Adam's life has been ruined by war . . . A veteran of the Iraq conflict who has suffered such extensive bodily trauma that he can only really survive by means of a mechanical skeleton.Marianna's has been ruined by men . . . A woman who has had to flee the country after her husband lied to the wrong people.John Philip's by too much money . . . Until he receives a surprise inheritance in the evening of his own life. Rodney Hall, two-times winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, presents the story of three people experiencing a period of life they never thought possible, and, perhaps, should never have been granted at all...PRAISE FOR RODNEY HALL"Reminiscent of both Joyce and Garcia Marquez" Washington Post"Magnificent. So good that you wish you had written it yourself" Salman Rushdie"A wondrous blend of the fabulous and the surreal" The Australian"Brilliant" David Mitchell

To find God a 'client' prepares to be buried alive. A Korean woman quietly puts the finishing touches to tidying her employer's house, hoping to shame the Japanese invader. Choirboys wait wordlessly for their cue, shut up high inside the dome of Florence cathedral. Richly evoking times past through historical figures and otherworldly imagery, this moving and playful collection of fictions explores the many facets of silence, all connected by a web of echoes. Silence is a storytelling tour de force from one of Australia's finest writers. Rodney Hall is one of Australia's finest writers. He has won the Miles Franklin Award twice for Just Relations and The Grisly Wife and many of his novels and poems have been published internationally. His acclaimed memoir popeye never told you was published in 2010. He lives in Melbourne.

In this memoir of his childhood in England during the Second World War, author Rodney Hall uses a little boy's point of view to tell the story of a time that changed the world. A time that not only changed the world, but one that would put into train events that were to shape Rodney's life. Rodney's father died when he was six months old, before the War began. His mother, finding herself out of work and responsible for three children, takes a job as a clerk in the Ministry of Food. At night she tells stories of 'home', the farm her family once owned at Kangaroo Valley in Australia. For Rodney this fabled place became his hope of escape from the bombing. The imagined Australia of 'home', plus the absence of a father in his life, underlie a charmed world in which three childen are free to roam the streets and the surrounding woods while the war rages across Europe. This is a rare and touching memoir. The voice of the young Rodney, the innocence with which he surveys the world and...

Winner of the 1982 Miles Franklin Award.Once a wild goldmining town, Whitey's Fall is now a small, brooding community of close and distant relations.One by one, the young are leaving for the alluring uncertainties of the world beyond. The old stay on, steadfast in their pride and sense of belonging. Remembering is their religion; the mountain is their altar. They are the guardians of the land's unbroken promise.But time brings strangers with different dreams, a different sense of justice. And their coming is a violation, a breakfast for parasites.