Frank Moorhouse: Strange Paths

‘Lamb has laid the foundation of a cumulative work that may well reach, even exceed, David Marr’s Patrick White- A Life, which many consider the high-water mark of Australian biography.’
NIGEL FEATHERSTONE, GUARDIAN

Frank Moorhouse was legendary in Australian literary and cultural life, the author of a huge and diverse body of work – essays, short stories, journalism, scripts, the iconic Edith Trilogy – an unapologetic activist, intellectual, libertarian and champion of freedom of speech and sexual self-determination. Though he lived his life publicly, his private stories have not been shared, the many paths he forged left unexamined, until now.

Matthew Lamb shared many a luncheon table with Moorhouse and immersed himself in the archived life and cultural ephemera of Frank’s world. This landmark study, from Moorhouse’s own publisher, the first in a projected two volumes, is the fascinating and comprehensive story of how one of Australia’s most original writers and pioneer of the discontinuous narrative came to be.

Fearless, sardonic and utterly dedicated to his creative life, his relationships with friends, other writers and lovers were complex and long-lasting. Lamb shares the strange paths that Frank traversed and gives us a cultural history of the times that shaped Moorhouse and which Moorhouse himself helped to shape.