Montebello
"Montebello is a beautifully crafted book. It switches effortlessly between travel literature, reportage, local history, nature writing and film and literature criticism... This dazzling memoir is a perfectly integrated work of art. Drewe’s literary instincts are as impeccable as his ear for the English language is unfaltering, and his latest memoir has all the more force for being set down with such a delicate hand."
- RICHARD KING, The Australian
"Robert Drewe at his supple, subtle and funny best."
- PETER TEMPLE, The Age Books of the Year
"Montebello is at heart a moving and profound love story. This is a splendid memoir with many moods – delicate, tough, ironic, compassionate – that are beautifully controlled and paced."
- BRIAN MATTHEWS, Australian Book Review
"Clear, unadorned, cool, sardonic, penetrating, incisive…The atmosphere this riveting memoir evokes is so vivid and visceral you can almost feel the fine white sand between your toes and the ferocity of the sun."
- CAROLINE BAUM, Booktopia
"Montebello is imaginative Australian storytelling at its best, a worthy sequel to the wonderfully evocative The Shark Net by a man who is undoubtedly one of Australia’s greatest living writers."
- Weekend Bookworm, ABC
"Drewe is a born raconteur: brilliantly funny, debonair, a larrikin and a rake…This memoir works such sweet and poignant charm. On sharks, parents and childhood pleasures, Drewe is the nation’s undisputed laureate."
- Catherine Ford, The Monthly
"This is a beautiful book."
- Sydney Morning Herald
- RICHARD KING, The Australian
"Robert Drewe at his supple, subtle and funny best."
- PETER TEMPLE, The Age Books of the Year
"Montebello is at heart a moving and profound love story. This is a splendid memoir with many moods – delicate, tough, ironic, compassionate – that are beautifully controlled and paced."
- BRIAN MATTHEWS, Australian Book Review
"Clear, unadorned, cool, sardonic, penetrating, incisive…The atmosphere this riveting memoir evokes is so vivid and visceral you can almost feel the fine white sand between your toes and the ferocity of the sun."
- CAROLINE BAUM, Booktopia
"Montebello is imaginative Australian storytelling at its best, a worthy sequel to the wonderfully evocative The Shark Net by a man who is undoubtedly one of Australia’s greatest living writers."
- Weekend Bookworm, ABC
"Drewe is a born raconteur: brilliantly funny, debonair, a larrikin and a rake…This memoir works such sweet and poignant charm. On sharks, parents and childhood pleasures, Drewe is the nation’s undisputed laureate."
- Catherine Ford, The Monthly
"This is a beautiful book."
- Sydney Morning Herald
The Drowner
Winner of seven National Prizes for Literature:
The NSW Premier's Prize, Australian Book of the Year, Victorian Premier's Prize, West Australian Premier's Prize, West Australian Book of the Year, Adelaide Festival Prize, South Australian Book of the Year.
In the warm alkaline waters of the public bath, a headstrong young engineer accidentally collides with a beautiful actress. From this innocent collision of flesh begins a passion that takes them from the Wiltshire Downs to the most elemental choices of life and death in the Australian desert. But their intense romance is but part of the daring story that unfolds. Mingling history, myth and technology with a modern cinematic and poetic imagination, Robert Drewe presents both a fable of European ambitions in an alien landscape and a magnificently sustained metaphor of water as the life and death force.
“With The Drowner Drewe has moved into the forefront of contemporary writing in English.”
- ANDREW REIMER, Sydney Morning Herald
“Drewe’s writing is cinematically immediate and crackles with an intensity of sense…A mesmeric and utterly addictive book.”
- Independent on Sunday, London
“Myth, magic and melody coalesce in a fertile delta of the imagination. Spellbinding.”
- Sunday Times, London
“Drewe is a profoundly elegant writer. His magnificent novel is the best thing I have read this year.”
- Sunday Tribune, Dublin
“Full of incident, oddity, humanity and poetry…This is in the true sense a delightful book.”
