Frank Delage, a middle-aged Australian, arrives in Vienna with the most daring of propositions. He has invented a revolutionary piano and means to market it to the grand old world of classical music. A chance meeting with one Amalia von Schalla brings new possibilities – a soirée, an introduction to her daughter Elisabeth, dinner with an avant-garde composer.
But when the sheer audacity of his campaign dawns on him, he takes a slow boat home to the southern hemisphere. As it meanders through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, he is afforded ample time to reflect on tensions between the old world and the new. And, for all his travails, he is not going home empty-handed…
But when the sheer audacity of his campaign dawns on him, he takes a slow boat home to the southern hemisphere. As it meanders through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, he is afforded ample time to reflect on tensions between the old world and the new. And, for all his travails, he is not going home empty-handed…
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Reviews
'His works are to be savoured for their elegant artifice ... This is particularly true of The Voyage' Andrew Reimer, Sydney Morning Herald.
'This masterful concoction engages, excites and perturbs with singular virtuosity' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times.
'One reads in a permanent faint fever, on tenterhooks, never knowing quite where a sentence or a paragraph may veer off to' John Banville.
'We won't see a finer piece of fiction in the longest while' Peter Craven, Melbourne Age.
'Worthy of Henry James ... Deserves to be Booker nominated' Steve Barfield, The Lady.