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The
2007 Award
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The Garden Book by Brian Castro
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Nominated by:
Publisher
of Nominated Edition
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| the complete A-Z listing of nominated authors |
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ABOUT
THE BOOK
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| Brian
Castro's new novel is set in the Dandenong Ranges in the years between the
Depression and the Second World War. The story revolves around Swan Hay,
born Shuang He, daughter of a country schoolteacher, her marriage to the
passionate and brutal Darcy Damon, and her love affair with the aviator
and architect Jasper Zenlin. Fifty years after her disappearance, Norman
Shih, a rare book librarian, pieces together Swan's chaotic life from clues
found in guest house libraries, antiquarian bookshops and her own elusive
writings. But what exactly is his relationship to her? The Garden Book is about loneliness, addiction, exploitation; it is about the precarious nature of Australian lives, when gripped by fear and racial prejudice. Yet underlying the story, and commanding it, there is the assured beat of Castro's prose, evoking an ideal world beyond these fears, full of richness and power. |
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
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Brian Castro lives in the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne. His previous novel, Shanghai Dancing (also published by Giramondo) won both the NSW and Victorian Premier's Awards for Fiction. |
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Copyright
© 2007 Dublin City Public Libraries
