Overview

When Wayne McLennan was growing up in a sleepy Australian mining town in the 1950s, the most exciting event of the year was the arrival of Jimmy Sharman's boxing tent. Sharman's boxers would stand on a raised platform, in front of a large painted tent, challenging the local men and boys to box, but also challenging their preconceptions about Aboriginals, who made up the bulk of Sharman's fighters. This all finished in 1969 when the boxing tents were banned. After many years of adventures overseas - goldmining in Costa Rica, fishing in Nicaragua, rowing from Seattle to Alaska - Wayne McLennan returned to Australia to find, to his delight, that a few boxing tents still existed in remote, northern Australia. Using his own experience of boxing professionally, and training boxers himself, McLennan worked at one of these tents and in the process of finding out what makes a man fight for money, he learned a lot about Australia and a lot about himself.

Full Product Details

9781862078543

Table of Contents

Reviews

* By the author of Rowing to Alaska: And Other True Stories * Praise for Rowing to Alaska: * 'A writer of rare force and scope' Anthony Sattin, Sunday Times Books of the Year * 'A truly exciting writer, brave enough to show how complex men can be' Independent on Sunday * 'Not only has he managed to recall vividly a series of rough-and-ready tales- he has done so, entertainingly, with a minimum of soul- searching and a maximum of no- nonsense storytelling' Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

Wayne McLennan was born in New South Wales in 1954. He now lives with his wife in Amsterdam and runs a business in Estonia. His first book, Rowing to Alaska, was a New York Times Notable Book in 2005.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available