- THOMAS KENEALLY
The NSW Premier's Prize, Australian Book of the Year, Victorian Premier's Prize, West Australian Premier's Prize, West Australian Book of the Year, Adelaide Festival Prize, South Australian Book of the Year.
In the warm alkaline waters of the public bath, a headstrong young engineer accidentally collides with a beautiful actress. From this innocent collision of flesh begins a passion that takes them from the Wiltshire Downs to the most elemental choices of life and death in the Australian desert. But their intense romance is but part of the daring story that unfolds. Mingling history, myth and technology with a modern cinematic and poetic imagination, Robert Drewe presents both a fable of European ambitions in an alien landscape and a magnificently sustained metaphor of water as the life and death force.
“With The Drowner Drewe has moved into the forefront of contemporary writing in English.”
- ANDREW REIMER, Sydney Morning Herald
“Drewe’s writing is cinematically immediate and crackles with an intensity of sense…A mesmeric and utterly addictive book.”
- Independent on Sunday, London
“Myth, magic and melody coalesce in a fertile delta of the imagination. Spellbinding.”
- Sunday Times, London
“Drewe is a profoundly elegant writer. His magnificent novel is the best thing I have read this year.”
- Sunday Tribune, Dublin
“Full of incident, oddity, humanity and poetry…This is in the true sense a delightful book.”
- THOMAS KENEALLY
The Shark Net
Winner of the following prizes for Literature:
The West Australian Premier's Prize for non-fiction, the Brisbane "Courier Mail" Book of the Year and the Vision Australia Book of the Year Award.
Aged six, Robert Drewe moved with his family from Melbourne to Perth, the world’s most isolated city – and proud of it. This sun-baked coast was innocently proud, too, of its tranquillity and friendliness. Then a man he knew murdered a boy he also knew. The murderer randomly killed eight strangers – variously shooting, strangling, stabbing, bludgeoning and hacking his victims, and running them down with cars – and innocent Perth was changed forever.
In the middle-class suburbs which were the killer’s main stalking grounds, the mysterious murders created widespread anxiety and instant local myth.
Robert Drewe: ‘The murders and their aftermath have both intrigued me and weighed heavily on me for three decades. To try to make sense of this time and place, and of my own childhood and adolescence, I had, finally, to write about it.’
“An instant classic…Constructed with superb craftsmanship, written with precision and tough humour, and with an extraordinary story to tell, it seems certain to enjoy a long life.”
- RANDOLPH STOW, Times Literary Supplement
“Fascinating…A moving and unpretentious memoir of a precocious youth, a bittersweet tribute to youth’s optimism.”
- JOYCE CAROL OATES, New York Review of Books
“In this magnificent and haunting memoir of murder, sharks and rubber goods, Robert Drewe proves himself too subtle and too adventurous a writer to settle for ‘the truth, plain and simple’. He creates instead a resurrection of his boyhood in Australia which is as ornamented, engaging and ambitious as any great novel.”
- JIM CRACE
“Deft, nuanced, beautifully structured – the equal of the novels that have made Drewe one of Australia’s most loved and celebrated writers.”
- PETER CAREY `
“Captivating…A charming coming-of-age story with undertones of noir memoir. Drewe tracks brilliantly the emotional challenges of a coastal boyhood, Australian style. Superb…Wonderful…Macabre.”
- New York Times Book Review
“Suffused with a wonderfully achieved sense of menace…Drewe himself is a master of the undertow, and his subtle, suggestive recollections transform boyish tales into a far more original, affecting meditation on the nature of childhood itself.”
- The Guardian
“So very sharp, atmospheric, brutal and deeply moving. There is a strange and haunting sweetness in the voice of the narrator, a clean wondering charm…It is beautiful.”
- CARMEL BIRD, Australian Book Review
“Like Albert Camus’s North Africa, blinding in its brightness.”
- New York Times
“A grace-filled and captivating achievement. Drewe offers gardens of literary delight, ripe with tragedy, zaniness, color, texture, vibrancy and, above all, high comedy… Drewe has created something very special – something that is at once full of wonderful humor and genuine sorrow.”
