Abstract: In his first novel Death of a River Guide, Richard Flanagan tells a tale of the century-old family saga of Tasmania with a focus on the root-searching journey of a local river guide. Employing the narrative technique of “river writing”, Flanagan aims to reveal the painstaking pursuit of Tasmania’s minority group for its unique cultural identity evident in the dynamic and conflicting relationship between individual memory and collective memory. Through the dialectical tension between family memory, river narrative and hybrid identity demonstrated in the novel, Flanagan attempts to reconstruct the national identity through the re-writing of history, i.e. calling up the untold cultural memory of an oppressed past and giving voice to the forgotten.

Key words: Richard Flanagan, Death of a River Guide, family memory, river narrative, hybrid identity