AustLit

'A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on the years from 1972 - 1977 when Coetzee, in his thirties, is sharing a run-down cottage in the suburbs of Cape Town with his widowed father. This, the biographer senses, is the period when he was finding his feet as a writer. Never having met Coetzee, he embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to him: a married woman with whom he had an affair, his favourite cousin Margot, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter had English lessons with him, former friends and colleagues. From their testimony emerges a portrait of the young Coetzee as an awkward, bookish individual with little talent for opening himself to others. Within the family he is regarded as an outsider, someone who tried to flee the tribe and has now returned, chastened. His insistence on doing manual work, his long hair and beard, rumours that he writes poetry evoke nothing but suspicion in the South Africa of the time.

Sometimes heartbreaking, often very funny, Summertime shows us a great writer as he limbers up for his task. It completes the majestic trilogy of fictionalised memoir begun with Boyhood and Youth.' (Provided by the publisher.)

'One of the most famous victims of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was the brilliant Dominican monk Giordano Bruno, burnt at the stake for heresy in 1600.

'Morris West recreates a diary of Bruno's intimate thoughts as he languishes in Rome's worst prison for seven years. Bruno's reflections and frank memories of his life reveal him to be both a fine thinker and a flawed priest—and a man willing to pay the highest price to be true to himself.

'The Last Confession was West's final novel, published posthumously. Written with passion and compassion, this is a voice that mesmerises from the start.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).

'As a young and outspoken priest, Luca Rossini was brutally tortured in an Argentine military prison, and then nursed back to health by the beautiful Isabel.

'Exiled to Rome to avoid scandal, Rossini becomes a cardinal and the pope's confidante. He is admired and feared by his colleagues, for he understands the Church, speak frankly and knows how to present his ancient faith to the media. When the pope becomes gravely ill and a successor must be chosen, Rossini takes a central role.

'In the midst of the political intrigue that surrounds the selection of a new pope, Isabel arrives in Rome—along with Rossini's daughter. Suddenly, Rossini must confront painful memories of Argentina and the scandalous passion of his long-suspended love affair.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Allen & Unwin, 2017).