A REVISED EDITION, NOW WITH AN AFTERWORD FROM THE AUTHOR.

Frank Harland's life is centred on his great artistic gift, his passionate love for his father and four brothers, and his desire to regain the Harlands' lost prosperity. Phil Vernon, growing up alone in the midst of a demanding family, is a boy when he first meets Frank Harland, but he is inexorably drawn into the Harlands' circle.

Through the interlinked lives of the two families, David Malouf explores solitude and society, possession and dispossession, the obsessions and violence of family life and love, illuminating the larger world of events and imagination.

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‘Absolutely stunning ... a triumph of the writer's craft.’ VOGUE

‘Australia’s finest writer’ MIRIAM COSIC, THE AUSTRALIAN

‘Malouf is a lyrical story-writer.’ MALCOLM KNOX, THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

‘Here is a marble faultlessness, with the animal warmth of a living thing.’ GEORDIE WILLIAMSON, THE AUSTRALIAN

‘A panorama of Australian society, scenery, and history.’ THE ATLANTIC

‘A remarkable book in which the realist and the dreamer are finally and excitingly fused.’ THE NYT BOOK REVIEW