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Product Description
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 the police officer 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 in 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. A new novel by Malouf is a major event; THE CONVERSATIONS AT CURLOW CREEK will confirm him as one of the greatest novelists of our time.
Amazon.com Review
It is only natural for our eyes to wander into the circumstances of others and either count our blessings or rail at the injustice of fate. How we deal with the fate dealt us is the subject of David Malouf's shadowy novel. Having grown up in the same household, but under different circumstances, two foster-brothers respond to fate in radically different ways and with radically different results. While one takes kismet under his horsewhip, the other dares not rebel. This haunting replay of Greek tragedy will reverberate in your mind long after the last page is turned, for as with these men, fate is our habitat.
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