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Fredy Neptune - by Les Murray (Paperback)

Fredy Neptune - by  Les Murray (Paperback) - 1 of 1
$18.31 sale price when purchased online
$23.00 list price
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About this item

Highlights

  • A riveting, beautiful novel in verse by Australia's greatest contemporary poet, winner of the 1996 T. S. Eliot Prize.
  • About the Author: Les Murray (1938-2019) was a widely acclaimed poet, recognized by the National Trust of Australia as one of the nation's treasures in 2012.
  • 272 Pages
  • Poetry, Australian & Oceanian

Description



Book Synopsis



A riveting, beautiful novel in verse by Australia's greatest contemporary poet, winner of the 1996 T. S. Eliot Prize.

I never learned the old top ropes,
I was always in steam.
Less capstan, less climbing,
more re-stowing cargo.
Which could be hard and slow
as farming- but to say

Why this is Valparaiso!

Or: I'm in Singapore and know my way about
takes a long time to get stale
.-from Book I, "The Middle Sea"

When German-Australian sailor Friedrich "Fredy" Boettcher is shanghaied aboard a German Navy battleship at the outbreak of World War I, the sight of frenzied mobs burning Armenian women to death in Turkey causes him, through moral shock, to lose his sense of touch. This mysterious disability, which he knows he must hide, is both protection and curse, as he orbits the high horror and low humor of a catastrophic age.Told in a blue-collar English that regains freshness by eschewing the mind-set of literary language, Fredy's picaresque life-as, perhaps, the only Nordic Superman ever-is deep-dyed in layers of irony and attains a mind-inverting resolution.



Review Quotes




"Murray's way with language and imagery is thrilling. . . . He has given his protagonist a biting plebeian voice, a vernacular that soars." --The New York Times

"Working-class lyricism undiminished in two hundred and fifty-three pages. . . . You can rely on the unexpected to keep happening here, and always to be exhilarating." --The New Yorker

"Highly charged in ideas as in language, Fredy Neptune may jump from sin to salvation and from Suez to Sydney in a single stanza, but it is no novelty act. Neither archer nor centaur, it is a novel. And a ripping good yarn." --Los Angeles Times




About the Author



Les Murray (1938-2019) was a widely acclaimed poet, recognized by the National Trust of Australia as one of the nation's treasures in 2012. He received the T. S. Eliot Prize for the Best Book of Poetry in English in 1996 for Subhuman Redneck Poems, and was also awarded the Gold Medal for Poetry presented by Queen Elizabeth II.


Murray also served as poetry editor for the conservative Australian journal Quadrant from 1990-2018. His other books include Dog Fox Field, Translations from the Natural World, Fredy Neptune: A Novel in Verse, Learning Human: Selected Poems, Conscious and Verbal, Poems the Size of Photographs, and Waiting for the Past.

Dimensions (Overall): 9.02 Inches (H) x 6.07 Inches (W) x .84 Inches (D)
Weight: .88 Pounds
Suggested Age: 22 Years and Up
Sub-Genre: Australian & Oceanian
Genre: Poetry
Number of Pages: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Format: Paperback
Author: Les Murray
Language: English
Street Date: January 10, 2000
TCIN: 90809463
UPC: 9780374526764
Item Number (DPCI): 247-43-3700
Origin: Made in the USA or Imported
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Shipping details

Estimated ship dimensions: 0.84 inches length x 6.07 inches width x 9.02 inches height
Estimated ship weight: 0.88 pounds
We regret that this item cannot be shipped to PO Boxes.
This item cannot be shipped to the following locations: American Samoa (see also separate entry under AS), Guam (see also separate entry under GU), Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico (see also separate entry under PR), United States Minor Outlying Islands, Virgin Islands, U.S., APO/FPO

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