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Barley Patch

by Gerald Murnane

And Other Stories

Paperback or Softback 00272 pages Feb 04, 2025

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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.
Author:
Gerald Murnane
Publisher:
And Other Stories
Publication Date:
Feb 04, 2025
Number of pages:
00272 pages
Binding:
Paperback or Softback
ISBN-10:
1916751148
ISBN-13:
9781916751149