 pounds and containing 1,463 pages.[16] On 16 September 1975, the publisher organised a week of festivities in Sydney to celebrate the release of the novel. Herbert and his wife Sadie attended.[17] Herbert was 74 when the novel was published, and it secured his financial security for the remainder of his life.[18]

In 1980, the novel was translated into Japanese by Professor Michio Ochi in 11 volumes, under the title of Kawaisô na watashi no kuni .[19][20]

The book sold 30,000 copies within a year of publication and 70,000 within five years, rendering it a success in Australian literary terms.[21] Australian reviewers were mixed but overall positive.[22] The Adelaide Advertiser review was entitled "A Passionate Cry for a Land and a People",[23] while the Courier-Mail called it a "big blockbuster".[24] Historian Manning Clark, in the Canberra Times, however, titled his review "Artist Turns Angry Prophet".[25] The Sydney Morning Herald ran two conflicting reviews: one entitled "Compelling Power"[26] and the other "Foaming River of Prose".[27] Much criticism centered on the novel's length, with the reviewer for the Nation Review joking about "poor fellow Xavier Herbert's typewriter".[28]

Reaction to the book was more muted from some of Herbert's fellow writers. Randolph Stow thought that Poor Fellow My Country might be "the Australian classic" but expressed reservations at the character of Jeremy Delacy, who "is a bore on a colossal scale", and whom Stow believed to be a mouthpiece for Herbert's views rather than a character.[29] Patrick White, Australia's only Nobel laureate, admitted privately that in spite of the "beautiful landscapes", he found it full of "cartoon dialogue and cartoon characters" and would never read the entire novel.[30]

The novel won the 1976 Miles Franklin Award, beating Frank Hardy's But the Dead Are Many and Thomas Keneally's Gossip from the Forest.[31]

• A book on Herbert's novels at www.xavier-herbert-novels.com. The book has 5 chapters on Poor Fellow My Country which can either be read on site or downloaded.