Henry Goes Bush

The price of genius is one hell of a hangover.

When Henry Lawson – New South Wales' most promising young writer and a budding alcoholic – is banished from Sydney to 'find the real bush', he hopes for fresh material and a new start. Instead, he stumbles into a mind-bending collision of myth, politics and madness on the edge of the Darling River.

Henry Goes Bush reimagines Lawson's fateful 1892 exile to Bourke as a surreal, action-packed journey through the birth of Australian identity. Blending fact with fiction, this novel plays with the very idea of history – exploring creativity, colonialism and masculinity through the eyes of a man haunted by his own legend, flailing for connection and on a quest to find a better version of himself while being pitted against a poet gunslinger who goes by the name of The Rider.

Wayne Marshall's debut novel cements his reputation as one of Australia's most dazzling writers, an unforgettable slice of insightful weirdness. This is Peter Carey meets David Mitchell in the outback – a remake of Wake in Fright by the directors of Everything Everywhere All at Once - a richly layered, darkly comic exploration of how the same stories that make nations can ruin their tellers.