AustLit

'Shortly before his death in 2014, an elderly man brought his publisher friend a crumpled purple folder filled with type-written pages. Cleaning the Stables he called it: a selection of stories, poems and a recipe that he didn't want left behind.

'In this posthumous collection we are given a feast of mostly unpublished treasures from the great literary life of Morris Lurie. Written in the wry and ironic style he was celebrated for, these pieces are sometimes odd, always clever, and at times profoundly moving as they give us insight into a man who had a truly unique way of interpreting and writing about the world around him. ' (Publication summary)

'This ebook brings together two of Lurie's novels, the comic "Rappaport", which focused on a day in the life of a young Melbourne antique dealer and his immature friend, Friedlander...' (Publication summary)

'Thirty stories in the incomparably distinctive voice of the author whose publishing career started with the comic novel Rappaport. One story starts with "I won a house in a lottery", and proceeds to career seemingly out of control – except it isn’t. Other stories open in equally startling fashion.

'Try: "Hergesheimer flees his marriage in a twenty-four-year-old car …"; "How do you steal from a thief?"; "Show me a man without tantrum and I’ll show you a man without blood"; "The prettiest damsel in many a moon drops a smile in Hergesheimer’s direction, which he, ever the gallant, snatches expertly up, with a bow courteously returns."'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'You are an unarmed man in the wilderness being hunted by men with guns and dogs.The ATM business? That number you pulled on the gullible art world? Those anonymous envelopes slipped under the door? Or deeper? Darker? A disappeared daughter? An absent son?

'Your name is Hergesheimer. This is your world. Deal with it.'

Source: www.scholarly.info/ (Sighted 17/11/2011).