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The Bath Fugues

374 pages
Paperback, 21 x 15 cm
Published May 2009
ISBN 9781920882556
Epdf ISBN 9781925336801
Epub ISBN 9781925336818

The Bath Fugues

Brian Castro

The Bath Fugues is Castro at his best, in a wonderful performance wrought from intrigue, romance, deception – and comedy. The book is composed of three interwoven novellas, the first centred on an ageing art forger; the second on a Portuguese poet, opium addict and collector; the third told by a well-connected doctor, with a cabinet of venom, and an art gallery on the north Queensland coast.

Around these characters circle others, in the contrapuntal manner of the fugue suggested by the book’s title. Some are related, some fugitive, some like the essayist Montaigne, the poet Baudelaire or the philosopher Benjamin, enter the story from the past.

Motifs recur – baths, bicycles, clocks, addiction, the counterfeit – deepening the lines of association and inheritance which bind their lives, and giving weight to the friendships thrust upon them.

…one of the most exacting, yet rewarding of Australian novelists, and when the mood is on him, one of the most amusing as well. Peter Pirece, The Age

His way of working has produced startlingly original storytelling, the sort that reminds me, with joy, again and again, that anything is possible in literature. Sue Bond, Asian Review Of Books

About the Author

Brian Castro

Brian Castro is the author of the prize-winning Australian classic Shanghai Dancing, and recipient of the 2014 Patrick White Literary Award. His novels include The Garden Book and The Bath Fugues, both shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and Street to Street, loosely based on the life of the poet Christopher Brennan. His most recent work, a verse novel titled Blindness and Rage, won the 2018 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry and the Mascara Avant-garde Award for Fiction.

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Awards

Shortlisted, 2010 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Shortlisted, 2010 Adelaide Festival Award for Fiction

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