Wrack

1997 kicks off with a startling and original literary debut ... a haunting, powerful story of passion, betrayal, obsession and loss. A body is found in the sandhills on the southern coast of New South Wales. David is an archaeologist, leading a team of students digging up the sandhills, searching for evidence of a Portuguese ship he believes was wrecked there in the fifteenth century. Hideously disfigured by injuries he received in New Guinea during the Second World War, Kurt now lies dying in a small shack near the sandhills. All his life he, like David, has been obsessed by the stories of the ship. When David meets Kurt, he believes the old man has the answers he so desperately wants. Answers he will do everything to discover ... The story swings back and forward in time, from the days of the Portuguese sailors and their fiercely protected maritime secrets, to the politics of history in a 1930s university, to the playing out of David's obsession in the present. Erotic, sensuous and erudite, Wrack draws the reader into a web of lies, sex and mystery in a novel that is as unusual as it is beautiful. THE AUTHOR: James Bradley was born in Adelaide in 1967. He studied at the University of Adelaide, where he completed a law degree and took honours in philosophy, and later at the University of South Australia and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. He has worked as a law clerk, judge's associate, solicitor, research assistant and editor and more recently has achieved some modicum of fame as a video shop attendant. As well as writing and reviewing for newspapers and magazines, he has written a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, which was shortlisted for the 1995 National Book Council Banjo Awards, and edited Blur, and anthology of work by young Australian writers, also published by Vintage. He lives in Sydney. SELLING POINTS: Forget grunge, here's a young Australian writer who's breaking the mould of those confused-young-men first novels with an assured work of great imagination and power, reaching into our history and coming up with a story of dangerous passion, obsession and suspense. The mystery of the Mahogany Ship in Warnambool (upon which the fictional wreck in Wrack is based) has intrigued generations of Australians. It is a genuine 'unsolved mystery' and every so often teams have gone down to Warnambool to try to uncover it. Wrack is a detective story (where is the ship? will they find it?) and contains not one but two love stories – both love stories strained and twisted by the protagonists' obsession with finding the ship. It is a meditation on the nature of history and how we rewrite it to suit our own prejudices. The novel is unusual in that it will feature colour plates of the beautiful sixteenth-century maps of Australia that led many to believe that Portuguese sailors did reach the east coast of the continent before Captain Cook. A fascinating blend of history and fiction that presents a new perspective on our past in a gripping read.

Winner of Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) Awards: Australian Unity Literature Award 1998

James Bradley is an author and critic. His books include the novels Wrack, The Deep Field, The Resurrectionist and Clade, a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus and The Penguin Book of the Ocean.

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