- San Diego Union-Tribune
“Strange and utterly recognisable. He makes childhood alive with the wondrousness of its own time and place.”
- DRUSILLA MODJESKA, The Australian’s Review of Books
“This beautifully limpid work is a marvellous combination of personal memoir, reportage and imaginative re-creation … A compelling read.”
- ROD MORAN, The West Australian
“Nothing short of dazzling. . . Deft, poignant and very funny.”
- CASSANDRA PYBUS, Sydney Morning Herald
“A beautifully told memoir of a time, a place and a city.”
- Sunday Times
“This fine, moving book is both a charming and funny memoir and an unsettling true-crime story. His ability to create vivid pictures with a handful of words is virtually unmatched.”
- Booklist, American Library Association
“Damnably compelling. . . Drewe stakes out new literary territory.”
- Kirkus Review
“This is not a book about sharks. But Drewe writes so well and creates or recreates his early life with such sensitivity that I don’t think it matters.”
- Literary Review
The West Australian Premier's Prize for non-fiction, the Brisbane "Courier Mail" Book of the Year and the Vision Australia Book of the Year Award.
Aged six, Robert Drewe moved with his family from Melbourne to Perth, the world’s most isolated city – and proud of it. This sun-baked coast was innocently proud, too, of its tranquillity and friendliness. Then a man he knew murdered a boy he also knew. The murderer randomly killed eight strangers – variously shooting, strangling, stabbing, bludgeoning and hacking his victims, and running them down with cars – and innocent Perth was changed forever.
In the middle-class suburbs which were the killer’s main stalking grounds, the mysterious murders created widespread anxiety and instant local myth.
Robert Drewe: ‘The murders and their aftermath have both intrigued me and weighed heavily on me for three decades. To try to make sense of this time and place, and of my own childhood and adolescence, I had, finally, to write about it.’
“An instant classic…Constructed with superb craftsmanship, written with precision and tough humour, and with an extraordinary story to tell, it seems certain to enjoy a long life.”
- RANDOLPH STOW, Times Literary Supplement
“Fascinating…A moving and unpretentious memoir of a precocious youth, a bittersweet tribute to youth’s optimism.”
- JOYCE CAROL OATES, New York Review of Books
“In this magnificent and haunting memoir of murder, sharks and rubber goods, Robert Drewe proves himself too subtle and too adventurous a writer to settle for ‘the truth, plain and simple’. He creates instead a resurrection of his boyhood in Australia which is as ornamented, engaging and ambitious as any great novel.”
- JIM CRACE
“Deft, nuanced, beautifully structured – the equal of the novels that have made Drewe one of Australia’s most loved and celebrated writers.”
- PETER CAREY `
“Captivating…A charming coming-of-age story with undertones of noir memoir. Drewe tracks brilliantly the emotional challenges of a coastal boyhood, Australian style. Superb…Wonderful…Macabre.”
- New York Times Book Review
“Suffused with a wonderfully achieved sense of menace…Drewe himself is a master of the undertow, and his subtle, suggestive recollections transform boyish tales into a far more original, affecting meditation on the nature of childhood itself.”
- The Guardian
“So very sharp, atmospheric, brutal and deeply moving. There is a strange and haunting sweetness in the voice of the narrator, a clean wondering charm…It is beautiful.”
- CARMEL BIRD, Australian Book Review
“Like Albert Camus’s North Africa, blinding in its brightness.”
- New York Times
“A grace-filled and captivating achievement. Drewe offers gardens of literary delight, ripe with tragedy, zaniness, color, texture, vibrancy and, above all, high comedy… Drewe has created something very special – something that is at once full of wonderful humor and genuine sorrow.”
- San Diego Union-Tribune
“Strange and utterly recognisable. He makes childhood alive with the wondrousness of its own time and place.”
- DRUSILLA MODJESKA, The Australian’s Review of Books
“This beautifully limpid work is a marvellous combination of personal memoir, reportage and imaginative re-creation … A compelling read.”
