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THE TALL MAN
CHLOE HOOPER
Hamish Hamilton . . . rrp $32.95
Publication/embargo date: 30 June 2008 |
'Life springs from every page of this enthralling book. Australians will weep over it. It is first class reportage, meticulously researched, studded with superbly observed human detail – and all the more moving for its intense restraint.'
Helen Garner
The Tall Man is the story of the death of Cameron Doomadgee, who one morning swore at a policeman and forty-five minutes later lay dead in a watch-house cell.
It is the story of that policeman, the tall, enigmatic Christopher Hurley who chose to work in some of the toughest and wildest places in Australia, and of the struggle that brought him to trial.
And it is the story of a place. To understand what happened, one needs to understand where it happened - Palm Island, in the far north. People there have a relationship with the land like no others, have a history and culture and catastrophic present like no others. It is Australia, but an Australia very few of us have seen.
Chloe Hooper's reports from the inquest won her a Walkley Award and were published around the world. The Tall Man tells the full story of the subsequent trial and its repercussions through northern Australia. In the tradition of In Cold Blood, she follows Hurley's trail to some of the hard towns of the Gulf, uncovering the true story behind the trial. The Tall Man offers a brilliant insight into the clash of two worlds—and a haunting moral puzzle that no reader will forget.
Chloe Hooper's first novel A Child's Book of True Crime was published in many languages. It was a New York Times Notable Book and short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction (UK). She lives in Melbourne and is writing a novel to be published in 2009.
For further information or an interview with Chloe Hooper please contact:
Kim Noble, Publicist, Penguin Group (Australia)
Tel: 03 9811 2384 or email: kim.noble@au.penguingroup.com