"A MASTERPIECE… AS EXHILARATING AS ANYTHING PROPOSED BY SWIFT, KAFKA, BORGES OR CALVINO": FIRST EDITION OF THE PLAINS, INSCRIBED BY GERALD MURNANE

MURNANE, Gerald. The Plains. Victoria, Australia: Norstrilia, 1982. Octavo, original blue cloth, original dust jacket. $1100.

First edition of the elusive third novel by Australian novelist Murnane, widely seen as the next winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, inscribed by him, "For D—-Gerald Murnane," a fine copy.

"A strong case could be made for Murnane, who recently turned 79, as the greatest living English-language writer most people have never heard of… Yet his work has been praised by J.M. Coetzee and Shirley Hazzard… Teju Cole has described Murnane as 'a genius' and a 'worthy heir to Beckett.' Last year Ladbrokes placed his odds at winning the Nobel Prize for Literature at 50 to 1—better than Cormac McCarthy, Salman Rushdie and Elena Ferrante" (New York Times). To fellow Australian novelist Wayne Macauley, "The Plains is a masterpiece and, word for word, sentence for sentence, one of the best novels ever written in this country… as exhilarating as anything proposed by Swift, Kafka, Borges or Calvino… aside from its startling originality, The Plains is also a very funny book… Out on Murnane's plains you get everything: the great perplexity of human existence, the itch of human flesh, the tug of the heart, the dreamy imagining of togetherness, the comedy of trying" (Introduction, The Plains, 2012 edition). Issued by Melbourne, Australia's small Norstrilia Press, which ceased operation in 1985.

A fine inscribed copy.