The Glass Canoe: Text Classics

The Glass Canoe: Text Classics PDF Author: David Ireland
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921961023
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Meat Man is a regular at the Southern Cross pub in Sydney. With his tribe he sits and drinks and watches as life spirals around him. David Ireland’s novel tells his stories, about the pub, its patrons and their women, about the brutal, tender and unexpected places his glass canoe takes him.

The Glass Canoe: Text Classics

The Glass Canoe: Text Classics PDF Author: David Ireland
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921961023
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Meat Man is a regular at the Southern Cross pub in Sydney. With his tribe he sits and drinks and watches as life spirals around him. David Ireland’s novel tells his stories, about the pub, its patrons and their women, about the brutal, tender and unexpected places his glass canoe takes him.

The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

The Unknown Industrial Prisoner PDF Author: David Ireland
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1922148148
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Winner of the Miles Franklin Award in 1971. On the shores of Botany Bay lies an oil refinery where workers are free to come and go. But they are also part of an unrelenting, alienating economy from which there is no escape. In the first of his three Miles Franklin Award-winning novels, originally published in 1971, David Ireland offers a fiercely brilliant comic portrait of Australia in the grip of a dehumanising labour system. This edition of The Unknown Industrial Prisoner comes with an introduction by Peter Pierce. David Ireland was born in 1927 on a kitchen table in Lakemba in south-western Sydney. He lived in many places and worked at many jobs, including greenskeeper, factory hand, and for an extended period in an oil refinery, before he became a full-time writer. Ireland started out writing poetry and drama but then turned to fiction. His first novel, The Chantic Bird, was published in 1968. In the next decade he published five further novels, three of which won the Miles Franklin Award: The Unknown Industrial Prisoner, The Glass Canoe and A Woman of the Future. David Ireland was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1981. In 1985 he received the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for his novel Archimedes and the Seagull. textclassics.com.au 'A harsh and remarkable work...it will leave you shaken mildly or terribly according to your life experience.' National Times 'When I think of my favourite Australian novels, two 1970s works by David Ireland are near the top of the list: The Unknown Industrial Prisoner and The Glass Canoe.' Stephen Romei

The Plains: Text Classics

The Plains: Text Classics PDF Author: Gerald Murnane
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921921870
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
Winner of the Patrick White Literary Award, 1999. Introduction by Wayne Macauley. There is no book in Australian literature like The Plains. In the two decades since its first publication, this haunting novel has earned its status as a classic. A nameless young man arrives on the plains and begins to document the strange and rich culture of the plains families. As his story unfolds, the novel becomes, in the words of Murray Bail, ‘a mirage of landscape, memory, love and literature itself’. Gerald Murnane was born in Melbourne in 1939. He has been a primary teacher, an editor and a university lecturer. His debut novel, Tamarisk Row (1974), was followed by ten other works of fiction, including The Plains and most recently Border Districts. In 1999 Murnane won the Patrick White Award and in 2009 he won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. He lives in western Victoria. Wayne Macauley is the author of three novels, Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe (2004), Caravan Story (2007) and The Cook (2011), and the short fiction collection Other Stories (2010). He lives in Melbourne. ‘Murnane is quite simply one of the finest writers we have produced.’ Peter Craven ‘A distinguished, distinctive, unforgettable novel.’ Shirley Hazzard ‘Gerald Murnane is unquestionably one of the most original writers working in Australia today and The Plains is a fascinating and rewarding book...The writing is extraordinarily good, spare, austere, strong, often oddly moving.’ Australian ‘A piece of imaginative writing so remarkably sustained that it is a subject for meditation rather than a mere reading...In the depths and surfaces of this extraordinary fable you will see your inner self eerily reflected again and again.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘The Plains has that peculiar singularity that can make literature great.’ Ed Wright, Australian, Best Books of 2015 ‘Murnane touches on foibles and philosophy, plays with the makings of a fable or allegory, and all the while toys with tone, moving easily from earnest to deadpan to lightly ironic, a meld of Buster Keaton, the Kafka of the short stories, and Swift in A Modest Proposal...A provocative, delightful, diverting must-reread.’ STARRED Review, Kirkus Reviews ‘Known for its sharp yet defamiliarizing take on the landscape and an aesthetic of purity historically associated with it, The Plains is uniformly described as a masterpiece of Australian literature. Look closer, though, and it's a haunting nineteenth-century novel of colonial violence captured inside the machine's test-pattern image—a distant, unassuming house on the plains.’ BOMB

The Cardboard Crown: Text Classics

The Cardboard Crown: Text Classics PDF Author: Martin Boyd
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921961716
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Set in Australia and England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, The Cardboard Crown presents an unforgettable portrait of an upper middle-class family who love both countries but are not quite at home in either. Martin Boyd is a deeply humane novelist, a writer of family sagas without peer.

Stiff: Text Classics

Stiff: Text Classics PDF Author: Shane Maloney
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921921854
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The fiddle at the Pacific Pastoral meat-packing works was a nice little earner for all concerned until Herb Gardiner reported finding a body in number 3 chiller. An accident, of course, but just the excuse a devious political operator might grab to stir up trouble with the unions. Enter Murray Whelan, minder and fixer for the Minister of Industry.

They're A Weird Mob: Text Classics

They're A Weird Mob: Text Classics PDF Author: Nino Culotta
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 192192134X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Just off the boat from Italy, Nino Culotta arrives in Sydney. He thought he spoke English but he’s never heard anything like the language these Australians are speaking. They’re a Weird Mob is an hilarious snapshot of the immigrant experience in Menzies-era Australia, by a writer with a brilliant ear for the Australian way with words.

