'When an Australian writer in Paris asks a local taxi driver for the Australian Cultural Centre, the reply is blunt: “that would be a fairly small building?”
'Victor Barker, the editor of Paris Studio, self-mockingly relates the anecdote, and an impish, dry humour permeates this anthology of work by fourteen Australian novelists, playwrights, poets and academics who have, at one time or another, stayed in an artists’ studio owned by the Australian Government. Tony Maniaty calls the Arc de Triomphe “the bullring of Paris” and Jean Kent describes how “a cold wind crocodile-skins the Seine”.' (Introduction)