‘As with Proust, the specificities of the images he pursues and catalogues provide their own pleasure the effect of his writing is less about the images themselves, and more about the way thought works in the human mind.’ Chris Power, The Guardian Murnane’s writing exhibits what literature should: an insight into a way of seeing that is quite unlike our own.’ John Self, Irish Times His work insists on the reality of the inner world – perhaps even its primacy.’ Melissa Harrison, Financial Times ‘An enigmatic author, possibly the best you’ve never heard of. ‘The emotional conviction…is so intense, the sombre lyricism so moving, the intelligence behind the chiselled sentences so undeniable, that we suspend all disbelief.’ J. ‘Murnane, a genius, is a worthy heir to Beckett.’ Teju Cole Ignore them if you dare, literature-besotted unraveller.’ ‘Has any writer ever paraded his aesthetic privacies so shamelessly? It doesn’t matter. ‘The best book about Murnane’s books that anyone is ever likely to write.’ Peter Craven ‘When looking over the endless paddocks of his fictions, one is also looking out at the mysterious landscape of the soul.’ Shannon Burns ‘Strange and wonderful and nearly impossible to describe.’ An essential entry in this exceptional writer’s corpus.’ ‘The chief pleasures here are his departures from convention, eccentricities of tone and diction, and flights of fancy, all trademarks of his later fiction. His work insists on the reality of the inner world-perhaps even its primacy.’ His work insists on the reality of the inner world – perhaps even its primacy.’ Melissa Harrison and idiosyncratic, mysterious ideas about writing fiction.’ Melissa Harrison

‘This quirky, sometimes fussy valedictory text features enjoyably grouchy dealings with past critics. ‘A voice that has spoken in an almost unbroken tenor across some fifteen strange and brilliant books a voice in which one hears a different notion of life’s time than what can be measured by counting the years that elapse from the day of one’s birth to the day of one’s death.’ Lola Seaton Known for his passion for horse-racing and his refusal to travel outside Australia, Murnane lives in the remote village of Goroke in the northwest of Victoria, near the border with South Australia. In 2019 Tamarisk Row and Border Districts, his first novel and his latest work of prose fiction respectively, were published to acclaim in the UK by And Other Stories, and are followed by Collected Short Fiction and Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs in 2020. Gerald Murnane is the award-winning author of fifteen books in his native Australia.

The Plains by Gerald Murnane