Poetry
Fredy Neptune
Les Murray · 1998
Synopsis
A verse novel, in eight-line stanzas arranged in five books, narrated by Fredy Boettcher, an Australian sailor of German parents. At the start of the First World War, he is forced to serve on a German warship; in Turkey, he sees crowds burn Armenian women alive, and the shock makes him lose his sense of touch, an infirmity he has to hide. According to Dallas Baptist University, the narrative then takes him to Australia, to the United States during the Depression, to Nazi Germany, then to Shanghai and the South Pacific during the Second World War.
Context
The first edition appeared in 1998 from Duffy & Snellgrove, and an American edition followed in 1999 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which presents the narrative as picaresque and ironic. A German translation by Thomas Eichhorn appeared in 2004. Ruth Padel saw in it an epic that is “haunting, loving, fiercely democratic”, written by a master; Steve Burt, in the Village Voice, judged it the best book by its author.
Who it is for
A long narrative poem in Australian English, in a spoken tone, which reads like an adventure novel.
Prizes and reception
Queensland Premier's Prize for fiction in 1998, then, in 2005, the Mondello Prize in Italy.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.