The Conversations at Curlow Creek

In diesem Roman geht es um Dinge wie Moral und Gerechtigkeit, die Unvollkommenheit des Lebens wie des Gesetzes, um das Wirken des Schicksals und die Macht der Liebe: In den 30er Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts treffen zwei Männer im australischen Busch aufeinander. Einer der beiden ist ein Outlaw, der als einziger Überlebender seiner Bande am nächsten Morgen gehenkt werden soll, der andere ein Polizeioffizier, der die Hinrichtung überwachen soll. In dieser Nacht erzählen sie sich ihr Leben und es entsteht eine seltsam vertraute Beziehung zwischen dem Todgeweihten und dem Mann, der das Gesetz vertritt.

The year is 1827, and in a remote hut on the high plains of New South Wales, two strangers spend the night in talk. One, Carney, an illiterate Irishman, ex-convict and bushranger, is to be hanged at dawn. The other, Adair, also Irish, is an officer of the police who has been sent to supervise the hanging. As the night wears on, the two discover unexpected connections between their lives, and learn new truths.Outside the hut, Adair's troopers sit uneasily, reflecting on their own pasts and futures, waiting for the morning to come. With ironic humour and in prose of starkly evocative power, the novel moves between Australia and Ireland to explore questions of nature and justice, reason and un-reason, the workings of fate, and the small measure of freedom a man may claim in the face of death.

Vorwort
'A strange, beautiful novel... It represents a deepening of Malouf's style, offering the reader greater intensity and confirming Malouf's position as one of the most exciting and uncompromising writers now producing novels in English' - Colm Toibin

Autorentext

David Malouf is the internationally acclaimed author of novels including The Great World (winner of the Commonwealth Writers' prize and the Prix Femina Etranger), Remembering Babylon (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), An Imaginary Life, Conversations at Curlow Creek, Dream Stuff ('These stories are pearls' Spectator), Every Move You Make ('Rare and luminous talent' Guardian), his autobiographical classic 12 Edmondstone Street and Ransom. His Collected Stories won the 2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award. In 2008 Malouf was the Scottish Arts' Council Muriel Spark International Fellow. He was born in 1934 and was brought up in Brisbane.