AustLit

'I began to see that whatever I might write about Max, discover about him, piece together with those old shards of memory, it would be his influence on the friendships of the living that would frame his story in the present.

'According to your 1939 Gestapo file, you adopted the cover names Landau and Maxim. The name your mother and father gave you was Moses. We knew you as Max. You had worked in secret. From an early age you concealed yourself - like the grey box beetle in the final country of your exile, maturing on its journey out of sight beneath the bark of the tree.

'You risked death every day. And when at last the struggle became hopeless, you escaped the hell and found a haven in China first, and then Australia, where you became one of those refugees who, in their final place of exile, chose not death but silence and obscurity.

'Alex Miller followed the faint trail of Max Blatt's early life for five years. Max's story unfolded, slowly at first, from the Melbourne Holocaust Centre's records then to Berlin's Federal Archives. From Berlin, Miller travelled to Max's old home town of Wroclaw in Poland. And finally in Israel with Max's niece, Liat Shoham, and her brother Yossi Blatt, at Liat's home in the moshav Shadmot Dvora in the Lower Galilee, the circle of friendship was closed and the mystery of Max's legendary silence was unmasked.

'Max is an astonishing and moving tribute to friendship, a meditation on memory itself, and a reminder to the reader that history belongs to humanity.' (Publication summary)

'Sitting in a New York park, an old man holds a book and tries to accept that his contribution to the future is over. Instead, he remembers a youthful yearning for open horizons, for Australia, a yearning he now knows inspired his life as a writer. Instinctively he picks up his pen and starts at the beginning . . .

'At twenty-one years, Robert Croft leaves his broken dreams in Far North Queensland, finally stopping in Melbourne almost destitute. It's there he begins to understand how books and writing might be the saving of him. They will be how he leaves his mark on the world. He also begins to understand how many obstacles there will be to thwart his ambition. When Robert is introduced to Lena Soren, beautiful, rich and educated, his life takes a very different path. But in the intimacy of their connection lies an unknowability that both torments and tantalises as Robert and Lena long for something that neither can provide for the other. In a rich blend of thoughtful and beautifully observed writing, the lives of a husband and wife are laid bare in their passionate struggle to engage with their individual creativity.'

source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Coalition Government has rightly made much recently of its policy to promote growth and jobs through its support of small and medium-size Australian businesses. The Australian publishing industry is made up of hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses. The independent Australian publishing industry, on which printers and allied trades also rely for much of their work, directly and indirectly employs thousands of skilled and professional workers. Abolishing territorial copyright would place Australian publishing at an impossible business disadvantage in relation to its overseas competitors. Some publishers would almost certainly be driven to the wall. An essential of any modern civilised nation is a robust independent publishing industry which can offer to the reading public the stories of its writers. The cultural independence and richness of any nation depends on the writers who tell the stories of that nation.' (Introduction)

'The Simplest Words is Alex Miller's first collection of stories, memoir, commentary and poetry.

'All of Alex Miller's novels have been critically acclaimed and have won or been shortlisted in the major Australian literary awards. He is twice winner of Australia's premier literary prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and is an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for The Ancestor Game. His eleventh and most recent novel, Coal Creek, won the 2014 Victorian Premier's Literary Award.

'Alex Miller is published internationally and his works have been widely translated.' (Publication summary)

'"Me and Ben had been mates since we was boys and if it come to it I knew I would have to be on his side."

Bobby Blue is caught between loyalty to his only friend, Ben Tobin, and his boss, Daniel Collins, the new Constable at Mount Hay. 'Ben was not a big man but he was strong and quick as a snake. He had his own breed of pony that was just like him, stocky and reliable on their feet.' Bobby understands the people and the ways of Mount Hay; Collins studies the country as an archaeologist might, bringing his coastal values to the hinterland. Bobby says, 'I do not think Daniel would have understood Ben in a million years.' Increasingly bewildered and goaded to action by his wife, Constable Collins takes up his shotgun and his Webley pistol to deal with Ben. Bobby's love for Collins' wilful young daughter Irie is exposed, leading to tragic consequences for them all.

Miller's exquisite depictions of the country of the Queensland highlands form the background of this simply told but deeply significant novel of friendship, love, loyalty and the tragic consequences of misunderstanding and mistrust. Coal Creek is a wonderfully satisfying novel with a gratifying resolution. It carries all the wisdom and emotional depth we have come to expect from Miller's richly evocative novels.' (Publisher's blurb)