Cirrus@Austlit

'The unique collection explores the sea change in Australian life today. Two years before the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games the nation is witness to transformations of all types, whether they are radical, magical, sexual or political. In this especially-commissioned anthology, twenty-five of Australia's finest writers and photographers take up the challenge of exploring that theme, including David Malouf, Lily brett, Robert Drewe, Beth Yahp, Robert Dessaix, Tracey Moffatt, Anne Zhalka and William Yang.

This unusual anthology conterpoints essays and photographic images, short stories and the cartoons of Matthew Martin to challenge, surprise and entertain.' (Source: Back cover)

'Here are nine haunting stories from the award-winning author of "Remembering Babylon," in which history and geography, as well as the past and the present, combine and often collide, illuminating the landscape and revealing the character of Australia.

'An eleven-year-old boy sees his father in his own elongated shadow only to realize that he will not return from the war. In a parting moment, a young woman hired to "marry" vacationing soldiers, grasps the weight of the word "woe." When a failing farmer senselessly murders a wandering aborigine, he imperils his son but discovers in the spring of sympathy that follows the power to influence others.

'Wise and moving, startling and lyrical, "Dream Stuff" reverberates with the unpredictability of human experience, revealing people who are shaped by the mysterious rhythms of nature as well as the ghosts of their own pasts.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

In this stunning collection, internationally acclaimed writer David Malouf gives us bookish boys and taciturn men, strong women and wayward sons, fathers and daughters, lovers and husbands, a composer and his muse. These are their stories, whole lives brought dramatically into focus and powerfully rooted in the vividly rendered landscape of the vast Australian continent. Malouf writes about men and women looking for something they seem to have missed, or missed out on, puzzling over not only their own lives but also the place they have come to occupy in the lives of others. This single volume gathers both a new collection of Malouf’s short fiction, Every Move You Make, and all of his previously published stories.

Source: Penguin Random House

(http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/106744/the-complete-stories-by-david-malouf/9780307386038/)