A Brief Affair

Description

'More than one ghost haunts this tender novel about love in its many guises, condoned and illicit. In his deceptively simple, lucid prose, Alex Miller examines the emotional contradictions inherent in apparent opposites as his central character learns to draw strength and inspiration from unlikely places. Hauntingly beautiful, A Brief Affair will resonate long after its pages are closed.' Sylvia Martin, author of Ink in Her Veins: The Troubled Life of Aileen Palmer From the bustling streets of China, to the ominous Cell 16 in an old asylum building, to the familiar sounds and sight of galahs flying over a Victorian farm, A Brief Affair is a tender love story. On the face of it, Dr Frances Egan is a woman who has it all - a loving family and a fine career - until a brief, perfect affair reveals to her an imaginative dimension to her life that is wholly her own. Fran finds the courage and the inspiration to risk everything and change her direction at the age of forty-two. This newfound understanding of herself is fortified by the discovery of a long-forgotten diary from the asylum and the story it reveals. Written with humour, sensitivity and the wisdom for which Miller's work is famous, this exquisitely compassionate novel explores the interior life and the dangerous navigation of love in all its forms. '...richly satisfying and luminous' Emeritus Professor, Tom Griffiths

Alex Miller was born in South London. As a boy he worked in the west country of England before travelling alone to Australia at age 16. He studied history and literature at Melbourne University. A Brief Affair is his fifteenth book. He is the award-winning author of thirteen novels, one biography and one collection of essays and stories and has been published internationally and widely in translation. He is twice winner of Australia's premier literary prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, first in 1992 for The Ancestor Game and again in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He is also an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1993 for The Ancestor Game. Conditions of Faith and Lovesong are both winners of the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier's Awards. Autumn Laing received the coveted Melbourne Prize for Literature, and Coal Creek, the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for 2014. His twelfth novel, the autobiographical The Passage of Love, was described by the noted American scholar Nicholas Birns as 'a masterpiece in every way'.