' The Plains has that peculiar singularity that can make literature great.' Ed Wright, Australian, Best Books of 2015 'A piece of imaginative writing so remarkably sustained that it is a subject for meditation rather than a mere reading.In the depths and surfaces of this extraordinary fable you will see your inner self eerily reflected again and again.' Sydney Morning Herald 'Gerald Murnane is unquestionably one of the most original writers working in Australia today and The Plains is a fascinating and rewarding book.The writing is extraordinarily good, spare, austere, strong, often oddly moving.' Australian 'A distinguished, distinctive, unforgettable novel.' Shirley Hazzard 'Murnane is quite simply one of the finest writers we have produced.' Peter Craven Wayne Macauley is the author of three novels, Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe (2004), Caravan Story (2007) and The Cook (2011), and the short fiction collection Other Stories (2010). In 1999 Murnane won the Patrick White Award and in 2009 he won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. His debut novel, Tamarisk Row (1974), was followed by ten other works of fiction, including The Plains and most recently Border Districts. He has been a primary teacher, an editor and a university lecturer. Gerald Murnane was born in Melbourne in 1939. As his story unfolds, the novel becomes, in the words of Murray Bail, 'a mirage of landscape, memory, love and literature itself'.

In the two decades since its first publication, this haunting novel has earned its status as a classic.Ī nameless young man arrives on the plains and begins to document the strange and rich culture of the plains families. There is no book in Australian literature like The Plains. Winner of the Patrick White Literary Award, 1999.

The plains by gerald murnane