Miles Allinson

In Moonland

Winner of the Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award 2014 'For nearly five years I have wanted to write something about the surrealist painter Emil Bafdescu: about his paintings, one of which hangs in a little restaurant in Melbourne, and about his disappearance, which is still a mystery. But this is probably not going to be the book I imagined. Nothing has quite worked out the way I planned.' With the inheritance he received upon his father's death, Miles has come to Europe on the trail of the Romanian surrealist, who disappeared into a forest in 1967. But in trying to unravel the mystery of Bafdescu's secret life, Miles must also reckon with his own. Faced with a language and a landscape that remain stubbornly out of reach, and condemned to wait for someone who may never arrive, Miles is haunted by thoughts of his ex-girlfriend, Alice, and the trip they took to Venice that ended their relationship. Uncanny, occasionally absurd, and utterly original, Fever of Animalsis a beautifully written meditation on art and grief. 'Exceptional . . . a worldly book, full of art and ideas, and yet so intimate that it feels like a conversation with a dear, intelligent friend . . . masterful in its treatment of time and memory . . . Allinson is destined for a cult following.' Emily Bitto, Stella Prize-winning author of The Strays 'Heartfelt, darkly comic, and nothing short of extraordinary. Allinson's novel is a rarity - fearless, finely judged, and alive with mystery,' Andrew Croome, Vogel Prize-winning author of Midnight EmpireandDocument Z

Fever of Animals

‘A parent’s love for a child, you probably know this yourself, it’s pretty bottomless. It goes down into the guts of the world. But a child’s love for a parent is different. It goes up. It’s more ethereal. It’s not quite present on the earth.’ In present-day Melbourne, a man attempts to piece together the mystery of his father’s apparent suicide, as his young family slowly implodes. At the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, in 1976, a man searching for salvation must confront his capacity for violence and darkness. And in a not-too-distant future, a woman with a life-altering decision to make travels through a climate-ravaged landscape to visit her estranged father. In Moonland is a portrait of three generations, each grappling with their own mortality. Spanning the wild idealism of the 70s through to the fragile hope of the future, it is a novel about the struggle for transcendence and the reverberating effects of family bonds. This long-awaited second outing from Miles Allinson, the multi-award-winning author of Fever of Animals, will affirm his reputation as one of Australia’s most interesting contemporary fiction writers, and urge us to see our own political and environmental reality in a new light.

Miles Allinson

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