Cirrus@Austlit

'The alienation, oppression and isolation that Gerard Lee records about the writing life in Queensland is not a lonely account. Ambivalence about their home towns, the politics, a stunted culture and devastated townscapes - mixed with the thrill of the exotic and the perverse - has been a rich soil for Thea Astley, David Malouf, Janette Turner Hospital and Rodney Hall. Younger writers such as Andrew McGahan, Mary-Rose MacColl and Venero Armanno also seem to be haunted by a memory of brutal politics and of many lost Brisbanes - mourned as one might the passing of childhood.' (Author's introduction, 69)