Murray Bail

De flesta svenskar, också de hyggligt belästa, får lätt något panikslaget i blicken om de ombeds nämna en enda australiensisk författare, skriver Jan Arnald i förordet till Australien berättar som är en antologi med ett brett urval av samtidsförfattare från denna ofta förbisedda kontinent. Den aboriginska urbefolkningen har den längsta obrutna kulturhistorien av jordklotets alla folkslag, men ur ett västerländskt perspektiv är den australiensiska litteraturen i stort sätt nyfödd. I denna antologi finns såväl aboriginska som icke-aboriginska författare representerade. På olika sätt förhåller de sig till det australiska; dess samhälle såväl som dess säregna mytologi. Inte minst bearbetar flera av författarna på olika sätt sin egen historia. Först i februari 2008 bad den australiensiska staten officiellt om ursäkt för sin förtryckarpolitik gentemot aboriginerna. Australien berättar fyller en lucka i den bokliga allmänbildningen i Sverige, genom att ge läsare möjligheten att bekanta sig med noveller som sträcker sig från det komiska till det tragiska, från det underhållande till det reflekterande mer sällan än inte på en och samma gång. Australien berättar utkommer i Tranans uppskattade berättarserie, som presenterar framstående novellistik från hela världen, inte sällan av författare som aldrig tidigare kommit ut på svenska. Hittills har tretton volymer utkommit, senast med noveller från Lettland och Egypten.

'A masterpiece. A novel of high seriousness and higher playfulness' Michael Hulse, Spectator On a property in New South Wales, a man named Holland lives with his daughter, Ellen. As years pass and Ellen grows into a beautiful young woman, her father announces his decision: she will marry the first man who can name all the eucalypts, down to the last tree. As suitors clamber to meet Holland's challenge, Ellen encounters a strange young man among her father's trees - a storyteller, with enchanting tales of faraway lands. 'Murray Bail is the warmest and quick-witted of storytellers. You will never forget what is at the heart of this book: one of the great and most surprising courtships in literature' Michael Ondaatje

Superb and surprising new fiction is found in this major new collection from the Australian master. A man named Huebler decides to photograph everyone alive. A suburban father perches in his son's tree house to spy on his friends. A dentist recognises his estranged wife in a famous painting. 'The Seduction of My Sister' tells of the increasingly bizarre events involving a boy and his sister when a new family moves in across the street. And in 'Camouflage', Eric Banerjee, an unassuming Adelaide piano tuner, is sent north to the centre of Australia in 1943 to make his contribution to the war effort. It is clear in all these remarkable stories that Murray Bail - already celebrated for his novels - has also extended the manifold possibilities of short fiction. Each of his stories creates a strange and fascinating new world, and none of them is easily forgotten. Bail's work in this collection is deft, angular, and very entertaining; the mastery of his art is fully revealed with wry humour and haunting power.

Frank Delage, a middle-aged Australian, arrives in Vienna with the most daring of propositions. He has invented a revolutionary piano and means to market it to the grand old world of classical music. A chance meeting with one Amalia von Schalla brings new possibilities - a soirée, an introduction to her daughter Elisabeth, dinner with an avant-garde composer. But when the sheer audacity of his campaign dawns on him, he takes a slow boat home to the southern hemisphere. As it meanders through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, he is afforded ample time to reflect on tensions between the old world and the new. And, for all his travails, he is not going home empty-handed...

What are The Pages? On a family sheep station in the interior of Australia, a brother and sister work the property while their reclusive brother, Wesley Antill, spends years toiling away in one of the sheds, writing a philosophy. Now he has died. Erica, a philosopher, is sent from Sydney to appraise his work.

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year On a property in New South Wales, a widower named Holland lives with his daughter, Ellen. Over the years as she grows into a beautiful woman, Holland plants hundreds of different eucalyptus trees on his land, filling the landscape, making a virtual outdoor museum of trees. When Ellen is nineteen, Holland announces that she may only marry the man who can correctly name the species of each and every gum tree on his property. A strange contest begins, and Ellen is left unmoved by her suitors until she chances on a strange young man resting under the Coolibah tree whose stories will amaze and dazzle her. A modern fairy tale, and an unforgettable love story, that bristles with spiky truths and unexpected wisdom about art, feminine beauty, landscape, and language. Eucalyptus affirms the seductive power of storytelling itself.

"Holden's Performance "by award-winning author Murray Bail is the story of Holden Shadbolt, a guileless and matter-of-fact innocent as he passes through the cities and landscape of Australia. His reassuring silent presence and photographic memory make him useful to men of power and women who appear to need his protection. He is surrounded by larger than life figures whose exploits and adventures Holden follows ex-Corporal Frank 'Bloodnut' McBee, the scrap dealer who woos his mother; his uncle Vern, a shortsighted proofreader who likes facts and eating newspaper with is breakfast cereal; and the crippled artist Harriet, whose twists and curves appeal to Holden as he holds to his own unswervingly straight lines."

Guileless and matter of fact, Holden is fated to follow the flamboyant people around him- ex-Corporal McBee, who zealously woos Holden's mother;

Thirteen Australian package tourists set off around the world on the holiday of a lifetime. Homesickness is an enchanting novel: a wry, witty look at the ways people interact, a catalogue of comic digressions and tantalising information in which the world becomes a museum with no exhibit more bizarre than human nature itself.