El Dorado

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIME MINISTER’S LITERARY AWARDS**

Now available in b-format paperback from Picador Australia

‘At a time when fiction in verse is in vogue in Australia…EL DORADO is a stellar example — popular poetry that is morally weighty, elegantly crafted.’
Bulletin

‘There are dozens of fine, powerful and subtle poems in this sequence, but, as with Porter’s other verse novels, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts…this mature and accomplished work…puts her at the top of the distinguished class of contemporary Australian poets when it comes to livres composés.’
Australian Book Review

‘…one reason why Porter’s works are so compelling: her close human dramas play out in this stark imaginative space. She writes in short lines with street-smart lingo; but she works with elaborate images and rococo emotion.’
The Age

There is a serial child killer stalking the streets of Melbourne. He kills his victims gently and places a gold mark on their head. The mark of El Dorado. He doesn’t kill because he hates children, but because he loves them. He believes in Childhood Innocence, and he will kill to entomb them there. This is a book about a friendship under siege, and about how jealousy and betrayal cast very long shadows – which can stalk you to the grave.

El Dorado is Dorothy Porter’s finest verse novel to date. Unflinching and morally uncompromising, it is both a complex thriller and a completely unique, and compelling, reading experience from Australia’s most maverick and versatile poet.

El Dorado was shortlisted for the Dinny O’Hearn Poetry Prize (Age Book of the Year Award), the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature; the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, and Best Fiction in the Ned Kelly Awards.

• Year of Publication: 2007
• Genre: Literature
• Audience: Adult