Snake

First UK edition. 8vo. Pp. [vi], 153. Red cloth boards, lettered in gilt to spine; butter-yellow endpapers. Jacket illustration by Kee Levi.

Author's first novel, originally published in 1996 as a paperback original by Minerva in Melbourne, Australia and in 1997 by Ecco Press, New York. Reportedly, it just missed out making the 1996 Booker Prize shortlist, in the days before it was preceded by a longlist.

A 1997 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The story of a mismatched couple – Irene, clever, ambitious and restless, and her quiet, adoring, responsible husband, Rex – who settle as newlyweds on a remote Australian farm, only for their marriage to unravel spectacularly amidst their incompatibilities and the unforgiving, parched landscape. "This snake of a novel is lethal and fast-moving. Domestic dystopia has rarely been distilled into such concentrated literary form." –Publishers Weekly