The Paraguayan Experiment

by Michael Wilding

A 'documentary' novel based on the story of the 400 Australians who emigrated to Paragay in 1893 to found a new society.

Genres: History

212 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1984

About the author

Michael Wilding is emeritus professor at the University of Sydney. He was a founding editor of the UQP’s Asian & Pacific Writing series, of the short story magazine, Tabloid Story, and co-founder of publishers Wild & Woolley, and Paperbark Press. He has also been a milkman, postman, newspaper columnist, apple-picker, Cosmopolitan ‘Bachelor of the Month’, and Chair of the New South Wales Writers’ Centre. He has published twenty-four works of fiction and books of criticism on Milton, Marcus Clarke and Henry Lawson. He has been translated and published in over twenty countries.

Reviews

[SteveDave · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel tells the fictionalised story of one of the lesser-known incidents in Australian history. In the late 1800s a group of Australian socialists and communists sailed away to Paraguay to set up a utopian socialist community. It quickly descended into chaos as the leader of the expedition proved himself to be dictatorial in his leadership, with the consequences being the rapid disintegration of the community.

[Pip Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilding called The Paraguayan Experiment a "documentary novel" and it's a shame the name hasn't taken hold considering the amount of books that are currently being published on the borderlands between essay and fiction. Wilding interweaves documentary material with his own fiction, and the boundaries between the two are often hard to make out, but the effect had me constantly question: is this how it really was? and left a trail of documentary fragments for me to pursue in my own time, extending the novel beyond the covers of the book.

The story itself is little known, at least amongst my immediate circles, and Wilding's skeleton-thin prose let the story as told by the archive be interesting on its own terms. It's unfortunate more women hadn't contributed to the archive by writing about their experience of the settlement (especially considering poet Mary Gilmore had lived there), as Wilding was left to imagine their voices for himself. If he is to be believed, all the women in the settlement were joyless, nagging, small-minded, and displayed Lady MacBeth-style tendencies to whisper discontentments in the ears of the powerful.

Even so, I'd love for this book to be re-published. Go on Text, include it in your Classics series.

[Steve Groves · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little less satisfying on the second read. With the passage of time there is now more information available which reduces the value of this documentary novel. Still glad that I discovered the book to give an insight into this bold experiment in co operative living in the jungle.