B. Wongar is an Australian author of Serbian origin who writes chiefly on the fate of tribal people in Australia, the wildlife and the environment. The author of 13 books, Wongar received the P.E.N. International Award for The Nuclear Cycle.

Walg
by B. Wongar

Paperback, 213 pages

ISBN-13: 978-0807612415
$9.95 (Can $11.95)

This is the first novel of Wongar's "nuclear trilogy", and it is based on the countless aborginal deaths that resulted from the cancer and radiation poisoning caused by the ten years of secret nuclear tests that the British conducted in Australia in the 1950s and 60s. Wongar uses these tests as the starting point for a powerful and startling series of novels about the destruction of a culture and a land, that, both independantly and together, constitute a lacerating indictment of a "civilization" that uses technology to commit genocide. In Walg, the main character Djumala is an aborigine who has escaped the experimental facility in which she was held prisoner. Carrying her unborn child, she travels on foot through the shattered landscape to her tribal countr --her "walg" (womb)--to learn the tribal secrets of motherhood which might help her promote the life of her decimated tribe.