Wake In Fright: Text Classics, book by Kenneth Cook

Introduction by Peter Temple

The controller stood back.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Spin ‘em!’
The man flipped the piece of wood and the coins spun up into the air above his head and dropped down on to the carpet.
There was silence.

Wake in Fright tells the tale of John Grant’s journey into an alcoholic, sexual and spiritual nightmare. It is the original and the greatest outback horror story. Bundanyabba and its citizens will forever haunt its readers.

This edition also includes an Afterword by film critic, David Stratton.

Wake in Fright was made into a film in 1971, arguably the greatest film ever made in Australia. It starred Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty, and Jack Thompson in his first screen role. Lost for many years, the restored film was re-released to acclaim in 2009.

INTERVIEWS

Listen to Raffaele Caputo interview Ted Kotcheff for Senses of Cinema here.
David Wenham talks about Channel 10’s miniseries version

MEDIA

Watch clips from the 1971 film production of Wake In Fright on AustralianScreen.
2ser Final Draft Book Club
Watch the trailer for the 2017 TV version

REVIEWS

Guardian

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Kenneth Cook was born in Sydney. Wake in Fright, which drew on his time as a journalist in Broken Hill, was first published in 1961 when Cook was thirty-two. It was published in England and America, translated into several languages, and a prescribed text in schools. Cook wrote twenty-one books in a variety of genres, and was well known in film...