Wayne Macauley: 7 books

It begins with the normally healthy Beth—aged-care worker, wife of David, mother of Lettie and Em—feeling vaguely off-colour. A locum sends her to Dr Yi for some tests. ‘There are a few things here that aren’t quite right,’ says Dr Yi, ‘and sometimes it is these little wrongnesses that...

Caravan Story is a brilliant satire on the role of the artistic community in our society and the changing response of the government to their role. The first caravans arrive in a convoy. Wayne Macauley's narrator, Wayne Macauley, is in one of them. He's one of the artists removed from his home,...

Shortlisted, WA Premier's Book Awards, 2011 Shortlisted, Victorian Premier's Book Awards, 2012 Shortlisted, Melbourne Prize for Literature, Best Writing Award, 2012 The Cook, Wayne Macauley's breakout novel, is funny and sad, strange and satirical, and weirdly moving. At Cook School,...

Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, Wayne Macauley's first novel, is a bitingly dark take on the great Australian dream. Fable-like, effortlessly readable and ultimately moving, it shows us the depth of Macauley's talent. Bram and his fellow residents are drawn by a dream: the promise of a...

Ninety years after they were thought to have died heroically in the Great War, the stretcher-bearer Simpson and his donkey journey through country Victoria, performing minor miracles and surviving on offerings left at war memorials. They are making their twenty-ninth, and perhaps final, attempt to...

Winner of the Patrick White Literary Award, 1999. Introduction by Wayne Macauley. There is no book in Australian literature like The Plains. In the two decades since its first publication, this haunting novel has earned its status as a classic. A nameless young man arrives on the plains...

Demons is an extraordinary social satire whose ending will leave you reeling. It is the middle of winter. Seven friends travel to a remote coastal beach house for the weekend. Without phones, internet or television, they sit around the fireplace, telling stories, each exposing the foibles...