Out of the Line of Fire (Text Classics)

"A remarkable and brainy work of metafiction."—Kirkus (starred review)

"Experimental, extraordinary. . . . One of my favorite Australian novels."—Australian

When a brilliant young philosophy student begins recounting his life—from his inquisitorial father and passionate mother to his eccentric grandmother who paid for his sexual initiation with the beautiful Andrea—we are lured into a mysterious and erotic maze. But what in fact is fact, and what in fiction is fiction? Brilliantly seductive, Out of the Line of Fire was the literary sensation of the year when it was first published in 1988 and was a hit in France, Germany and Italy.

Mark Henshaw has lived in France, Germany, Yugoslavia and the United States. He currently lives in Canberra. OUT OF THE LINE OF FIRE won the FAW Barbara Ramsden Award and the NBC New Writers Award on first publication in 1988. It was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Age Book of the Year Award. It was one of the biggest selling Australian literary novels of the decade, and is being republished in the Text Classics series.
In 1989 Mark was awarded a Commonwealth Literary Fellowship, and in 1994 he won the ACT Literary Award. Under the pseudonym J. M. Calder, in collaboration with John Clanchy, he has written two crime novels, If God Sleeps (1996) and And Hope to Die (2007). His work has been widely translated. For many years he was a Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Australia. He recently returned to writing fiction full-time. His most recent book is THE SNOW KIMONO.

Stephen Romei is a journalist, writer and critic. He is literary editor of The Australian newspaper, and former editor of the Australian Literary Review.