In this darkly ironic novel, a dead man walks back through four generations of family estrangements to recover his lost identity. The journey will be long and difficult, one thousand miles. Try not to be too obvious. Stick to the backroads. You'll know you've arrived when you get there. Stephen Bolin leaves a bizarre note by his deathbed, asking his sisters to take his body back to his birthplace in Far North Queensland. When they ignore his request, Stephen's corpse makes the nocturnal pilgrimage alone. But what is compelling him and what will he find there? His journey, as a kind of jiangshi, takes him back through his turbulent family history- from his Chinese great-grandfather's life on the goldfields in 1860s Queensland, to his Scottish grandparents' migration to Australia as ten-pound Poms, and to his own coming of age and coming out in Brisbane and London. Original and satirical, First Name Second Name follows four generations of one family through a reckoning with racial, familial and sexual identity.

Details

ISBN13: 9780702268809
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 272
Edition:
Publication Date: 04 Mar 2025
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Publication City, Country: St Lucia, Australia
Dimensions (cm): 226(H)x153(L)x20(W)322
Weight (gm): 322

Author Biography

Steve MinOn was an internationally awarded advertising copywriter and a restaurateur before becoming a writer of fiction. He grew up in North Queensland and he now lives in Meanjin/Brisbane. Steve has written often about outsiders and his family's mixed-race ancestral history, and his articles and short stories have been published in SBS Voices, Mamamia and various anthologies. He won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer in the 2023 Queensland Literary Awards for First Name Second Name.

Reviews

'First Name Second Name is the quintessential Australian novel - a stunningly complex and intelligent portrait of who we are now and who we are destined to become. MinOn is a critical, insightful and compassionate new voice. Absolutely a name to remember.' Michael Mohammed Ahmad

'First Name Second Name is a glorious, inventive novel about the experiences of a Chinese-Scottish family, from the goldfields in North Queensland to 1980s Brisbane to the present day. You will be both entertained and moved by this wonderful novel.' Mirandi Riwoe

'First Name, Second Name is exhilaratingly brilliant. Steve MinOn's voice is wry, wise and utterly original. Here, MinOn delivers a spellbinding odyssey through the past of a migrant family from Far North Queensland.' Lech Blaine

'Ambitious and inventive ... First Name Second Name takes themes of racial, familial and sexual identity and explores them in an entirely original way.' Judges' comments, Queensland Literary Awards