AustLit

'Bookish boys and taciturn men, strong women and wayward sons, fathers and daughters, lovers and husbands, a composer and his muse, a builder-architect and his legacy - here are their stories, whole lives brought vividly into focus and so powerfully rooted in the landscape that you can almost feel the heat and the dust. His canvas is the vast Australian continent from the mysterious, glittering Valley of Lagoons behind the Great Divide in Far North Queensland, to bohemian Balmain and the Centre at Uluru, but always there are enticing glimpses of a world beyond, and the stories are tender, subtle, unsettlingly intimate. A young man going off to war tries to make sense of his place in the world he is leaving; a composer's life plays itself out as a complex domestic cantata; an accident on a hunting trip speaks volumes, which its inarticulate victim never could; and, in the funniest, most surprising story of all, a down-to-earth woman stubbornly tries to keep her feet on the ground at Ayers Rock. Malouf's men and women are together but curiously alone, looking for something they seem to have missed, or missed out on, in life, puzzling over the space they'll leave behind when the waters close over them...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'A rollercoaster ride through a land of chaos and contradiction with a woman on a mission to save her soul, her love life - and her sanity. A rollercoaster ride through a land of chaos and contradiction with a woman on a mission to save her soul, her love life - and her sanity. After backpacking her way around India Sarah Macdonald decides she hates the country with a passion. When a beggar reads her palm and insists she will one day return - and for love - she screams 'Never!' But twelve years later the prophecy comes true. When the love of her life is posted to India, Sarah follows him to the most polluted city on earth, New Delhi. It seems like the ultimate sacrifice for love and it almost kills her - literally. After being cursed by a naked sadhu smeared in human ashes Sarah almost dies from double pneumonia, but not before facing some serious questions about her fragile mortality and inner spiritual void - not to mention some unsightly hair loss. It's enough to send a rapidly balding atheist on a wild rollercoaster ride through India in search of the meaning of life and death. With the help of the Dalai Lama, a goddess of healing hugs and a couple of Bollywood stars - among many, many others - Sarah discovers a hell of a lot more. '  (Publication summary)