'The dust jacket of the first edition of The Plains describes it as 'a lament for an Australian literature that ha never been written'. Thirty years later this strange, disquieting, curious little book continues to stand almost alone in the library of alternative Australian fiction. But make no mistake: this is no archaeological artefact. The Plains is a masterpiece, and, word for word, sentence for sentence, one of the best novels ever written in this country...' (Source: author's introduction, 25)