We are pleased to announce that the first title in our new Bonfire Monograph Series, Landscape Written in His Face: People, Places and Ideas in the Life and Work of Christopher Koch by Jamie Grant is now available to pre-order at a hefty discount until early May.
Get it here: https://bonfirebooks.org/product/landscape-written-in-his-face-by-jamie-grant-pre-order/
In a lifetime that ran from the steamship to the digital age Christopher Koch earned the distinction of being Australia’s (and certainly Tasmania’s) best-selling literary novelist, which is sort of like saying Britain’s most successful baseballer or New Zealand’s top chef. Australia, not famed for the literary arts, tends to produce outliers who doggedly pursue their own interests and styles. Christopher Koch famously took almost exactly seven years between each of his novels, except when he took fourteen due to abandoning a nearly finished project. Like our most celebrated poet, Les Murray, Koch worked hard to make himself commonly understood and delighted in fan letters from people of all walks of life, not just the literati. The height of his successes was undoubtedly The Year of Living Dangerously (1979), made into a film of the same name by Peter Weir starring Mel Gibson. His subsequent books dealt with the Vietnam War, the Irish political prisoner experience in 19th century Van Diemen’s Land, Australian diplomacy in China and the contemporary music industry, among other topics. Always foregrounded was Koch’s insistence on the world behind the material world, where spirits, good and bad, dwelt and influenced human lives in various ways. Characters in his novels suffer both for belief and lack of belief in supernatural powers both in and out of canonical Christian contexts.
Sometimes maligned as a writer of “airport novels” Koch’s work is psychologically, historically and emotionally complex while never courting obscurantism or lexical obfuscation. Since his death in 2013 Koch’s star has fallen somewhat. We are pleased to make a small contribution to remedying this oversight.
Koch’s friend and collaborator, the veteran poet Jamie Grant, has written a brilliant work of criticism, biography and cultural history that is the perfect introduction to Christopher Koch for those who have not read him, a deeper look for those who have and a record of an Australian publishing milieu fast fading from sight.
More broadly we are pleased that this deep yet accessible work will set the tone for our Monograph Series. A reminder that pitches are always open for our Monograph Series. See our website for details.
Purchase your copy of Landscape Written in His Face here: https://bonfirebooks.org/product/landscape-written-in-his-face-by-jamie-grant-pre-order/