Every year for over a decade Howard Goldenberg, a white middle-aged doctor, has spent numerous periods working as a relieving doctor for Aboriginal communities in remote places. On these visits he has observed and recorded Aboriginal Australians' lives without resorting to simplification or glib solutions.

Raft

Biographies & Memoirs

Goldenberg, Howard

Professionals & Academics

ReadHowYouWant

Carrots And Jaffas: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Every year for over a decade Goldenberg, a white middle-aged doctor, has spent numerous periods working as a relieving doctor for Aboriginal communities in remote places. On these visits he has observed and recorded Aboriginal Australians' lives without resorting to simplification or glib solutions. Among his true stories we meet psychotic Elijah who believes he is Satan's boss and cannot die; a dehydrated baby whose mother gambles away money for food; an old lady who receives a gashed head while fending off a thief stealing her money - her husband. In the midst of tragedies, suffering and moral ambiguity, these stories also tell of cultural richness and common humanity. Goldenberg writes: 'Aboriginal Australians are not at peace. They are variously unwell, underfed, overfed, afflicted excessively by our lifestyle diseases, confused by our drugs and drink, endowed with income but not with work, living in sickening poverty in paradisiacal places; and distracted from their serious cultural business by the trappings of our serious cultural emptiness.'

Hybrid Publishers

Carrots and Jaffas  tells the story of two red-headed identical twins whose oneness is ruptured when one of them is kidnapped. Their startling intimacy is both a strength and a fault line in their being, and once separated, their individuality emerges. In the course of this exhilarating domestic tale set in Melbourne and the Flinders Ranges, the reader encounters the twins' parents - emotional, scripture-quoting Luisa and calm Bernard - as well as two remarkable storytellers, Doc, an eccentric outback doctor and Greta, an Aboriginal elder. Trauma is followed by recovery through the unexpected agency of story and 'country' (in the Australian Aboriginal meaning of that term).

Carrots and Jaffas

Contemporary

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Goldenberg, Howard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Goldenberg, Howard