Fierceland
Omar Musa
Penguin, RRP $34.99

reviewed by Wendy Tucker

Omar Musa is an author, visual artist, poet and rapper of Irish and Malaysian descent. This multitude of talents combine in Fierceland, his second novel, to produce this multifaceted epic novel and winner of the 2026 Miles Franklin Literary Award and Victorian Premier’s Literary Award.

Set mainly in North Borneo, Australia and America, with brief visits to Venice and Nigeria, this novel spans over 160 years. There are 10 different narrators who give their perspectives and voices to this novel of family, inheritance, colonialism, environmental destruction and mythology.

It is complex as the best writing often is, but it is not difficult. The reader is in very sure hands here.

The novel focuses on three narrators: Yusuf, the father who builds huge wealth from palm oil and whose empire is built on the clearing of Borneo’s rainforest, the stealing of indigenous lands and political corruption; Roxana, the rebellious daughter, an unsuccessful artist in Sydney with a love of drugs and alcohol; and Harun, the determined younger brother, a very successful tech entrepreneur in LA.

We also meet Nurhanizaah, known as the Crazy Aunt, an academic and poet. She writes a book of poems about the destruction of the Borneo rainforest and has the poem translated into the many disappearing and dying indigenous languages of Sabah. Omar Musa has done the same as his character. He has tried to find the last knowledge holders of the over fifty indigenous languages of Sabah and has successfully had some of his poems translated into fifteen indigenous languages.

Kill a language and a forest dies.

Kill a forest and a language dies.

And there is Salam, a man of great knowledge of the forest, who lived in the village, in the forest where the first clearing begins. He is brutally bashed at the hands of Yusuf and his henchmen while trying to sabotage the equipment. This is witnessed by Roxana and Harun as children and informs their relationship to both their father and Salam.

The forest and the myths, legends and stories the forest contains are ever present characters. Musa treats the Bornean rainforest as a character and a witness to its own destruction. There is also a mysterious glass bead.

Yusuf dies. The estranged siblings return for the funeral with many questions. What can be done with a blood soaked inheritance? What cannot be undone?

Personal, political, angry but never preachy. I am in awe of the scope, breadth and brilliance of this epic novel.