Brian Castro's fifth novel is perhaps his most complex and certainly his most political. Like all his work it is productively playful, punningly irreverent and deeply concerned with sex and death, fact and fiction, but also more seriously with the redemptive possibilities of art and the existential power of the novel - all in the context of Australia's contested history.' - from the Introduction by Katharine England 'A novel of daring, of enormous originality of ideas, of our history seen through a kaleidoscopic imagination dizzying in its range ...' - Matthew Condon, The Australian 'Brian Castro is an amazingly gifted writer ...' - Helen Elliott, The Canberra Times