Reconfigurations of History and Embodying Books in Gould’s Book of Fish

Abstract

Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish presents the relationship among colonizers, the colonized, and outsiders through an exploration of written documents. This article explores the violence that certain reconstructions of history cause, the relationship between characters and physical texts, and Flanagan’s own physical construction of his novel. This article looks at the written form’s connection to the question that floats throughout the narrative: what does it mean to represent history?