Author(s): Noel Rowe

Essays

In this extraordinary collection of essays Rowe demonstrates his deep understanding of Australian Literature and its complex and ongoing dialogue with questions of theology and ethics. Rowe reads, and shows us how to read, the poetry of some of Australia's greatest poets - Vincent Buckley, James McAuley, Judith Wright, Rosemary Dobson, Vivian Smith, Francis Webb and Les Murray. He explores the narrative strategies and concerns of writers as diverse as Helen Garner, Patrick White and Hal Porter. This collection spans a fifty-year period of Australian writing. The final essay, 'Sacrificing Grace: Christos Tsiolkas's Dead Europe' is a 9,000-word tour de force: a richly layered, multi-dimensional reading of Tsiolkas's confronting and challenging novel. Readers of Australian literature will find themselves returning again and again to these provoking, insightful and piercingly intelligent essays.