AustLit

'The first volume of the long-awaited, near-mythical biography of Nick Cave, by award-winning writer, Mark Mordue.

'A beautiful, profound, profane and poetic biography of the early formative years of the dark prince of Australian rock 'n' roll, Boy on Fire is Nick Cave's creation story. This is the story of the artist first as a boy, then as a young man. A deeply insightful work which charts his family, friends, influences, milieu and, most of all, his music, it reveals how Nick Cave shaped himself into the extraordinary artist he would become.

'As well as a powerfully compelling biography of a singular, uncompromising artist, Boy on Fire is also a fascinating social and cultural biography, a vivid and evocative rendering of a time and place, from the fast-running dark river and ghost gums of Wangaratta, to the nascent punk scene which hit staid 1970s Melbourne like an atom bomb, right through to the torn wallpaper, sticky carpet and the manic, wild energy of nights at the Crystal Ballroom.' (Publication summary)

'‘One of the many things I regret about writing And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989) was that I didn’t set it in Australia. It could just as easily be set in Wangaratta rather than an imaginary part of the American South. I don’t know why I didn’t do that. I wish I had. For sure that book comes from growing up in the country, from living a life in country Australia. It’s not from listening to murder ballads. The river was the sacred place of my childhood and everything happened down there.' (Introduction)