The Conversations At Curlew Creek - Tapa dura

The year is 1827, and in a remote hut on the high plains of New South Wales, two strangers spend the night in talk. One, Carney, an illiterate Irishman, ex-convict and bushranger, is to be hanged at dawn. The other, Adair, also Irish, is the police officer who has been sent to supervise the hanging. As the night wears on, the two discover unexpected connections between their lives, and learn new truths. Outside the hut, Adair's troopers sit uneasily, reflecting on their own pasts and futures, waiting for the morning to come. With ironic humour and in prose of starkly evocative power, the novel moves between Australia and Ireland to explore questions of nature and justice, reason and un-reason, the workings of fate, and the small measure of freedom a man may claim in the face of death. A new novel by Malouf is a major event; THE CONVERSATIONS AT CURLOW CREEK will confirm him as one of the greatest novelists of our time.

David Malouf is internationally recognised as one of Australia's finest writers. His novels include Johnno, An Imaginary Life, Harland's Half Acre, and The Great World, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Prix Femina Etranger in 1991. Remembering Babylon, his most recent novel, was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize and won the inaugural IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He has also written five collections of poetry - his Selected Poems: 1959-1989 is published by Chatto - and three opera libretti, of which the latest, Baa Baa Black Sheep, is published by Chatto. He lives in Sydney.