Barley Patch

Murnane, Gerald

ISBN 10: 1916751148 / ISBN 13: 9781916751149

Published by And Other Stories, 2025

Gently used with minimal wear on the corners and cover. A few pages may contain light highlighting or writing, but the text remains fully legible. Dust jacket may be missing, and supplemental materials like CDs or codes may not be included. May be ex-library with library markings. Ships promptly! Seller Inventory # DBV.1916751148.G

Synopsis:

Published in Australia in 2009, Barley Patch was Murnane's first book in fourteen years, written after a period in which he had thought he would never write fiction again. The book begins with the question, ‘Must I write?’ What follows is both a chronicle of the images that have endured in the author’s mind and an exploration of their nature. The clarity of the images is extraordinary, as is their range, from Mandrake the Magician to the bachelor uncle kicked in the ‘stones’ as a child, from a cousin’s doll’s house to the mysterious woman who lets her hair down, from the soldier beetle who winks messages from God to the racehorses that run forever in the author’s mind.

The narrator lays bare the acts of writing and imagining, finally giving us a glimpse of the mythical place where the characters of fiction dwell before they come into existence in books. With something of the spirit of Italo Calvino and Georges Perec, this is a cornerstone of Murnane's unclassifiable project, for which he is a deserving Nobel Prize candidate.

‘A genius.’ Teju Cole

About the Author: Gerald Murnane is the award-winning author of acclaimed works of fiction as Border Districts, The Plains and Inland, and equally acclaimed non-fiction such as Last Letter to a Reader and the essay collection Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs. Murnane lives in Goroke, a remote village in western Victoria, Australia.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Barley Patch
Publisher: And Other Stories
Publication Date: 2025
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: good