Atlas (International) assertion Atlas i(A130113 works by) (Organisation) assertion (a.k.a. Atlas Press; Uitgeverij Atlas)
Born: Established: Amsterdam,
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Netherlands,
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Western Europe, Europe,
;
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9 31 y separately published work icon A Fraction of the Whole Steve Toltz , Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2008 Z1451497 2008 single work novel

It's a simple family story ... From the New South Wales bush to bohemian Paris, from sports fields to strip clubs, from the jungles of Thailand to a leaky boat in the Pacific, A Fraction of the Whole follows the Deans on their freewheeling, scathingly funny and deeply moving quest to leave their mark on the world.

'After an injury which cut short a golden sporting career, Jasper's uncle became Australia's most beloved murderer. After a lifetime of impossible ideas and a brief stint as the country's saviour, Jasper's father became Australia's most loathed philosopher. This is Jasper's attempt to make sense of it all. (Back cover and Libraries Australia)

4 11 y separately published work icon Quicksand Steve Toltz , Melbourne : Random House Australia , 2015 8222389 2015 single work novel

'The literary event of 2015. Steve Toltz follows his extraordinary debut, the Booker-shortlisted A Fraction of the Whole, with a novel that's just as edgy, hilarious and compelling: Quicksand, at once unmistakeably Toltzean and unlike anything that's come before.

'Aldo has been so relentlessly unlucky – in business, in love, in life – that the universe seems to have taken against him personally. Even Liam, his best friend, describes him as 'a well-known parasite and failure'. Aldo has always faced the future with optimism and despair in equal measure, but this last twist of fate may finally have brought him undone.

'There's hope, but not for Aldo.

'Liam hasn't been doing much better himself: a failed writer with a rocky marriage and a dangerous job he never wanted. But something good may come out of Aldo's lowest point. Liam may finally have found his inspiration. Together, maybe they can turn bad luck into an art form.

'What begins as a document of Aldo's disasters develops into a profound story of love lost, found and betrayed; of freedom and incarceration; of suffering and transcendence; of fate, faith and friendship; of taking risks – in art, work, love and life – and finding inspiration in all the wrong places.

'Quicksand is a fearlessly funny, outrageously inventive dark comedy that looks contemporary life unblinkingly in the eye. It confirms Steve Toltz as one of our most original and insightful novelists.' (Publication summary)

22 56 y separately published work icon Theft : A Love Story Peter Carey , Milsons Point : Random House , 2006 Z1244799 2006 single work novel humour (taught in 5 units) Michael 'Butcher' Boone is an ex-'really famous' painter now reduced to living in the remote country house of his biggest collector and acting as caretaker for his younger brother, Hugh, a damaged man of imposing physicality and childlike emotions. Together they've forged a delicate equilibrium, a balance instantly disarrayed when a mysterious young woman named Marlene walks out of a rainstorm and into their lives. Beautiful, smart, and ambitious, she's also the daughter-in-law of the late great painter Jacques Liebowitz, one of Butcher's earliest influences. She's sweet to Hugh and falls in love with Butcher, and they reciprocate in kind. And she sets in motion a chain of events that could be the making--or the ruin--of them all. (Source: Trove)
10 132 y separately published work icon The Aunt's Story Patrick White , London : Routledge , 1948 Z470389 1948 single work novel (taught in 27 units)

'With the death of her mother, middle-aged Theodora Goodman contemplates the desert of her life. Freed from the trammels of convention, she leaves Australia for a European tour and becomes involved with the residents of a small French hotel. But creating other people's lives, even in love and pity, can lead to madness. Her ability to reconcile joy and sorrow is an unbearable torture to her. On the journey home, Theodora finds there is little to choose between the reality of illusion and the illusion of reality. She looks for peace, even if it is beyond the borders of insanity.' (From the publisher's website.)

4 y separately published work icon Paradijs Verloren Cees Nooteboom , Amsterdam : Atlas , 2004 Z1658574 2004 single work novel Alma, a young Brazilian women recovering from a traumatic and brutal attack, sets out from Sao Paulo and winds up in Australia, where Dutch novelist Erik Zontag, in Perth for a literary conference, stumbles upon a winged woman curled up in a closet in an empty house. (Source: Trove)
4 21 y separately published work icon Too Many Men Treasure Lily Brett , Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 1999 Z330394 1999 single work novel 'Ruth Rothwax, a successful, independent, New York woman with her own business, Rothwax Correspondence, can find order and meaning in the words she writes for other people - condolence letters, thank-you letters, even you-were-great-in-bed letters. But as the devoted daughter of Edek Rothwax, an Auschwitz survivor with a somewhat idiosyncratic approach to the English language, Ruth can find no words to help her understand the loss her family experienced during World War II. Ruth is obsessed with the idea of returning to Poland with her father, Edek, but she doesn't quite understand why she feels this so intensely. To make sense of her family's past - and the way her parents' lives were suddenly torn apart by the Nazis - yes. To visit the places where her beloved mother and father lived and almost died, certainly. But there's more to this trip than Ruth's extraordinary perceptiveness can identify. By facing Poland and the past, she can confront her own future.' (Publisher's blurb)
11 14 y separately published work icon 30 Days in Sydney : A Wildly Distorted Account Peter Carey , New York (City) : Bloomsbury , 2001 Z895300 2001 single work autobiography travel 'After living abroad to years, novelist Peter Carey returns home to Sydney and attempts to capture its character with the help of his old friends, drawing the reader into a wild and wonderful journey of discovery and rediscovery as bracing as the southerly buster that sometimes batters Sydney's shores. Famous sights such as Bondi Beach, the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge and the Blue Mountains all take on a strange new intensity when exposed to the penetrating gaze of the author and his friends.' - back cover (2008).
11 182 y separately published work icon A Fringe of Leaves Patrick White , London : Jonathan Cape , 1976 Z476217 1976 single work novel (taught in 8 units)

"Set in Australia in the 1840s, A FRINGE OF LEAVES combines dramatic action with a finely distilled moral vision. Returning home to England from Van Diemen's land, the Bristol Maid is shipwrecked on the Queensland coast and Mrs Roxburgh is taken prisoner by a tribe of aborigines, along with the rest of the passengers and crew. In the course of her escape, she is torn by conflicting loyalties - to her dead husband, to her rescuer, to her own and to her adoptive class."

Source: Goodreads
31 192 y separately published work icon True History of the Kelly Gang Peter Carey , St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 2000 Z668312 2000 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 29 units)

'"I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false."

'In TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semi-literate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.' (From the publisher's website.)

3 21 y separately published work icon Just Like That Lily Brett , Sydney : Macmillan Australia , 1994 Z232454 1994 single work novel 'A novel about the daughter of Holocaust survivors, a professional obituary writer who escapes Melbourne for New York, but cannot escape the reminders of who she is and where she has come from.' (The Bibliography of Australasian Judaica 1788-2008, p. 9)
25 341 y separately published work icon Voss : A Novel Patrick White , London : Eyre and Spottiswoode , 1957 Z872480 1957 single work novel (taught in 33 units)

'Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality.

'From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White's novel is a work of extraordinary power and virtuosity.'

Source: Random House Books (Sighted 21/09/2012)

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