'Until this book arrived on my desk I had not heard of AM Fernando. Few know of him, either in Australia or elsewhere. While the ‘A’ and the ‘M’ might indeed stand for ‘Anthony Martin’, the name ‘Fernando’ is moot: it appears likely the man took this name to signal his affection for Italy, where he was treated as a man, a human being. There exists no known contemporaneous likeness — neither photographic nor artistic — of the man.' (Introduction)