- ROD MORAN, The West Australian
“Nothing short of dazzling. . . Deft, poignant and very funny.”
- CASSANDRA PYBUS, Sydney Morning Herald
“A beautifully told memoir of a time, a place and a city.”
- Sunday Times
“This fine, moving book is both a charming and funny memoir and an unsettling true-crime story. His ability to create vivid pictures with a handful of words is virtually unmatched.”
- Booklist, American Library Association
“Damnably compelling. . . Drewe stakes out new literary territory.”
- Kirkus Review
“This is not a book about sharks. But Drewe writes so well and creates or recreates his early life with such sensitivity that I don’t think it matters.”
- Literary Review
Our Sunshine
Our Sunshine is the tale of a man whose story outgrew his life, Robert Drewe’s strikingly imaginative recreation of the inner life of Ned Kelly, the National Hero and Devil Incarnate of the Antipodes. Written with brilliant clarity and impressionistic economy, it carries the reader into a dreamworld of astonishing and violent revelation, an entrancing and frightening landscape of murder, sexuality, persecution, robbery, vanity, religion, politics and corruption.
“This is a mesmerizing novel.”
- Times Literary Supplement
“Robert Drewe’s revisionary – and visionary – novel makes your heart thud.”
- Time Out, London
“This book is addictive. Drewe’s language is, as ever, astonishing, with every one of his sentences containing a shiver of exactness and immediacy.”
- New Statesman
“A tour de force…A model of style and passion.”
- THOMAS SHAPCOTT, The Age
“Drewe has performed a remarkable feat of literary sleight-of-hand. . . Our Sunshine is a marvellous book.”
- ANDREW REIMER, Sydney Morning Herald
Grace
Some relevant facts about Grace Molloy. Apart from being named after a 100,000-year-old skeleton, she was twenty-nine and for much of the past three years she’d been hiding from an erotomaniac.
Intricately plotted, breathlessly paced, Grace reflects on the countless varieties of love and the nature of fear and territory. At once intimate and grand in scale, this disquieting and provocatively witty novel reveals the full vigour of an artistic vision in turn poetic and cinematic.
“Drewe has created a gripping, well-paced thriller. But Grace is more than that: its complex fabric is the product of unusual dexterity, sophistication and intellectual range. Drewe is one of the most significant novelists currently working.”
- JEM POSTER, The Guardian
“Pacey, scary and dripping with atmosphere – also unexpectedly witty.”
- The Times, London
“Unflagging story and pace, plot and subplot tightly interwoven, a style thjat applies poetry in translucent strokes… Intense in scope and often sensuously detailed, it is also grand and sweeping. Grace is proof that reports of the death of the novel are greatly exaggerated.”
- DEBRA ADELAIDE, The Australian
“Superbly written and utterly absorbing, Grace resonates long after the last page has been turned.”
- Vogue
“Provocative and thrilling.”
- New Weekly
“Nail-biting stuff. Drewe skilfully underpins it with a reflection on the nature of existence itself and the ineluctable desire of humanity to find a place to belong.”
- Big Issue, London
“An embarrassment of riches from one of our greatest storytellers."
- LUCY CLARK, Sunday Telegraph
“A prodigal imagination. He is still operating on a grander, more generous scale than most of his contemporaries.”
- PETER PIERCE, The Bulletin
“Grace is like a flare of hope in an empty sea.”
- CHRISTOPHER BANTICK, The Mercury
“One of the undisputed masters of Australian story-telling.”
- ABC Radio National
“Although it may seem irreverent to call Robert Drewe’s latest offering a thumping good read when it is so finely crafted, I do so unapologetically.”
- Australian Bookseller and Publisher
“Drewe infuses this taut thriller-cum-outback-adventure with power and grace. You’ll love it.”
- Australian Women’s Weekly
“The subtle parallels that Drewe establishes among the events and characters of this novel, his distinctive ironic humour, and especially the creation of another impressively insightful portrait of a complex woman, combine to make Grace at once a compelling, dark and at times humorous novel.”
