Book description
For three very different people brought together by their love for
birds, life on the Queensland coast in 1914 is the timeless and idyllic
world of sandpipers, ibises and kingfishers. In another hemisphere
civilization rushes headlong into a brutal conflict. Life there is lived
from moment to moment. Inevitably, the two young men - sanctuary owner
and employee - are drawn to the war, and into the mud and horror of the
trenches of Armentieres. Alone on the beach, their friend Imogen, the
middle-aged wildlife photographer, must acknowledge for all three of
them that the past cannot be held. Malouf is subtle, lyric and
insistent. His stories enter the memory and stay there. Irish Times
Simply brilliant and naturalistically told Guardian The continuities of
nature are set against the obscenities of war...to contruct a memorable
book Sunday Telegraph The novel of a poet without a single trace of
overwriting Daily Telegraph David Malouf is the internationally
acclaimed author of novels including
The Great World
(winner of the Commonwealth Writers' prize and the Prix Femina
Etranger), Remembering Babylon
(shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the IMPAC Dublin
Literary Award), An Imaginary Life
, Conversations at Curlow Creek, Dream Stuff
('These stories are pearls' Spectator
), Every Move You Make
('Rare and luminous talent' Guardian
), his autobiographical classic 12 Edmondstone Street
and Ransom
. His Collected Stories
won the 2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award. In 2008 Malouf was the
Scottish Arts' Council Muriel Spark International Fellow. He was born in
1934 and was brought up in Brisbane.
