Frank Moorhouse Knihy

Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Five years have passed since Edith Campbell Berry's triumphant arrival at the League of Nations in Geneva, determined to right the wrongs of the world. The idealism of those early Grand Dayshas been eroded by a sense foreboding as the world moves ever closer to another war. Edith's life too, has changed- her marriage and her work are no longer the anchors in her life - she is restless, unsure, feeling the weight of history upon her and her world. As her certainties crumble, Edith is once again joined by Ambrose Westwood, her old friend and lover. Their reunion is joyful, and her old anxiety about their unconventional relationship is replaced by a feeling that all things are possible - at least in her private life. But World War II advances inexorably, and Edith, Ambrose and their fellow officers must come to terms with the knowledge that their best efforts - and those of the well-meaning world - are simply useless against the forces of the time. Moving, wise and utterly engrossing, this is a profound and enriching novel. Grand Daysand Dark Palaceconfirm Frank Moorhouse as one of our greatest writers - a master of tone and timing, an elegant and exuberant stylist, and an unerring chronicler of the human spirit.

In the sixth edition of this best-selling series, higly acclaimed author Frank Moorhouse has collected Australia's finest short fiction from the last twelve months. The contributors to this collection display the best fiction writers at the top of their form. This anthology demonstrates the enduring quality of Australian fiction.

In this collection, Frank Moorhouse and his alter ego, Françoise Blasé, are at their mordant best. Their wit, satire and keen eye for detail are finely honed as they travel at home and abroad, savouring the persecution inflicted by bell captains, barmen and tour guides — together with the endless buffeting of cultural differences and Traveller's Paranoia (real and imagined).

Frank Moorhouse, one of Australia's most celebrated writers, has chosen twenty-seven pieces that, he says, 'set a new benchmark in the standard of the short story'. Inventive, adventurous, seductive and entertaining, the stories range in setting from war-torn Sarajevo to the streets of Che Guevara's Havana, from the electronic buzz of Tokyo to the waterways of ancient Rome. Both new and established writers are featured, including J. M. Coetzee, Delia Falconer and Graeme Kinross-Smith.

The six-six-Sixties were the Devil's decade. Following the rise of Satanism through from the Sixties onwards, this work examines the key cases and delves into the lives of the perpetrators, searching for the events that could have driven them to commit such horrific acts.

Meet Edith Campbell Berry, the woman all Australian women would like to be. On a train from Paris to Geneva, Edith Campbell Berry meets Major Ambrose Westwood in the dining car, makes his acquaintance over a lunch of six courses, and allows him to kiss her passionately. Their early intimacy binds them together once they reach Geneva and their posts at the newly created League of Nations. There, a heady idealism prevails over Edith and her young colleagues, and nothing seems beyond their grasp, certainly not world peace. The exuberance of the times carries over into Geneva nights: Edith is drawn into a dark and glamorous underworld where, coaxed by Ambrose, she becomes more and more sexually adventurous. Reading Grand Days is a rare experience: it is vivid and wise, full of shocks of recognition and revelation. The final effect of the book is intoxicating and unplaceably original

It is 1950, the League of Nations has collapsed and the newly formed United Nations has rejected all those who worked and fought for the League. Edith Campbell Berry and her now-husband Ambrose Westwood are now back: from one of the oldest cities of the world to the world's newest city, she moved from trying to make a world capital in Geneva, to a dusty town trying to become a national capital. Edith has ambitions to be Australia's first female Ambassador and is seeking a position in Canberra with the Department of External Affairs. Finding her ambitions thwarted in this area, Edith vigorously involves herself in the building of the new centre of civilization. Frederick - Edith's brother who disappeared from her life before she left Australia - reacquaints himself with her and introduces Edith to the Australian Communist Party, of which he is a leader. Frederick's relationship to Edith, in the time of the Communist Party Dissolution Act, is a threat to Ambrose's career with the High Commission - or does it provide him with an opportunity to spy?

Since Henry Lawson wrote his story 'The Drover's Wife'in 1892, Australian writers, painters, performers and photographers have created a wonderful tradition of drover's wife works, stories and images. The Russell Drysdale painting from 1945 extended the mythology and it, too, has become an Australian icon. Other versions of the Lawson story have been written by Murray Bail, Barbara Jefferis, Mandy Sayer, David Ireland, Madeleine Watts and others, up to the present, including Leah Purcell's play and Ryan O'Neill's graphic novel. In essays and commentary, Frank Moorhouse examines our ongoing fascination with this story and has collected some of the best pieces of writing on the subject. This remarkable, gorgeous book is, he writes, 'a monument to the drovers' wives'.