
Collected Short Fiction
Gerald Murnane(Author)
And Other Stories (Publisher)
Published on 27. February 2020
Book
Paperback/Softback
464 pages
978-1-911508-64-9 (ISBN)
Description
Originally published between 1985 and 2012, these stories offer an enthralling introduction to the work of one of contemporary fiction's greatest magicians, and a map of Gerald Murnane's evolution as a writer. Spare, transparent and profane, This career-spanning volume ranges from 'Finger Web', a fractal tale of the scars of war and the roots of misogyny, to 'Land Deal', which imagines Australia's colonisation and the ultimate vengeance of its indigenous people as a series of nested dreams, to 'The Interior of Gaaldine', a story which finds its anxious protagonist stranded beyond the limits of fiction itself, and which points the way toward Murnane's later works, from Barley Patch to Border Districts.
With potent style and determined vision, Murnane creates sensitive portraits of intimate relationships - with parents, uncles and aunts, and particularly children - and probes each situation for anxiety and embarrassment, shame or delight. Murnane treats emotions and thoughts as he does minor objects: he shines light through them and makes them new, remaking the vessel of literature as he goes.
'Murnane, a genius, is a worthy heir to Beckett' Teju Cole
'A voice so clear, so unaffected, that it's a voice for everyone' Benjamin H. Ogden, The New York Times
'The sentences are laid on like varnish, coat after coat, until the text gleams with a high shine. Immaculate in its unadorned plainness...his prose achieves a crystalline beauty.' The New Republic
With potent style and determined vision, Murnane creates sensitive portraits of intimate relationships - with parents, uncles and aunts, and particularly children - and probes each situation for anxiety and embarrassment, shame or delight. Murnane treats emotions and thoughts as he does minor objects: he shines light through them and makes them new, remaking the vessel of literature as he goes.
'Murnane, a genius, is a worthy heir to Beckett' Teju Cole
'A voice so clear, so unaffected, that it's a voice for everyone' Benjamin H. Ogden, The New York Times
'The sentences are laid on like varnish, coat after coat, until the text gleams with a high shine. Immaculate in its unadorned plainness...his prose achieves a crystalline beauty.' The New Republic
Reviews / Votes
'As Murnane remarks, "My writing was not an attempt to produce something called literature but an attempt to discover meaning", and his insistence on the artifice of written enterprise bears witness to a thoroughness and integrity that far outweigh the minor virtue - or minor vice - of readability.' -- Adrian Nathan West * Times Literary Supplement * 'A voice so clear, so unaffected, that it's a voice for everyone.' -- Benjamin H. Ogden * The New York Times * 'The sentences are laid on like varnish, coat after coat, until the text gleams with a high shine. Immaculate in its unadorned plainness, at certain moments his prose achieves a crystalline beauty.' * The New Republic *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
High Wycombe
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Weight
369 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-911508-64-9 (9781911508649)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
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.