This new work by Gerald Murnane is a fictionalised autobiography told in thirty sections, each of which begins with the memory of a book that has left an image on the writer's mind.
The titles aren't given but the reader follows the clues, recalling in the process a parade of authors, the great, the popular, and the now-forgotten.
The images themselves, with their scenes of marital discord, violence and madness, or their illuminated landscapes that point to the consolations of a world beyond fiction, give new intensity to Murnane's habitual concern with the anxieties and aspirations of the writing life, in the absence of religious belief. A HISTORY OF BOOKS is accompanied by three shorter pieces of fiction which play on these themes, featuring the writer at different ages, as a young boy, a teacher, and an old recluse.
Gerald Murnane
The Plains
$12.95 – Paperback / Text Publishing Co
Winner of the Patrick White Literary Award, 1999 Introduction by Wayne Macauley. Twenty years ago, when I first arrived on the plains, I kept my eyes open. I looked for anything in the landscape that seemed... Buy or find out more→
History Of Books
$26.95 – Paperback / Giramondo Publishing Co
This new work by Gerald Murnane is a fictionalised autobiography told in thirty sections, each of which begins with the memory of a book that has left an image on the writer's mind. The titles aren't given but the reader... Buy or find out more→
Barley Patch
$27.95 – Paperback / Giramondo Publishing Co
Discover the Australian novelist ranked by Ladbrokes as a top-five contender for the 2010 Nobel Prize. Buy or find out more→
Tamarisk Row
$27.95 – Paperback / Giramondo Publishing Co
An unsparing evocation of a Catholic childhood in a Victorian country town in the late 1940s. Clement Killeaton transforms his father's obsession with gambling, his mother's piety, the cruelty of his fellow pupils and the... Buy or find out more→
The Plains
$23.95 – Paperback / Text Publishing Co
On their vast estates, the landowning families of the plains have preserved a rich and distinctive culture. Obsessed with their own habitat and history, they hire artisans, writers and historians to record in minute detail... Buy or find out more→
Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs
$34.95 – Paperback / Giramondo Publishing Co
This collection of essays leads into the eccentric imagination of Gerald Murnane, one of the masters of contemporary Australian writing, and winner of the Patrick White Literary Award. Buy or find out more→
Staff Recommendations
The Purple Book: Symbolism & Sensuality in Contemporary Art and Illustration →
Angus Hyland, Angharad Lewis
$70.00
