One of the most important Australian novels of the last few decades is Boy Swallows Universe, the semi-autobiographical debut by Queenslander Trent Dalton. Set in the boondocks of Brisbane in the early 1980s, it chronicles the post-war Australian dream bypassing an entire generation of ‘white trash’, leaving them in the clutches of welfarism, unemployment, drug and alcohol addiction and junk-food poverty.
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