With Giramondo’s publication of Barley Patch and A History of Books, Gerald Murnane has attracted renewed interest as a brilliant writer and Nobel Prize contender. First published 25 years ago, Inland is one of Murnane’s most complex and rewarding works, a study of guilt, longing and regret rich in metaphysical insights. From his native district in the Melbourne suburb of Pascoe Vale, Murnane’s narrator imagines another world, in Szolnok county Hungary, and within that world another, in Ideal South Dakota, each haunted by the betrayal of a young girl, each driven by the possibility of restitution. Murnane’s mastery over language and his pressing towards the edges of what fiction can accomplish make this book a landmark in Australian literature.Gerald Murnane was born in Melbourne in 1939. He has published eight previous works of fiction, Tamarisk Row (reprinted by Giramondo in 2008), A Lifetime on Clouds, The Plains, Landscape with Landscape, Inland, Velvet Waters, Emerald Blue and Barley Patch; and a collection of essays, Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs. Murnane is a recipient of the Patrick White Literary Award, the Melbourne Prize for Literature and an Emeritus Fellowship from the Literature Board of the Australia Council.