Out Of The Line Of Fire [Inscribed and Signed by the Author]

"Is she your girlfriend? Wolfi asked.
I'm not sure, I say.
But you sleep with her?
No. Yes, once.
How many women have you slept with?
God, Wolfi, what sort of question is that?"

To an Australian writer visiting Heidelberg, the brilliant young philosophy student Wolfi is a compelling character. From the start, the details of Wolfi's life are curious - from his inquisitorial father and passionate mother to the grandmother who pays for his sexual initiation with a prostitute and to his connections with the outlandish rogue Karl.

As we are lured by Wolfi's obsession into the mysterious and erotic maze of this novel, we find nothing is as it appears.

What in fact is fact and what in fiction is fiction?

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.