Bridge of Triangles

by John Muk Muk Burke

This novel of the harsh and lonely experience of a sensitive Black youth struggling to be understood in a white world, won the author an Australian national literary award for emerging Aboriginal writers in 1993.To cross the bridge into the landscape of his Wiradjurri ancestors is a need that both torments and sustains young Chris Leeton, the main character in this story. Of Irish and Aboriginal descent, an exile in his own land, he struggles to understand the cruel barrier between identity and acceptance while experiencing its inevitable consequences: poverty and family breakdown.

140 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 1994

Reviews

[Lee Kofman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite Australian novels and the first one I read by an Indigenous writer (I read this book just a couple of years after arriving here). Powerful language and the depth of emotion is remarkable.

[Fatema Johera Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting insight into the bush lives that were coming apart with contact with the white man's ways. The initial pages did not draw me in right away but there is a sense of estrangement that the landscape and characters convey that has a haunting aftereffect.

[JJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wonderful language, but too many loose ends in the story. We abruptly leave characters and don't return, leaving us wondering what happens. Unsatisfying.