- JOHN HAY, Courier Mail
The Rip
Robert Drewe returns to the short-story territory he has made his own. Set against the backdrop of the Australian coast, as randomly and imminently violent as it is beautiful, The Rip reveals the fragility of relationships between husbands and wives, children and parents, friends and lovers.
“You will read the powerful short stories in this collection with your heart in your mouth. They are the stories of a writer at the top of his form, and they will attach themselves to you.”
- CARMEL BIRD, The Age
“Thirteen exquisitely focussed tales, all dealt with through a rich yet limpid literary chemistry, by what might be called a sumptuous minimalism.”
- The West Australian
“Funny and unsettling, joyous and heartbreaking; a fine addition to Drewe’s ravishing body of work.
- MATTHEW CONDON, Courier Mail
“The Rip is incredibly good – dazzling. These stories lie in wait for the reader. They’re wonderful.”
- BRENDA WALKER
“Expansive, perfectly controlled, almost achingly painful, it shows Drewe at the height of his powers.
- JAMES BRADLEY, Australian Literary Review
“One of Australia’s finest writers returns to familiar territory with even greater skill, wit, pathos and marvellous economy of language.”
- LUCY CLARK, Sunday Telegraph
“There are few writers who can match Drewe’s delicate balance of comedy and tragedy...the bedrock of the power of his writing.”
- Adelaide Advertiser
“A fully rewarding collection of stories...the best we’ve got.”
- MALCOLM KNOX, Sydney Morning Herald
“A delight... He has a laid-back clarity of vision that makes you want to look at the world again to see what you missed.”
- CHRISTOPHER BANTICK, Sunday Tasmanian
“Drewe drills down into the emotions of middle Australians. He entices readers with simplicity, then belts them with significance.”
- Weekend Australian
The Savage Crows
Robert Drewe’s first novel is the revelatory story of the most tragic, cruel, brave and misguided episode in Australia’s history -- the “saving” of a unique race, the Tasmanian Aborigines -- seen through the eyes of an obsessive young present-day narrator. Breathtaking and visionary in its scope, The Savage Crows breaks new fictional ground in its affecting portrayal of the collision of worlds, generations and mythologies. From suburban apathy and cynicism blossoms a wild, foolhardy and beautiful hinterland of time and space.
“I was riveted by it. I more than liked it, I was compelled by it.”
- THOMAS KENEALLY
“It is a rare pleasure to be able to hail The Savage Crows as the best first novel I have read for at least ten years.”
- Melbourne Herald
“The best Australian novel I have read for a long time.”
- DOUGLAS STEWART, Sydney Morning Herald
“The Savage Crows has the magic of a great book about it. It is your genuine and rare ‘compelling’ story.”
- Vogue
“Excitingly ambitious and wholly engrossing.”
- The Guardian
A Cry in the Jungle Bar
Big, bullish Dick Cullen, light sleeper, former Rugby star and present expert on the water buffalo, is lumbering through his tour of duty with a UN agency in Asia. Totally out his depth among his small, deft, knowing colleagues, he lurches sweatily from bar to bar across various tropical states of emergency. Only in the Nameless Nightclub does he realise it is only a matter of time before his nightmares become reality.
“Shaped with precision, wit and tenderness. It is impressive both for the sharpness of its comedy and for its control of serious themes. It’s the work of a writer who deserves that blessed double-rating: he’s Important and Entertaining.”
- The Age
“A milestone in Australian literature. It is often black farce, but from the first page there is a foreboding that makes the book a thriller of Greenesque power.”
- Financial Review
“Critics have likened him to both Graham Greene and Patrick White. He is more his own man.”
- The West Australian
“Supercharged with an indeterminate atmosphere of menace, intrigue and vice.”
- Courier Mail
The Bodysurfers
Set among the surf and sand hills of the Australian beach – and the tidal changes of three generations of the Lang family – The Bodysurfers has become an Australian and international classic. A short story collection which became a best-seller, never out of print since 1983, it has been adapted for film, television, radio and the theatre, The Bodysurfers marked a sea-change in Australian literature.
