The Hunter - Softcover

Leigh, Julia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571200192 ISBN 13: 9780571200191

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2001

Synopsis

The hunter arrives in an isolated community in the Tasmanian wilderness with a single purpose in mind: to find the last thylacine, the tiger of fable, fear and legend. The man is in the employ of the mysterious 'Company', but his sinister purpose is never revealed and as his relationship with a grieving mother and her two children becomes more ambiguous, the hunt becomes his own. Leigh's Tasmania is a place where the wilderness can still claim lives; where the connection between people and the land is at best uneasy and cannot be trusted. In prose of exceptional clarity and elegance, Julia Leigh creates an unforgettable picture of a man obsessed by an almost mythical animal in a damp dangerous landscape. The Hunter is the work of a compelling storyteller and a truly remarkable literary stylist.

About this title

Review:

The young Australian writer, Julia Leigh, has been hailed as a talent to watch in the 21st century. The Hunter, her first novel, is a strange and haunting story which opens straight onto the world of its protagonist, M: "The mini-bus takes fifteen minutes to arrive in town: "Welcome to Tiger Town" reads a sign by the highway, "Population: 20,000"". Assuming the identity of Martin David, Naturalist, M makes his preparations for a hunt: he, and the reader, will be spending some time in the Tasmanian wilderness in search of the legendary tiger, the thylacine. In crafted, measured and often beautiful prose, Leigh offers her readers glimpses of who M is, or might be, and what he is looking for. There is a hint that the thylacine's genetic material has been "declared capable of winning a thousand wars", a gift to bio-weaponry, but M remains detached: "M does not know, cannot know and does not want to know, but there is no question the race is on to harvest the beast". M's not wanting to know guides the narrative: he is solitary, unconnected, only occasionally giving in to the desires for human and sexual, contact which emerge through M's vague, yet somehow yearning, association with the woman and two children with whom he stays when not out on the hunt. But the feeling centre of the book is anchored elsewhere in the unique connection between M and the tiger, in Leigh's meticulous exploration of the beauty--and terror--of the relation between killer and killed. --Vicky Lebeau

Book Description:

The Hunter by Julia Leigh is the work of a compelling storyteller and a truly remarkable literary stylist.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0571200192
• ISBN 13: 9780571200191
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192