AustLit

Originally published as a limited edition chapbook in 2009, Red Hills of Africa is Matthew Asprey's comic novella of dangerous erotic entanglement and literary obsession. The story begins at an academic conference in Madrid, where a young Australian vegan presents a quixotic paper on the hidden herbivorous tendencies in late Ernest Hemingway. Afterwards, with an international group of scholars and hangers-on, our vegan hero cruises Hemingway's classic Madrid haunts - El Botin, Chicotes. This long night of absinthe-fueled confession, drunken debauchery, and sexual desperation has unforeseen consequences for all the characters. From the streets of contemporary Madrid to the souks of Marrakech and onwards into the Atlas Mountains, Red Hills of Africa dramatizes the allure of literary pilgrimage as well as the dangerous pursuit of the pleasures of transgression. It also fondly explores the paradoxes of Ernest Hemingway (Author's website).