Liars: Australian New Novelists

by Helen Daniel

"Liars" looks at eight contemporary Australian novelists - Peter Carey, Elizabeth Jolley, David Ireland, Murray Bail, David Foster, Nicholas Hasluck, Peter Mathers and Gerald Murnane - who are breaking away from the conventional novel and opening strange new territories in post-modernist fictions, full of contradictions, artifice and comedy. All cross the boundaries between reality and fiction, in fictions which are fantastic, comic, surrealistic and zany. Their work is full of lies and inventions, and they conscript the reader into the fiction as collaborator. The bizarre worlds of the new novel in Australia opens up startling new perspectives on contemporary Australian society and contemporary reality.

384 pages, Paperback

First published September 6, 1988