Janette Turner Hospital's stories have won widespread international acclaim for their dazzling style, intellectual depth and crackling energy. Her characters oscillate between estrangement and a sense of belonging, as Hospital herself has suffered geographical displacement from the deep north of Australia to the deep south of the United States.Seven of these fourteen stories were included in the 'North of Nowhere' section of Collected Stories (UQP 1995). Seven, including 'South of Loss', are published here in book form for the first time.
Reissue of a novel first published 1988. It is a story of passion and obsession that ranges in setting from an Australian rainforest to Boston and Toronto. A mysterious and elusive love affair haunts the lives of three women in Australia. Twenty years later, on the other side of the world, Charade Ryan sorts through story and counter-story for her father, the legendary Nicholas, and the truth about her origins. This novel was included in the 'New York Times Book Review's' 50 most notable novels of the year, was in the top 16 for the Booker Prize, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, the Banjo and the Adelaide Festival National Fiction Awards. Author has written many award-winning novels including 'The Last Magician' and 'The Ivory Swing' and the short story collections 'Dislocations' and 'Isobars'.
"By the Book is an indispensable history of the literature of Queensland from its establishment as a separate colony in the mid-nineteenth century through major economic, political and cultural transformations to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Queensland figures in the Australian imagination as a frontier, a place of wild landscapes and wilder politics, but also as Australia's playground, a soft tourist paradise of warm weather and golden beaches. Based partly on real historical divergences from the rest of Australia, these contradictory images have been questioned and scrutini.
Can the pieces of a broken past be enough to build a solid future? Haunted by sorrow and regret, Margaret Hale stands at the precipice of an uncertain destiny. Fiercely determined but not knowing how to find her way, she risks the little she has left on the heart she once shattered
Reissue of a novel first published in 1985. An insurance salesman and an art curator witness the capture of illegal immigrants on the Canadian-USA border and help a woman to escape. The former strangers cross and re-cross borders - between countries, between past and present, and reality and illusion. Author holds a permanent position at the University of South Carolina as Professor and Distinguished Writer in Residence. Her other books include 'The Ivory Swing', winner of Canada's Seal Award, and 'Charades', which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, the Banjo and the Adelaide Festival National Fiction Awards.
In this powerful and achingly beautiful novel, Janette Turner Hospital tackles head-on questions of national security, art, terrorism and love. From the moment Leela’s ear catches the first few bars of music in between the roar of subway trains, she’s entranced by its haunting beauty. Letting the music reel her in, in perfect fifths, it’s at the end of the inbound platform that she finds Mishka Bartok, singing Che farò senza Euridice and accompanying himself on the violin. He’s surrounded by a cluster of commuters, but hardly seems to notice they are there until he stops playing. Despite Mishka’s reluctance to talk, Leela discovers that he’s a graduate student at Harvard, studying composition. She’s a mathematician at MIT, researching the math of music. Their connection is immediate, and that night they embark on a steamy love affair. Living together in Boston, Leela and Mishka pursue their mutual passions — both academic and carnal — in a fog, as if the outside world does not exist. They have both distanced themselves from their families — Mishka from his mother and grandparents in Australia, Leela from her father and sister back in Promised Land, South Carolina. Both recoil from the reality of the city streets, where terrorists attack American civilians and a subway bombing under Harvard Square comes dangerously close to tearing their world apart. But that is ultimately the effect of the bombing, when Leela is grabbed off the street, thrust into a dark car, and taken to an interrogation room. There, she is questioned about the recent attacks by a masked man who tells her he’s a member of a private security force. He also asks directly about Mishka — who often visits an Arab café and a mosque that are under surveillance, and socializes with known instigators… all signs that he’s a terrorist, or at least aiding those responsible for the subway bombing. When Leela’s captor removes his mask at last, Cobb stands before her: the person she was perhaps closest to as a teenager back in Promised Land. Since leaving the army, after a long stint in the Middle East, he’s been involved in paramilitary work. Cobb knows from experience that photographs can be disastrously misinterpreted, but in his eyes, Mishka is guilty. Against her instincts, Leela thinks back to Mishka’s many unexplained disappearances, often around the time of such attacks. It’s then that she realizes the mystery and intensity at the heart of their relationship could be hiding much more than she’d thought. Mishka disappears again the next day, and doubt erodes Leela’s love as she embarks on her own investigation to find him and unravel the mystery of his life. Little does she know that her search will lead her across the globe and into an underworld of kidnapping, torture and despair. With this compelling re-imagining of the Orpheus story, Janette Turner Hospital again shows her genius, interweaving a literary thriller with a story of passion and the triumph of decency in confusing and dangerous times. It is at once a love story on a grand scale that spans America, Australia and the Middle East, and an exploration of how ghastly side effects of terrorism can wreak havoc on individual lives.
Paperback re-issue of novel delving into the psyche of a woman unable to escape domestic abuse - first from her father then from a partner who alternates between ferocious protection and vicious physical abuse. Traces her journey from her frustrating passivity to her emerging strength, but in the end she remains unable to protect her infant daughter. Author won the 2000 Queensland Premier's Literary Award for best manuscript from an emerging Queensland writer.
" ... Documents the history and development of [Post-colonial literatures in English, together with English and American literature] and includes original research relating to the literatures of some 50 countries and territories. In more than 1,600 entries written by more than 600 internationally recognized scholars, it explores the effect of the colonial and post-colonial experience on literatures in English worldwide.
