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Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
Original language
English

IN CERTAIN CIRCLES

Elizabeth Harrower

Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award 2015.

IN CERTAIN CIRCLES tells the story of two sets of siblings growing up in Sydney whose lives unexpectedly connect. Zoe Howard is seventeen when her beloved brother Russell introduces her to Stephen Quayle. Aloof and harsh, Stephen is not like anyone she has ever met, 'a weird, irascible character out of some dense Russian novel'. Stephen's sister Anna is shy and thoughtful, 'a little orphan'. Zoe and Russell, Stephen and Anna: they may come from different social worlds but all four will spend their lives moving in and out of each other's shadow.

Set amid the lush gardens and grand stone houses that line the north side of Sydney Harbour, IN CERTAIN CIRCLES is an intense psychological drama about family and love, about tyranny and freedom.

The manuscript of IN CERTAIN CIRCLES has lain buried in the archives of the national Library for many years. Until now it was widely thought that THE WATCH TOWER was Harrower's last novel, the masterpiece that she wrote before ceasing to publish. In fact Harrower wrote IN CERTAIN CIRCLES in the late 1960s and worked on it intensively before she withdrew it from publication at the last minute in early 1971. She was then in her early forties and arguably in the prime of her literary career.Text will publish this novel for the first time in May 2014, more than forty years after it was completed.

IN GEWISSEN KREISEN
Deutsch von Alissa Walser
[HC Aufbau 05/16]
Available products
Book

Published 2014-05-01 by Text Publishing

Comments

Holland: Atlas-Contact; France: Rivages;

Elizabeth Harrower was also interviewed by Mariella Frostrup for Open Book. You can listen to that interview under: (Elizabeth is on at the nine-minute mark) Read more...

In Certain Circles is subtle yet wounding, and very much alive. (Guardian Australia) Read more...

Reading In Certain Circles gave me the thrill that only comes from the work of a major novelist. (The Conversation) Read more...

Harrower's sparse prose is best read with careful concentration; it's easy to miss a brilliant observation or an original turn of phrase... An Australian novelist of extraordinary talent. (Readings) Read more...

IN CERTAIN CIRCLES is currently being serialised on Radio 4's Book at Bedtime. The first episode aired yesterday, and you can listen to it here. Read more...

Longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award 2015

A wonderful interview with the author appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on May 3, 2014. Read more...

An exploration of the psychologies of entitlement and deprivation in the context of love. ( Adelaide Advertiser Book of the Week) This is not a comfortable book. It is tight, intense, concentrated, powerful - almost hypnotic. (Weekend Press) A coup ...weirdly thrilling line by line ..[its] dense and adult conversation crackles with a sense of moral urgency. (Delia Falconer, Australian) Her insights into the nature of love, the role of women and the torsions of power in even the most ordinary relationship are bitter and sometimes cruel, wielded in the way that acute honesty may be, like a whip. Yet they are always delivered via the honeyed dipper of her prose. (Geordie Williamson, Monthly) A novel of astonishing psychological insight exploring the darker aspects of human attraction. (Saturday Paper)

Finland: Fabriikki; Turkey: Metis; Greece: Dardanos