Cirrus@Austlit

'To say I was charmed by the invitation to launch this collection is not a platitudinous social nicety. I was literally charmed in the original and potentially perilous sense of the word. The meaning invoked in the title.' (Introduction)

'In 2012, Joel Deane suffered a huge shock to the system that could have ended his life. In Year of the Wasp, he tries to come to terms with this devastating experience, attempting — by means of novel and often weird imagery — to reproduce in the reader something of the intensity and alienation he felt. But how do you convey a highly unusual life-episode without toning down its otherness? And how do you convey such otherness in a way that enables others to share in it? These are two questions that reverberate throughout Deane’s Wasp.' (Introduction)