This award-winning novel is the story of Harrison B. Guest, or Happy for short, an Irish Setter who has taught himself to read and write. Also known as Archimedes, Happy walks the streets pondering life's big issues: religion, death, the inequality between humans and animals. He also understands seagulls.  'At times thoughtful, at times hilarious, this is the work of a truly gifted writer.' —  Publishers Weekly, US. First published in 1984, Archimedes and the Seagle won the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal in 1985. David Ireland AM is the author of three Miles Franklin Literary Award-winning novels: The Unknown Industrial Prisoner (1971), The Glass Canoe (1976), and A Woman of the Future (1979), also joint winner of The Age Book of the Year in 1980. His most recent novel is The World Repair Video Game (2015), shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Fiction Award in 2016. In 2013, he was the recipient of...

Winner of the Miles Franklin Award 1976. Introduction by Nicolas Rothwell. Meat Man is a regular at the Southern Cross pub in Sydney. With his tribe he sits and drinks and watches as life spirals around him. David Ireland’s novel tells his stories, about the pub, its patrons and their women, about the brutal, tender and unexpected places his glass canoe takes him.David Ireland was born in 1927 in south-western Sydney. His first novel, The Chantic Bird, was published in 1968. In the next decade he published five novels, three of which won the Miles Franklin Award: The Unknown Industrial Prisoner, The Glass Canoe and A Woman of the Future. In 1985 he received the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for Archimedes and the Seagull. David Ireland lives in New South Wales.Nicolas Rothwell is the author of Heaven and Earth, Wings of the Kite-Hawk, Journeys to the Interior and The...

A Woman of the Future, first published in 1979, was David Ireland's best-selling sixth novel and his third to win the Miles Franklin Award.An imaginative tour de force, it is the story of the young life of Anthea Hunt, from conception to sexual awakening. It is controversial and brilliant, and unlike anything else in Australian literature.Now published as a Text Classic, it features a new introduction from Kate Jennings.David Ireland started out writing poetry and drama but then turned to fiction. His first novel, The Chantic Bird, was published in 1968. In the next decade he published five further novels, three of which won the Miles Franklin Award: The Unknown Industrial Prisoner, The Glass Canoe and A Woman of the Future.David Ireland was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1981. In 1985 he received the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for his novel Archimedes and the Seagull.Kate Jennings...

Winner of the Miles Franklin Award in 1971.On the shores of Botany Bay lies an oil refinery where workers are free to come and go. But they are also part of an unrelenting, alienating economy from which there is no escape. In the first of his three Miles Franklin Award-winning novels, originally published in 1971, David Ireland offers a fiercely brilliant comic portrait of Australia in the grip of a dehumanising labour system.This edition of The Unknown Industrial Prisoner comes with an introduction by Peter Pierce.David Ireland was born in 1927 on a kitchen table in Lakemba in south-western Sydney. He lived in many places and worked at many jobs, including greenskeeper, factory hand, and for an extended period in an oil refinery, before he became a full-time writer. Ireland started out writing poetry and drama but then turned to fiction. His first novel, The Chantic Bird, was published in 1968. In the next decade he...

The Chantic Bird is the confession of a teenage anarchist, who combines a contempt for contemporary society with a great tenderness and warmth for his younger siblings and for Bee, the girl who looks after them.The first of David Ireland's masterful novels, The Chantic Bird contains the same characteristic indictment of the bovine mindlessness of collective humanity, and the home-owning wage slaves.This edition of The Chantic Bird comes with a new introduction by Geordie Williamson.David Ireland was born in 1927 in south-western Sydney. He lived in many places and worked at many jobs, including greenskeeper, factory hand, and for an extended period in an oil refinery, before he became a full-time writer. His first novel, The Chantic Bird, was published in 1968. In the next decade he published five further novels, three of which won the Miles Franklin Award: The Unknown Industrial Prisoner, The Glass...