Conversations at Curlow Creek by David Malouf

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Bend to front cover top corner. Previous owner has stamped inside page. Minor marks on tail foredge. Otherwise interior and binding are very good.

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 an officer of the police 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 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. (back cover)