A Haunted Land
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: First Edition
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Condition remarks: DJ: good with minor wear along the edges, in mylar. Binding: remains intact. Boards: faded spine; square and clean. Pages: Yellowed with light foxing on the book block. Markings: small bookseller sticker on the fep.
Beneath the vast, sun-scorched skies of the Western Australian outback, A Haunted Land announces the extraordinary debut of one of Australia's most gifted literary voices. Randolph Stow's 1956 novel chronicles the tormented Maguire family across generations, trapping them within the unyielding grip of their remote pastoral station — a landscape that is as much psychological prison as physical place. At the heart of the narrative is Andrew Maguire, a patriarch whose obsessions and sins cast long, dark shadows over his descendants, binding them to a cycle of passion, violence, and spiritual desolation that seems as inescapable as the red earth itself. Stow writes with a remarkable maturity for a debut novelist — he was barely twenty when the book was published — wielding prose that is both lyrical and unsparing, suffused with a brooding Gothic intensity that places A Haunted Land firmly in the tradition of great colonial literature. The novel interrogates the psychological cost of wresting life from an indifferent and ancient continent, arguing that the land itself exacts a terrible toll on those who seek to possess it. Critics have long recognised this work as a precursor to Stow's later masterpieces, and its haunting power endures as a testament to the darkness that can lie beneath the Australian pastoral myth — leaving the reader to wonder whether any family can truly escape the ghosts they inherit.
Author: Randolph Stow
Format: Hardback
Published: 1956, Macdonald, London
Genre: Australian history
Edition: First Edition
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Condition remarks: DJ: good with minor wear along the edges, in mylar. Binding: remains intact. Boards: faded spine; square and clean. Pages: Yellowed with light foxing on the book block. Markings: small bookseller sticker on the fep.
Beneath the vast, sun-scorched skies of the Western Australian outback, A Haunted Land announces the extraordinary debut of one of Australia's most gifted literary voices. Randolph Stow's 1956 novel chronicles the tormented Maguire family across generations, trapping them within the unyielding grip of their remote pastoral station — a landscape that is as much psychological prison as physical place. At the heart of the narrative is Andrew Maguire, a patriarch whose obsessions and sins cast long, dark shadows over his descendants, binding them to a cycle of passion, violence, and spiritual desolation that seems as inescapable as the red earth itself. Stow writes with a remarkable maturity for a debut novelist — he was barely twenty when the book was published — wielding prose that is both lyrical and unsparing, suffused with a brooding Gothic intensity that places A Haunted Land firmly in the tradition of great colonial literature. The novel interrogates the psychological cost of wresting life from an indifferent and ancient continent, arguing that the land itself exacts a terrible toll on those who seek to possess it. Critics have long recognised this work as a precursor to Stow's later masterpieces, and its haunting power endures as a testament to the darkness that can lie beneath the Australian pastoral myth — leaving the reader to wonder whether any family can truly escape the ghosts they inherit.