A Better Place
Melbourne
:
Text Publishing
,
2023
26031842
2023
single work
novel
war literature
'In a novel of stark and lyrical beauty, award-winning author Stephen Daisley portrays the brutal effects of war on two New Zealand brothers.
'The old people in the district would often say that Roy was not quite the same after he come back. There was a brother. A twin brother, Tony. Tony Mitchell, different boy but a good rugby player. Bit of a mental case, they said, but Roy would have none of it. He always stayed close to Tony when they were growing up. They both went off to fight, must have been 1940. Only the one come back, though.
'Crete, they thought. We lost Tony over there.' (Publication summary)
Coming Rain
Melbourne
:
Text Publishing
,
2015
8138809
2015
single work
novel
'The contractor left a letter from their father and a white carton of tailor-made American cigarettes with a big red circle on them. Lucky Strike toasted. He would remember his mother holding the carton as she hugged him and told him to do his best. The crinkly sound of the cellophane. The other kids around them like chooks as he tried to say goodbye Mum.
'Western Australia, 1955. Lew McLeod has been travelling and working with Painter Hayes since he was a boy. Shearing, charcoal burning—whatever comes. Painter made him his first pair of shoes. But Lew’s a grown man now. And with this latest job, shearing for John Drysdale and his daughter Clara, everything will change.
'Stephen Daisley writes in lucid, rippling prose of how things work, and why; of the profound satisfaction in hard work done with care, of love and friendship and the damage that both contain.' (Publication summary)
Traitor
Melbourne
:
Text Publishing
,
2010
Z1714727
2010
single work
novel
'What would make a soldier betray his country?
'In the battle-smoke and chaos of Gallipoli, a young New Zealand soldier helps a Turkish doctor fighting to save a boy's life. Then a shell bursts nearby; the blast that should have killed them both consigns them instead to the same military hospital.
'Mahmoud is a Sufi. A whirling dervish, he says, of the Mevlevi order. He tells David stories. Of arriving in London with a pocketful of dried apricots. Of Majnun, the man mad for love, and of the saint who flew to paradise on a lion skin. You are God, we are all gods, Mahmoud tells David; and a bond grows between them.
'A bond so strong that David will betray his country for his friend.' (From the publisher's website.)
