Napoleon’s Roads
by David Brooks

Magnificent in its scope and imagery, David Brooks’s mastery of the written word is eclipsed in this thought-provoking collection.

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Overview

A writer questions the architecture of words, struggling to capture his ideas before they are lost; a husband excavating beneath his house becomes mesmerised by silence and disappears in search of solitude; a lighthouse keeper dreams that he is a man dreaming that he is the keeper of a lighthouse.

Both evocative and experimental, Brooks’s stories conjure fragments of memory and time, capturing streetscapes and heartscapes in a mosaic-style splendour. Lyrical and perceptive, brave and illuminating, Napoleon’s Roads explores the richness of language and the possibilities of expression, while exemplifying some of the most sophisticated, polished and beautiful contemporary literature in Australia today.

Details

Awards

Reviews

ebook

The Weekend Australian

‘A powerful and accomplished collection, evocative and secretive, and it lingers deliciously long after reading.’

The Sydney Morning Herald

‘The reader … is likely to be engrossed from the start by the bright intelligence and muted sensuality of the latest performance by one of Australia’s most skilled, unusual and versatile writers.’

The West Australian

‘This latest collection ... features a fragmentary approach that allows more light in through the cracks to illuminate Brooks’ characters and situations.’

David Brooks

is the author of five previous collections of poetry and several novels and works of short fiction. His The Book of Sei (1985) was heralded as the most impressive debut in Australian short fiction since Peter Carey’s. His novel The Fern Tattoo (UQP, 2007) was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. The Sydney Morning Herald called his collection of poetry, The Balcony (UQP, 2008), ‘an electric performance’. Until 2013 he taught Australian Literature at The University of Sydney. In recent years he has devoted his writing increasingly to animal advocacy. He lives with rescued sheep in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. In 2014 he was awarded a 2015/16 Australia Council Fellowship for services to Australian and international literature.