Awards

• Winner of Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award 2022
• Winner of NSW Premier's Literary Awards - Douglas Stewart Prize 2022
• Winner of Victorian Premier's Literary Awards: Non-Fiction 2022

Overview

Animal Dreams collects David Brooks' thought-provoking essays about how humans think, dream and write about other species. Brooks examines how animals have featured in Australian literature and culture, from The Man from Snowy River to Phar Lap to contemporary debates about horse-racing, live animal exports, veganism, and the culling of native species such as kangaroos and sharks. In his piercing, elegant, widely celebrated style, he considers how private and public conversations about animals reflect older and deeper attitudes to our own and other species, and what questions we might ask to move these conversations forward. For readers interested in animal welfare, conservation, and the relationship between humans and other species, Animal Dreams will be an essential, richly rewarding companion.

Full Product Details

9781743327470

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Brooks' visceral and affective responses to the suffering of animals ... the essays here, in their erudition and compassion, nudge us towards a more complete understanding of our non-human kinsfolk and the rich inner lives therein.' -- Ben Brooker * Australian Book Review * '[A] deeply passionate but measured examination of the way humans think of non-human life (animals) and how they are depicted in art.' -- Steven Carroll * Sydney Morning Herald *

"'Brooks' visceral and affective responses to the suffering of animals ... the essays here, in their erudition and compassion, nudge us towards a more complete understanding of our non-human kinsfolk and the rich inner lives therein.' -- Ben Brooker * Australian Book Review * '[A] deeply passionate but measured examination of the way humans think of non-human life (animals) and how they are depicted in art.' -- Steven Carroll * Sydney Morning Herald * ""His painstaking reconstruction of the scene argues for grief as a dimension of animal experience, while insisting upon the necessity of reinstating the incommensurability of an animal’s experience with human understanding, a nuanced and ethically complex position."" -- Michelle Hamadache * Animal Studies Journal * 'The profound and complex questions that Brooks probes in this collection will interest an extensive assortment of readers. Activists motivated by concern for animal welfare will find much to take in here, while the less politically minded may nonetheless be drawn to Brooks’s far-reaching and intellectually curious approach to his subject.' -- Nicole Emanuel * Antipodes *"

'Brooks' visceral and affective responses to the suffering of animals ... the essays here, in their erudition and compassion, nudge us towards a more complete understanding of our non-human kinsfolk and the rich inner lives therein.' -- Ben Brooker * Australian Book Review * '[A] deeply passionate but measured examination of the way humans think of non-human life (animals) and how they are depicted in art.' -- Steven Carroll * Sydney Morning Herald * His painstaking reconstruction of the scene argues for grief as a dimension of animal experience, while insisting upon the necessity of reinstating the incommensurability of an animal's experience with human understanding, a nuanced and ethically complex position. -- Michelle Hamadache * Animal Studies Journal * 'The profound and complex questions that Brooks probes in this collection will interest an extensive assortment of readers. Activists motivated by concern for animal welfare will find much to take in here, while the less politically minded may nonetheless be drawn to Brooks's far-reaching and intellectually curious approach to his subject.' -- Nicole Emanuel * Antipodes *

Author Information

David Brooks is a poet, novelist, short fiction writer and essayist. He has taught literature at various Australian universities and is honorary associate professor of Australian literature at the University of Sydney.

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