The epic novel of race relations set in Australia's top end.

First published to controversy and acclaim in 1938, Xavier Herbert's first novel brings to life a cast of memorable characters in an epic spanning fifty years. It has been described as one of Australia's 'great comic novels' although Herbert's humour is often as bitter and as harsh as the terrain about which he writes. Above all, however, this is a novel of protest, and of compassion for the original inhabitants of Australia's 'last frontier'.

Sprawling, explosive, thronged with characters, plots and sub-plots,Capricornia is one of the best-known and most widely read Australian novels. It is still widely regarded as a 'turning point' and an 'outstanding work of social protest' and its message is as penetrating today as it was in the 1930's when Herbert himself was official 'Protector of Aborigines' at Darwin.

Capricornia won the Sesquicentenary Literary Prize in 1938 and the Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal in 1939.