{"title":"Brian Castro","description":"\u003cp\u003eWelcome to the captivating world of Brian Castro, an acclaimed author renowned for his exceptional contribution to the genre of General Fiction. With a unique blend of cultural insights and narrative innovations, Castro's works have garnered widespread admiration and critical acclaim.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAmong his celebrated novels, \u003cem\u003eBlindness and Rage\u003c\/em\u003e weaves a compelling tale exploring themes of ambition and disillusionment, while \u003cem\u003eChinese Postman\u003c\/em\u003e delves into intriguing narrative experiments. With \u003cem\u003eGarden Book\u003c\/em\u003e, Castro draws readers into a lush and evocative tale that speaks to the heart.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOne of his standout works, \u003cem\u003eShanghai Dancing\u003c\/em\u003e, is an exquisite novel that intertwines family history and personal identity, offering a mesmerising journey across time and place. Similarly, \u003cem\u003eStreet to Street\u003c\/em\u003e presents a profound exploration of relationships and artistic inspirations. Finally, \u003cem\u003eThe Bath Fugues\u003c\/em\u003e challenges conventional storytelling with its innovative structure and rich character studies.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBrian Castro's novels seamlessly blend lyrical prose with deep philosophical insights, inviting readers to contemplate the complexities of human experience. Discover his diverse collection today and embark on a literary journey filled with passion, creativity, and profound storytelling.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"blindness-and-rage-by-brian-castro-9781925336221","title":"Blindness and Rage","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSuffering from a fatal disease, Lucien Gracq travels to Paris to complete the epic poem he is writing and live out his last days. There he joins a secret writers' society, Le club des fugitifs, that guarantees to publish the work of its members anonymously, thus relieving them of the burdens of life, and more importantly, the disappointments of authorship.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn Paris, Gracq finds himself crossing paths with a parade of phantasms, illustrious writers from the previous century - masters of identity, connoisseurs of eroticism, theorists of game and rule, emigrés and Oulipeans. He flees from the deathly allure of the Fugitives, and towards the arms of his beloved - but it may be too late.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWritten in thirty-four cantos, \u003cem\u003eBlindness \u0026amp; Rage\u003c\/em\u003e recalls Virgil and Dante in its descent into the underworld of writing, and Pushkin's \u003cem\u003eEugene Onegin\u003c\/em\u003e with its mixture of wonder and melancholy. The short lines bring out the rhythmic qualities of Castro's prose, enhance his playfulness and love of puns, his use of allusion and metaphor. Always an innovator, in \u003cem\u003eBlindness \u0026amp; Rage\u003c\/em\u003e he again throws down a challenge to the limits of the novel form.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBrian Castro is the author of the prize-winning Australian classic \u003cem\u003eShanghai Dancing\u003c\/em\u003e, and recipient of the 2014 Patrick White Literary Award. His recent novels include \u003cem\u003eThe Garden Book\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Bath Fugues\u003c\/em\u003e, both shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and \u003cem\u003eStreet to Street\u003c\/em\u003e, loosely based on the life of the poet Christopher Brennan. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Adelaide University.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46711001972972,"sku":"9781925336221","price":34.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/13687543482873.jpg?v=1754174636"},{"product_id":"garden-book-by-brian-castro-9781920882105","title":"Garden Book","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrian Castro's novel is set in the Dandenong Ranges in the years between the Depression and the Second World War. The story revolves around Swan Hay, born Shuang He, daughter of a country schoolteacher, her marriage to the passionate and brutal Darcy Damon, and her love affair with the aviator and architect Jasper Zenlin.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFifty years after her disappearance, Norman Shih, a rare book librarian, pieces together Swan's chaotic life from clues found in guest house libraries, antiquarian bookshops and her own elusive writings. But what exactly is his relationship to her?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Garden Book\u003c\/em\u003e is about loneliness, addiction, exploitation; it is about the precarious nature of Australian lives, when gripped by fear and racial prejudice. Yet underlying the story, and commanding it, there is the assured beat of Castro's prose, evoking an ideal world beyond these fears, full of richness and power.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46711613653228,"sku":"9781920882105","price":34.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/25317963482871.jpg?v=1754233031"},{"product_id":"shanghai-dancing-by-brian-castro-9780957831186","title":"Shanghai Dancing","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eShanghai Dancing\u003c\/em\u003e is the most highly regarded and popular novel by multi-award-winning Australian author, Brian Castro. In it, his fictional persona Antonio Castro faces dispossession in Australia after the death of his parents.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn an attempt to recover something of the inheritance that has been denied him, he brings his parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and their tangled relationships, back to life by recounting their stories. He rediscovers, in the photographs, documents, and secrets they left behind, the defections and betrayals that have led to his own disinheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46714730873068,"sku":"9780957831186","price":34.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/148953482529.jpg?v=1754364497"},{"product_id":"street-to-street-by-brian-castro-9781920882952","title":"Street to Street","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eStreet to Street\u003c\/em\u003e is one of Brian Castro's best books yet, a comic-tragic enactment of the anxieties of the writing life, in which the early twentieth-century Sydney poet Christopher Brennan plays a major role. A legendary figure with a commanding knowledge of classical and European poetry, Brennan wrote some of the most powerful poems in Australian literature. He died an impoverished alcoholic at the age of sixty-one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCastro's double portrait of the poet and his biographer, the writer-academic Brendan Costa, plays on the disappointment, the guilt, the lack of recognition, which troubles those who live by their imaginations. The novella is the perfect form for Castro's purpose, its compression heightening the wit and energy of his prose, and his remarkable feel for the embarrassments of character.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46715130904812,"sku":"9781920882952","price":29.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/25326433482871.jpg?v=1754385086"},{"product_id":"the-bath-fugues-by-brian-castro-9781920882556","title":"The Bath Fugues","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Bath Fugues\u003c\/em\u003e is a meditation on melancholy and art, in the form of three interwoven novellas. The stories centre respectively on an ageing art forger, a Portuguese poet and opium addict who is also an art collector, and a doctor who has built an art gallery in tropical Queensland.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThese characters are tied by more than their art, each dealing with questions of deception and discovery, counterfeiting and rewriting, transmission and identity. Each character stretches the bonds of trust and friendship in their own unique way.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46715517436140,"sku":"9781920882556","price":37.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/25322473482871.jpg?v=1754400228"},{"product_id":"chinese-postman-by-brian-castro-9781923106130","title":"Chinese Postman","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShortlisted, Miles Franklin Literary Award 2025\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAbraham Quin is in his mid-seventies, a migrant, thrice-divorced, a one-time postman and professor, a writer now living alone in the Adelaide Hills. In \u003ci\u003eThe Chinese Postman\u003c\/i\u003e he reflects on his life with what he calls 'the mannered and meditative inaction of age', offering up memories and anxieties, obsessions and opinions, his thoughts on solitude, writing, friendship and time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHe ranges widely, with curiosity and feeling, digressing and changing direction as suits his experience, and his role as a collector of fragments and a surveyor of ruins. He becomes increasingly engaged in an epistolary correspondence with Iryna Zarebina, a woman seeking refuge from the war in Ukraine. As the correspondence opens him to others, the elaboration of his memories tempers his melancholy with a playful enjoyment in the richness of language, and a renewed appreciation of the small events in nature.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis understanding of the experience of old age is something new and important in our literature. As Quin comments, 'In Australia, the old made way for the young. It guaranteed a juvenile legacy.'\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46997982216428,"sku":"9781923106130","price":37.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/19472423482872.jpg?v=1763202182"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.pro\/collections\/brian-castro.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}