I should point out straight away that the title of this post is sarcastic.
In 1990 American businesswoman Marlo Morgan self published a fictional (but penned as a factual memoir) title “Mutant Message Down Under” describing her experiences in Australia, being kidnapped by a tribe of wandering Aboriginals and travelling through the desert with them, a great spiritual journey which changed her life. The book was subsequently picked up by Harper Collins in 2005 and became a bit of a success in America and Europe, and was translated for European audiences. I had never heard of the book until a visiting couchsurfer showed me the book she was reading – a copy of the novel, in French.
It sounds pretty good until you realise that the entire story was fabricated, and completely misrepresents Aboriginal culture and customs – more resembling American Indian tribes according to this denouncing review (highly recommended reading!). The Harper Collins publication was sensibly marketed as a novel, not a memoir. As well as misinforming foreign readers on the life of customs of Australians indigenous peoples, the book is commonly described as having racist undertones all the way through. Little wonder the book has received no notoriety or success in Australia. At the end of the review, my reviewer leaves a note:
In 1996 a group of Aboriginal elders, incensed by this book and the damage it is doing, obtained a government grant to travel to the United States to confront Marlo Morgan and to stop a Hollywood film being made of it. They obtained a very reluctant apology from her which I heard on radio in Australia. As they represented the people of the area in which she claimed to have begun her walk across Australia she had no choice but to admit she had made the whole story up. Unfortunately this admission has gained almost no publicity in the States. For those who still listen to Morgan’s message please remember it is the simply the musings of a white woman who has been fully prepared to lie and delude her admiring public.
As to the motive for writing the book, a reviewer on goodreads.com types:
After reading the book I researched Marlo Morgan and found out that she merely worked for four months in a pharmacy in Queensland, came back to the United States and started selling Melaleuca, a tea tree oil based product. She began supplementing and boosting her sales by handing out manuscripts of her “experiences” with Aboriginals and the healing powers of tea tree oil. I think she merely found a way to make big bucks on a hugely fabricated story
thetimehascometo 