A History of Books

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.

About the Author

Gerald Murnane was born in Melbourne in 1939. He has published eight previous works of fiction, Tamarisk Row (reprinted by Giramondo in 2008), A Lifetime on Clouds, The Plains, Landscape with Landscape, Inland, Velvet Waters, Emerald Blue and Barley Patch; and a collection of essays, Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs. Murnane is a recipient of the Patrick White Literary Award, the Melbourne Prize for Literature and an Emeritus Fellowship from the Literature Board of the Australia Council.