AustLit

'In Fog the promising, high-spirited young Nick Mangos of Fitzroy Raw is a loner in his late-fifties with signs of failing memory. Wanting to dispel a sense of growing unease, Nick sets out on a foggy night and finds himself, candle in hand, wandering through Fitzroy in search of his boyhood home. He encounters an assortment of vivid characters – rappers, squatters, an arsonist, a graffiti artist, gamblers, sex workers, homeless folk, and people from his past – all of whom are in some way touched by the flame and who further his journey. Through adventure and misadventure his candle is responsible for a fire, a Molotov cocktail, a suspected bomb, which result in a police hunt. Meanwhile, news reports depict Nick as an arsonist, a mad bomber, a terrorist. Mixing pathos and humour, blurring past and present, fusing real and surreal, Fog is a modern-day parable, a long night’s journey toward light, a lost soul’s quest for meaning and homecoming.' (Publication summary)

'He records the passage of the year in a journal that includes notes from his intercultural story-telling group. He finds that mortals, and even some part- human, part-goblin beings, like the Japanese tengu, inhabit a zone somewhere between the terrors of the supernatural world, depicted in literature and art, and the ‘ordinary’ terrors of the natural, ‘real’ world.

'In the process Roy finds a special friend and ultimately exorcises the ghost of his own loneliness, which he has been inclined to idealise as solitude.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'Reclusive antiquarian bookseller Alan Redgrave meets Fei Yun, a beautiful and beguiling Chinese artist, at a gallery in the summer of 2018. She takes him to the ancient oasis town of Dunhuang, gateway to the Southern Silk Road. Her deep involvement with Taoist philosophy and ritual, including talismans, and her fascination with an eighteenth-century portrait lead him to wonder if there is something haunting her — or him.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'One of my Buddhism for dummies books says there are three fires to be avoided at all costs — desire, anger and delusion. I think my greatest desire — and delusion — is to see a meaning in the events that have taken place in my life. There have been three occasions I can think of when I felt the siren call of Meaning, when I was convinced that things had happened as they were meant to — and each time I got it wrong.’

'In solitude, in a hotel in China, a man writes to a close friend, trying to identify themes in his life and relationships, revealed in the memory of sometimes funny, sometimes traumatic incidents and episodes. Intermittently he also writes of his present days in China, of the shifting persona he has adopted in order to lead a 'floating life' between worlds and identities.' (Publication summary)

'Restless China scholar Rubert Robinson leaves the refuge of his studio in Montsalvat artists' colony in outer Melbourne and embarks upon travels with Xiaorong, his former student, in order to discover and illuminate fragments of the age-old encounter between China and the West.

'During their quest through old and new worlds they discover a parallel realm of fascination, misunderstanding, pain and delight - all within their own relationship. Like other cultural voyagers before them, they find both sanctuary and exile within a landscape of ever shifting perspectives.' (Publication summary)