AustLit

'Like the best true life adventures, the story of Werner Pelz is stranger than fiction. Forced to flee Nazi Germany for being Jewish, he was then interned in England for being German. Shipped to Australia on the notorious HMT Dunera, he spent two years in internment camps in Hay and Tatura. After returning to Britain, his life evolved into a spiritual quest that led him to become an Anglican vicar, to author popular books (including God Is No More), to frequently appear on the BBC, and to become a Guardian columnist. Decades after his wartime Australian exile, he returned to teach Sociology at La Trobe University, continuing his search for a new way of thinking, a new mythology.

'In the mid-1980s, a young university student, Roger Averill, was taught by this quietly charismatic man. The two developed an unlikely friendship, one that was to last until Werner's death, after which Roger's research unexpectedly revealed a deeper dimension —a personal life filled with familial drama, pain and poignancy.

'Both memoir and biography, Exile: The Lives and Hopes of Werner Pelz is a compelling account of a remarkable man's life-long search for a truth unbound by orthodoxy. It is also a lyrical evocation of an abiding friendship in which a teacher and a student share the lessons of love and loss, discovering that while the questions they ask have no answers, the act of asking them creates a meaning of its own.' (From the publisher's website.)

'In Keeping Faith the innocence and certainties of childhood are delicately tested against the realities of adult life. Josh and Gracie grow up in a working class world centred on the values of faith and family. Both cherish their father, a lay preacher, and their mother, but for Josh the complex secrets, doubts and subtleties of the world do not allow for certainty. In adulthood he works as a labour ward attendant, his younger sister Gracie as a nurse on a remote mission station in Papua New Guinea.

'While Josh's conviction falters, the unfailing faith of his sister leads to tragic consequences. As events move between 1975 and 1994, between a family drama in outer suburban Melbourne and a tribal rebellion in Melanesia, faith and doubt become entwined.' (From the publisher's website.)