Ken Gelder

So one of his embarrassments is that he's never read any of his novels, and all the settlers around him are quoting Dickens at him, and he doesn't really know where the quotes come from.

So he's also a bit humiliated.

And I think all of that makes for a character who's not especially engaging.

Yes, that's true.

I mean, one of the interesting things about the novel is that it has some boundary riders, or we sometimes call them hut shepherds.

You know, that novel by Tim Winton, The Hut Shepherd, it sort of comes out of that colonial figure of the hut shepherd.

And the Hutt Shepherd is an interesting character because he lives on the edge of the frontier, really.

And he's the first to go when Aboriginal people attack.

Or he's the first point of defense when Aboriginal people attack as well.

The Hutt Shepherd is a solitary figure.

I mean, he's in enforced self-isolation, if I can put it that way.

And one of the narratives about the Hutt Shepherd is that he can go mad.

And so there are one or two of those sorts of figures.

in Keneally's novel.

Yeah, it does.

No, it's not.

No.

So over the weekend, I just finished a little book, a very small book, by a Japanese writer called Junichiro Tanizaki.

He wrote in the 1920s and 1930s through to the 1960s, so he's not contemporary.

He was a crazy writer, really.