“These stories breathe. Taut yet teeming with life, seductive yet stylistically chaste, they are shot through with gritty phrases that catch at one’s throat.”
- Sydney Morning Herald Books of the Year
“A remarkably seductive and exuberant collection which manages, in its portrayal of human relationships, to be both mordant in tone and playful in manner.”
- Times Literary Supplement
"The Bodysurfers is a brilliant book. It is clever, touching and at times desperately funny.”
- Canberra Times
“His short stories are front-page featurettes transformed by poetic vision.”
- Time
“His characters repeatedly hurl themselves at life and lovers. There is something very poignant in these stories.”
- Newsweek
Fortune
Winner of the National Book Council Prize for Fiction.
A tale of passion and pursuit, Fortune is the story of Don Spargo, a modern explorer who finds a sunken treasure ship off the West Australian coast, and becomes a folk hero, a lover -- and a hunted and haunted man. Suspenseful, satirical and deeply moving, it challenges the nature of both reality and legend in those scenes of modern conflict – from the media to art, from politics to crime – that have obsessed the Western individual since World War II.
“A gifted writer. A compelling treasure.”
- Time
“Fascinating reading, full of inventions, irony and play. We should be grateful to Drewe for applying his skill to important tasks. It is bringing our literature forward.”
- Times on Sunday
“A fine work that makes you want to read it in one sitting."
- The West Australian
A tale of passion and pursuit, Fortune is the story of Don Spargo, a modern explorer who finds a sunken treasure ship off the West Australian coast, and becomes a folk hero, a lover -- and a hunted and haunted man. Suspenseful, satirical and deeply moving, it challenges the nature of both reality and legend in those scenes of modern conflict – from the media to art, from politics to crime – that have obsessed the Western individual since World War II.
“A gifted writer. A compelling treasure.”
- Time
“Fascinating reading, full of inventions, irony and play. We should be grateful to Drewe for applying his skill to important tasks. It is bringing our literature forward.”
- Times on Sunday
“A fine work that makes you want to read it in one sitting."
- The West Australian
The Bay of Contented Men
Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book in Australia, the Pacific and Asia.
Witty and seductive, inventive and disturbing, The Bay of Contented Men ranges in location from east and west coast Australia to the United States, Japan and Hong Kong. This is the neighbourhood of this nation of edgy suburbanites whose desires and misadventures are conjured here into intriguing fictions. Robert Drewe’s characters face the confrontations of gender, race and generations with an ironic desperation born of love, lust and wistful memory.
“This is writing at the highest level of narrative achievement, a book which deserves international acclaim and respect.”
- JIM CRACE, Times Literary Supplement
“Robert Drewe is masterly... one of Australia’s most original writers, exploring contemporary culture and identity in ways which keep exposing new angles of our uneasy repose.”
- HELEN DANIEL, Sydney Morning Herald
“Crystalline, taut and accessible… While Drewe’s stories are beautifully lucid and direct, they are crafted with a highly sophisticated narrative technique.”
- The West Australian
Witty and seductive, inventive and disturbing, The Bay of Contented Men ranges in location from east and west coast Australia to the United States, Japan and Hong Kong. This is the neighbourhood of this nation of edgy suburbanites whose desires and misadventures are conjured here into intriguing fictions. Robert Drewe’s characters face the confrontations of gender, race and generations with an ironic desperation born of love, lust and wistful memory.
“This is writing at the highest level of narrative achievement, a book which deserves international acclaim and respect.”
- JIM CRACE, Times Literary Supplement
“Robert Drewe is masterly... one of Australia’s most original writers, exploring contemporary culture and identity in ways which keep exposing new angles of our uneasy repose.”
- HELEN DANIEL, Sydney Morning Herald
“Crystalline, taut and accessible… While Drewe’s stories are beautifully lucid and direct, they are crafted with a highly sophisticated narrative technique.”
- The West Australian
