Title: Excellent edition of an obscure literary tradition
Product review: Native literatures from around the world have enjoyed a surge of popularity in the past few decades, and this volume is a good example of why that is so. The Aboriginal song poems have been ably translated, but the editors decided to have the poems in their original languages facing the English versions. This adds much to the feel of a foreign, exotic literature. Explanatory notes are placed with the original versions, causing some difficulty in switching from page to page reading the translation and then the explanation (the meanings of passages are not always clear from the translation). The selections cover four distinct literary traditions within Aboriginal Australia, from varying geographical locales. This allows the reader to appreciate the wide variation in Aboriginal culture.
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