Fog a Dox
Shortlist year:
2013
Shortlist category:
Young adult literature
Published by:
Magabala Books
About the book
Albert Cutts is a tree feller. A fella who cuts down trees. Fog is a fox cub raised by a dingo. He’s called a dox because people are suspicious of foxes and Albert Cutts owns the dingo and now the dox. Albert is a bushman and lives a remote life surrounded by animals and birds. All goes well until Albert has an accident ...
This is a story of courage, acceptance and respect. The dialogue is finely crafted and Indigenous cultural knowledge and awareness are seamlessly integrated into the story.
About the author
Bruce Pascoe
Author Bruce Pascoe is a Tasmanian, Bunurong and Yuin man who lives on country, deep in the Victorian bush.
A prolific writer, Bruce is the author of over 20 books. In 2016, his book Dark Emu (Magabala Books 2014) – which argues that systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history – won the Book of the Year and Indigenous Writer’s Prize in the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
In 2017, his children’s book, Mrs Whitlam (Magabala Books 2016) was shortlisted for the CBCA’s Younger Readers Book of the Year.
Judges’ comments
Bruce Pascoe's Fog a Dox is a work of profound humanity' that ‘delights with its gentle humour, its knowledge of the bush and of the hidden workings of the heart, and its often surprising originality of expression. It gives an eloquent voice to those rarely heard. It has a place in the canon of Australian literature and is in every respect an appropriate winner'.
Pascoe's is an original voice and his story of people and country is beautiful in its simplicity. It speaks of a love of the land and its animals, of the innate goodness of bush people, of being an outsider and of earned respect. Its language and dialogue are crisp, authentic and inventive. The author's Aboriginality shines through but he wears it lightly, with an inclusivity brilliantly expressed in the bushmen's encounter with a young girl suffering from leukaemia.
