AustLit

'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).

'Born on a poor dairy farm in Queensland, Frank Harland's life is centred on his great artistic gift, his passionate love for his father and four brothers and his need to repossess, through a patch of land, his family's past. The story spans Frank's life; from before the First World War, through years as a swaggie in the Great Depression and Brisbane in the forties, to his retirement to a patch of Australian scrub where he at last takes possession of his dream. Solitude and society, possession and dispossession, the obsessive and often violent claims of family life and love, illuminate the imagination of the artist and the larger world of events. This is an ambitious novel, presented simply and poetically; the narrative is absorbing, full of incident, and peopled with characters of formidable humour and power.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage reprint).