'Eminent Australian author Gail Jones examines the intersections of art and life via a fictionalised biography of Joseph Conrad in her distinctively immersive and rich prose.
'At Cambridge University, in the summer of 1992, Australian student Helen is completing her thesis on Joseph Conrad. But she is distracted by a charming and dangerous lover, Justin, and by a ghost manuscript, her anti-thesis, which she has left on a train.
'Haunted by this loss and others, by Justin's destructive tendencies and by details of Conrad's life, Helen is unmoored. And then the drama of the lost manuscript sets in motion a series of events-with possibly fatal consequences.
'In her masterly new novel, Gail Jones traverses the borders between art and life, between life and death, in a journey through literary history and emotional landscapes. Elegantly written, deftly crafted, One Another covers new territories of grief, memory and narrative.' (Publication summary)
'The protagonist of Gail Jones’s One Another accidentally leaves the manuscript of the book she is writing on a train. Helen is a PhD student from Tasmania who is living in Cambridge while she researches and writes a thesis on Joseph Conrad, the Ukrainian-born mariner and writer who eventually settled in England. Neither a conventional scholarly account of Conrad’s work nor a true biography, the manuscript slips away from Helen’s possession just as it slips from the moorings of conventional categories of form.' (Introduction)
'Jones’s latest novel is complex and delicate, charting echoes in the lives of a PhD student in 90s Cambridge and the Heart of Darkness author, who she is fascinated by.'
'It is 1992, the year of the Mabo judgment, and Helen, a scholarship student from Tasmania, is undertaking a PhD at Cambridge, writing a thesis titled ‘Cryptomodernism and Empire’. It is on Joseph Conrad, a writer about whom her peers are contemptuous. Helen is dealing with a forlorn and dismissive supervisor, and the disappointment that her experience abroad was not what she had expected. Her ‘fantasy of vigorous literary talk, multisyllabic and theoretical, was soon defeated’.' (Introduction)
'It is 1992, the year of the Mabo judgment, and Helen, a scholarship student from Tasmania, is undertaking a PhD at Cambridge, writing a thesis titled ‘Cryptomodernism and Empire’. It is on Joseph Conrad, a writer about whom her peers are contemptuous. Helen is dealing with a forlorn and dismissive supervisor, and the disappointment that her experience abroad was not what she had expected. Her ‘fantasy of vigorous literary talk, multisyllabic and theoretical, was soon defeated’.' (Introduction)
'Jones’s latest novel is complex and delicate, charting echoes in the lives of a PhD student in 90s Cambridge and the Heart of Darkness author, who she is fascinated by.'
'The protagonist of Gail Jones’s One Another accidentally leaves the manuscript of the book she is writing on a train. Helen is a PhD student from Tasmania who is living in Cambridge while she researches and writes a thesis on Joseph Conrad, the Ukrainian-born mariner and writer who eventually settled in England. Neither a conventional scholarly account of Conrad’s work nor a true biography, the manuscript slips away from Helen’s possession just as it slips from the moorings of conventional categories of form.' (Introduction)
Gail Jones Was Saved by Reading
Michael Williams
(presenter),
2024
27637586
2024
single work
podcast
'Joseph Conrad only ever captained one ship in his lifetime – the Otago. In a strange turn of events, the wreckage of Joseph Conrad’s ship now lies on the banks of the Derwent River in Hobart. And it's there that novelist Gail Jones took the inspiration for her latest novel, One Another. This week, Michael sits down with Gail for a wide-ranging discussion about desire, hauntings, and the life and work of Joseph Conrad.' (Production summary)
