Fierceland follows two siblings - Roz and Harun - as they journey to Borneo for their father Yusef's funeral. Yusef was a wealthy businessman, who made his money from the palm-oil trade. The siblings seek to make amendments for the deforestation and exploitation of their forebears.
Roz is a struggling Sydney-based artist, while Harun is a tech entrepreneur living in Los Angeles. Together they have to come to terms with colonialism, family secrets and the legacy of power and corruption.
“Omar Musa's Fierceland is a tour de force set against the backdrop of the destruction of Borneo's rainforests. Cleared to make way for palm oil plantations, this pulsing forest world is the moral centre of Fierceland and Musa’s rhythmic prose hums its defiance. In the human drama, siblings Harun and Rozana gradually realise that even in Sydney and Los Angeles, they cannot outrun the fraught legacy of their father, a palm-oil baron in Sabah. As it charts a journey of personal and planetary redemption, Fierceland refashions the venerable, vernacular hikayat traditions of Malay storytelling into new Australian idioms.”
Omar Musa is a Malaysian-Australian rapper and poet from Queanbeyan. Prior to this novel, he was best known for Here Come the Dogs (2014) which was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2015.Musa has already been recognised for Fierceland as it also won the 2026 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction.
I have not read this novel, but I am intrigued as I do not believe I have ever encountered a novel set in Borneo