Author Description

Product DescriptionThe narrator spends twenty years preparing notes and doing research for a documentary film about the plains and people of AustraliaReview“The Plains are a vast place inhabited by wealthy landowners whose prime obsession seems to be preserving history by ‘shaping from uneventful days in a flat landscape the substance of myth.’ A film-maker arrives to record aspects of their heritage, discovering symbols, stories and parables that transcend spiritual, political or cultural purposes; even the rugged patriarchy of their world is somehow illusory. Deeply mysterious yet grounded in familiar, everyday detail, this novel is an alchemical miracle, converting vision into pure narrative. A stunning achievement...”—Debra Adelaide,Sydney Morning HeraldAbout the AuthorGerald 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 nine other works of fiction, including The Plains and, most recently, A Million Windows. In 1999 Murnane won the Patrick White Award and in 2009 he won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. He lives in western Victoria.Ben Lerner has been a Fulbright Fellow, a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, a Howard Foundation Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. He is the author of Leaving the Atocha Station (2012 Believer Book Award winner) and 10:04. Lerner is a professor of English at Brooklyn College.