WINNER OF THE 2014 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AWARD WINNER OF THE 2016 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS PEOPLE'S CHOICE WINNER OF THE 2016 WESTERN AUSTRALIA PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS PEOPLE'S CHOICE

For nearly five years I have wanted to write something about the surrealist painter Emil Bafdescu: about his paintings, one of which hangs in a little restaurant in Melbourne, and about his disappearance, which is still a mystery. But this is probably not going to be the book I imagined. Nothing has quite worked out the way I planned.

With the small inheritance he received upon his father’s death, Miles has come to Europe on the trail of the Romanian surrealist, who disappeared into a forest in 1967. But in trying to unravel the mystery of Bafdescu’s secret life, Miles must also reckon with his own.

Faced with a language and a landscape that remain stubbornly out of reach, and condemned to wait for someone who may never arrive, Miles is haunted by thoughts of his ex-girlfriend, Alice, and the trip they took to Venice that ended their relationship.

Uncanny, occasionally absurd, and utterly original, Fever of Animals is a beautifully written meditation on art and grief.