AustLit

'The Last Man in Europe, a lean novel of artful mimicry, was the working title of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four before it was published in 1949. Melbourne writer and political adviser Dennis Glover seems to have absorbed all Orwell was and yearned to be by the time he came to the ordeal of his final, invalid years spent writing  that  last  word  on  our  political future.' (Introduction)

'West London in the present day. Two women have a chance encounter in a supermarket. They are about the same age, both pregnant, both due in early December.' (Introduction)

'People who suffer from mental illness still struggle to throw off the stigma cast by residual Victorian attitudes and present-day disdain or fear. We have been reluctant to recognise that mental health needs full community acknow­ledgment as a vital branch of healthcare. Fortunately, this is changing.' (Introduction)