A voyage of discovery

Few writers anywhere in the world can match the esteemed Australian for stylistic daring. At just 150 pages, The Voyage (only his fifth novel in 32 years) is a short but sumptuous feast that rewards close reading. The nonlinear narrative comes in a dense, chapterless torrent, looping constantly back on itself, brimming with allusion and oblique trickery.

Australian piano maker Frank Delage has come to Vienna, one of the old-world hearts of classical music, to peddle his latest ware, a pale brown Frankenstein’s monster ugly to the eye but beyond gorgeous in its tone, clean as ice even across a broad array of barely competent demonstrations, from barrelhouse honky tonk, to Lizst, to Lara’s Theme from Doctor Zhivago. He impresses no one until a fortuitous encounter with Amalia von Schalla, descended from one of the high families, and who can make or break reputations with the turn of her lips or the dismissive flutter of her fingers. Suddenly, a major social door swings open.