> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 February 2013
  • ISBN: 9781742758329
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

Harland's Half Acre

from the award-winning author of Remembering Babylon, Ransom and Johnno




A tale of artistic passion, familial bonds, and the intricate balance of solitude and community, capturing the essence of human experience through the lens of an Australian family's journey.

A REVISED EDITION, NOW WITH AN AFTERWORD FROM THE AUTHOR.

Frank Harland's life is centred on his great artistic gift, his passionate love for his father and four brothers, and his desire to regain the Harlands' lost prosperity. Phil Vernon, growing up alone in the midst of a demanding family, is a boy when he first meets Frank Harland, but he is inexorably drawn into the Harlands' circle.

Through the interlinked lives of the two families, David Malouf explores solitude and society, possession and dispossession, the obsessions and violence of family life and love, illuminating the larger world of events and imagination.

-------

‘Absolutely stunning ... a triumph of the writer's craft.’ VOGUE
‘Australia’s finest writer’ MIRIAM COSIC, THE AUSTRALIAN
‘Malouf is a lyrical story-writer.’ MALCOLM KNOX, THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
‘Here is a marble faultlessness, with the animal warmth of a living thing.’ GEORDIE WILLIAMSON, THE AUSTRALIAN‘A panorama of Australian society, scenery, and history.’ THE ATLANTIC‘A remarkable book in which the realist and the dreamer are finally and excitingly fused.’ THE NYT BOOK REVIEW

  • Published: 1 February 2013
  • ISBN: 9781742758329
  • Imprint: Random House Australia
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

About the author

David Malouf

David Malouf is the internationally acclaimed author of novels including Ransom, The Great World (winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ prize and the Prix Femina Etranger), Remembering Babylon (winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), An Imaginary Life, Conversations at Curlow Creek, Dream Stuff, Every Move You Make and his autobiographical classic 12 Edmondstone Street. His Collected Stories won the 2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award. His most recent books are A First Place and The Writing Life. He was born in 1934 and was brought up in Brisbane.

Also by David Malouf

See all

Praise for Harland's Half Acre

To read Harland's Half Acre is to have your sense of the quiet ambition, intelligence and immaculate poetry that characterise Malouf's writing renewed. Here is a marble faultlessness, with the animal warmth of a living thing.

Geordie Williamson, The Australian

Malouf's view of the world (here and elsewhere in his fiction) is more generous, embracing and forgiving [than White]. A fine novel.

Andrew Riemer, The Sydney Morning Herald

A remarkable book in which the realist and the dreamer are finally and excitingly fused.

The New York Times Book Review

A novel rich in descriptive detail, ambitious in historical scope and thoroughly persuasive in its portrait of a world and an era ... The most satisfying look into the mind of a painter since Virginia Woolf's portrayal of Lily Briscoe in To The Lighthouse.

David Leavitt, The Village Voice

A panorama of Australian society, scenery, and history ... Malouf succeeds brilliantly in convincing the reader that Harland is indeed an artist, and a good one.

Atlantic

Absolutely stunning ... the book's lyric ending is a triumph of the writer's craft.

Vogue