The Wort Papers
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: No markings
A landmark of Australian experimental fiction, The Wort Papers chronicles the chaotic misadventures of Jack Wort, a wildly eccentric and morally unmoored protagonist whose rambling, stream-of-consciousness narrative tears through the social and cultural fabric of mid-twentieth-century Australia. Peter Mathers constructs a darkly comic and satirical world, using Wort's fractured voice to skewer colonial history, class pretension, and national identity with savage wit and irreverence. The novel's anarchic prose style — dense, digressive, and deliberately disorienting — demands an engaged reader willing to surrender to its unpredictable rhythms. Celebrated by critics as one of the most daring works in the Australian literary canon, it stands alongside Mathers' debut Trap as a bold challenge to conventional storytelling, illustrating the full, subversive range of his literary vision.
Author: Peter Mathers
Format: Hardback
Published: 1972, Cassell Australia
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: No markings
A landmark of Australian experimental fiction, The Wort Papers chronicles the chaotic misadventures of Jack Wort, a wildly eccentric and morally unmoored protagonist whose rambling, stream-of-consciousness narrative tears through the social and cultural fabric of mid-twentieth-century Australia. Peter Mathers constructs a darkly comic and satirical world, using Wort's fractured voice to skewer colonial history, class pretension, and national identity with savage wit and irreverence. The novel's anarchic prose style — dense, digressive, and deliberately disorienting — demands an engaged reader willing to surrender to its unpredictable rhythms. Celebrated by critics as one of the most daring works in the Australian literary canon, it stands alongside Mathers' debut Trap as a bold challenge to conventional storytelling, illustrating the full, subversive range of his literary vision.