AustLit

'On the boat stood a man of wood and an innocent of bone. The dark brown water of the river was crowded with the floating stalls and, like the others, the timbers of his vessel boasted the stamps of various collisions on their boughs. But beneath the battered exterior they housed the keepers of the market. A strong wind sent the boats rocking like cribs in a sunlit nursery while creamy white beads rattled in the barrels of the wooden man's narrow yellow boat...' (Publication abstract)