The Long Prospect: Text Classics

The Long Prospect: Text Classics PDF Author: Elizabeth Harrower
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921961767
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Sharply observed, bitter and humorous, The Long Prospect is a story of life in an Australian industrial town. Growing up neglected in a seedy boarding house, Emily Lawrence befriends Max, a middle-aged scientist who encourages her to pursue her intellectual interests. Innocent Emily will face scandal, suburban snobbery and psychological torment.

Demons

Demons PDF Author: Wayne Macauley
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1922148393
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Demons is an extraordinary social satire whose ending will leave you reeling. It is the middle of winter. Seven friends travel to a remote coastal beach house for the weekend. Without phones, internet or television, they sit around the fireplace, telling stories, each exposing the foibles of humankind. But as a storm rolls in and torrential rain cuts the party off from the outside world, it soon becomes clear that some secrets are best kept hidden. Demons is an extraordinary novel by one of Australia's great writers. Wayne Macauley is the author of three highly acclaimed novels: Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, Caravan Story and, most recently, The Cook, which was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier's Book Award, a Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award. He lives in Melbourne. 'Macauley has ingeniously refurbished an old tale to capture the perplexing vacuity of a generation...a fierce and uncomfortable novel about contemporary Australian life that drives us to ask why we are who we are, as it simultaneously makes us wish we were better.' Weekend Australian 'Absorbing.' Saturday Paper 'Brilliant, thought-provoking.' Otago Daily Times 'Absorbing, thought-provoking and altogether quite brilliant.' BookMooch 'The novel [has] the potential to resonate with Australians in the same way as Christos Tsiolkas's The Slap, only it's darker and more complex.' Herald Sun/Courier Mail 'Demons is a compelling, can't-put-it-down book. Not because of any thrilling action, but because of its ordinary, troubled characters, their ordinary everyday struggles and the stories they tell. In a way the novel is like a collection of short stories, although every one of them leads us to understand more about the teller and the listeners as they start to hit uncomfortably close to home. Each story and how it is told offers fascinating insight into human nature in a humorous, yet sharp critique of contemporary society and its many flaws.' Surf Coast Times 'The pace is headlong; the disintegration relentless. Startling, discomforting, and not likely to be underrated.' Auckland Herald

The Watch Tower: Text Classics

The Watch Tower: Text Classics PDF Author: Elizabeth Harrower
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921921986
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
‘Harrower's greatest novel [is] The Watch Tower (1966), the bitter story of two sisters, Laura and Clare, who lose their parents and fall under the sway of Felix Shaw, an abusive and controlling drunk...[It is] her masterpiece.’ James Wood, New Yorker After Laura and Clare are abandoned by their mother, Felix is there to help, even to marry Laura if she will have him. Little by little the two sisters grow complicit with his obsessions, his cruelty, his need to control. Set in the leafy northern suburbs of Sydney during the 1940s, The Watch Tower is a novel of relentless and acute psychological power. Elizabeth Harrower was born in Sydney in 1928 and moved to London in 1951. She travelled extensively and began to write fiction. Her first novel Down in the City was published in 1957, and was followed by The Long Prospect a year later. In 1959 she returned to Sydney where she began working for the ABC and as a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1960 she published The Catherine Wheel, the story of an Australian law student in London, her only novel not set in Sydney. The Watch Tower appeared in 1966. No further novels were published until May 2014 when Harrower's 'lost' novel, In Certain Circles, was released. Her work is austere, intelligent, ruthless in its perceptions about men and women. She was admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead, and is without doubt among the most important writers of the postwar period in Australia. Elizabeth Harrower died in Sydney on 7 July 2020 at the age of ninety-two. 'Haunting and delicate.' Kirkus Reviews 'This is a harrowing novel, relentless in its depiction of marital enslavement, spiritual self-destruction and the exploited condition of women in a masculinist society...It is a brilliant achievement.' Washington Post 'Haunting...Harrower captures brilliantly the struggle to retain a self.' Guardian ‘Each of Harrower’s four novels is concerned with entrapment of one sort or another, through family or youth or love. But The Watch Tower, her last novel, is almost like a distillation in its vision of the forces of good and evil. Something runs clear and strong through this wonderful, painful novel, the dark and the light. The victim and the survivor. Suffering and joy. The knowledge of both. Reality.’ Joan London, Lit Hub 'Elizabeth Harrower's thrilling 1966 novel The Watch Tower comes rampaging back from decades of disgraceful neglect: a wartime Sydney story of two abandoned sisters and the arrival in their lives of Felix, one of literature's most ferociously realised nasty pieces of work.' Helen Garner, Australian 'A superb psychological novel that will creep into your bones.' Michelle de Kretser, The Monthly 'I read The Watch Tower with a mixture of fascination and horror. It was impossible to put down...Her acute psychological assessments are made from gestures, language and glances and she is brilliant on power, isolation and class.' Ramona Koval, Australian ‘To create a monster as continually credible, comic and nauseating as Felix is a feat of a very high order. But to control that creation, as Miss Harrower does, so that Clare remains the centre of interest is an achievement even more rare. The Watch Tower is a triumph of art over virtuosity...a dense, profoundly moral novel of our time.’ H.G. Kippax, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 1966 ‘As gripping and terrifying as any horror story...An astonishing book.’ Guardian

Dark Places: Text Classics

Dark Places: Text Classics PDF Author: Kate Grenville
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921921811
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Dark Places, a companion novel to Lilian’s Story, is the tale of a man with a comically grand exterior who believes he has the right, and the duty, to conquer the mocking flesh of any woman. Even his own daughter.