A Season on Earth

‘A Season on Earth recalls us to the truth that Murnane’s avant-gardism emerges out of a resolutely conventional soul…Now that [the novel’s] excised half has been returned, we’re granted a fuller sense of Murnane’s original aims…The comedy here is no less wicked in deployment, but the edge is sharpened…Ludicrous and hectic as [Adrian] Sherd’s casting around for some stable sense of self may be, there is something moving in the efforts he makes…We see an artist inventing himself from scratch…[By the end] Sherd has not yet pinpointed those regions his mature art would explore. What he has learned is that they lie somewhere in the inland empire of his imagination.’ – Monthly
‘A Lifetime on Clouds has tended to be regarded as a lesser work in the context of Murnane’s remarkable oeuvre…In its complete version as A Season on Earth, it reveals itself as a major novel, essential to the understanding of Mur_nane’s development as a writer…It is Murnane’s version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man…Murnane has, belatedly, come to be widely recognised as one of the finest and most original writers Australia has produced. A Season on Earth is easily his longest novel, but it is among his most accessible, and in many respects it can be regarded as a foundational text. It provides a key to the imaginative riches of his substantial body of work…The restoration of this important early novel to its original form is an event to be celebrated.’ – Australian
‘Murnane’s early writing, as shown here, is accessible and often humorous in his own dry way…A Season on Earth could be recommended as an ideal jumping-off point for readers new to Murnane and his particular way of looking at the world.’ – Books + Publishing
‘Gerald Murnane seems to be winning the wider regard his devotees have always known he deserved…A Season on Earth is more like other novels, or more like a novel, than the fictions to come, but Murnane is already determined to make his own forms…[It is] not simply an idiosyncratic take on the Australian Catholic upbringing, but a portrait of an artist as a young man, in which one false vocation has to die so that a true vocation can take its place.’ – Age
‘Murnane is now generally recognised as a major literary figure, and the excavation of this work from the author’s archives is important for Australian literary history.’ * Australian Book Review *
‘Murnane has skill and power in his ability to tell its story, without show-pony histrionics. The restoration of the full text changes the previously truncated novel and gives it a significant new place in Australian literature. A Season on Earth was the peak of Murnane’s early semi-autobiographical style. He would use it as a step to reach towards a new literary ambition.’ * Stuff.co.nz *
‘… a poignant portrait of a lonely individual trying to come to terms with being different in a world regimented not just by his religion but by a conformist society. …beg, borrow or steal yourself a copy as soon as you can.’ * ANZ LitLovers *
‘Murnane’s protagonist is absolutely unforgettable, and the author himself, whose name has been appearing on Nobel Prize–contender lists recently, only adds to his exceptional body of work with this wonderful novel.’ * Publishers Weekly [starred review] *

Gerald Murnane was born in Melbourne in 1939. He is the author of thirteen works of fiction, including the internationally acclaimed novel The Plains and most recently A Season on Earth, as well as a memoir, a collection of essays and a volume of poetry. He has won the Patrick White Award, the Melbourne Prize for Literature, an Adelaide Festival Award, a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and, for Border Districts, a Prime Minister’s Literary Award. Murnane lives in Goroke, in western Victoria.

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