The Refuge: A Confession
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: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
A work of rare psychological intensity, The Refuge: A Confession by Australian author Seaforth Mackenzie presents the intimate inner world of a narrator compelled to reckon with his own complicity, desire, and self-deception. Set against the backdrop of mid-twentieth century Australian life, the novel chronicles a deeply personal confession that lays bare the tensions between social expectation and private yearning, casting its protagonist in an unsparing moral light. The subtitle — a confession — signals from the outset that this is no ordinary narrative; it is an act of deliberate, almost painful self-exposure. Mackenzie, best known for The Young Desire It and Dead Men Rising, writes with a lyrical precision that balances brutal honesty with literary grace, drawing the reader into a world where self-knowledge is both the wound and the cure. His prose carries the measured cadence of a writer acutely conscious of language's power to both conceal and reveal. Framed by a striking epigraph from Michael Faul's The Anatomy of Failure — a reminder that all created things are by their nature false — the novel invites readers to question the very act of confession itself. Is the refuge a sanctuary, or merely another beautifully constructed lie?
Author: Seaforth Mackenzie
Format: Hardback
Published: 1954, Jonathan Cape / Angus & Robertson
Genre: Modern fiction
Edition: 1st ed.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Tanning and foxing
A work of rare psychological intensity, The Refuge: A Confession by Australian author Seaforth Mackenzie presents the intimate inner world of a narrator compelled to reckon with his own complicity, desire, and self-deception. Set against the backdrop of mid-twentieth century Australian life, the novel chronicles a deeply personal confession that lays bare the tensions between social expectation and private yearning, casting its protagonist in an unsparing moral light. The subtitle — a confession — signals from the outset that this is no ordinary narrative; it is an act of deliberate, almost painful self-exposure. Mackenzie, best known for The Young Desire It and Dead Men Rising, writes with a lyrical precision that balances brutal honesty with literary grace, drawing the reader into a world where self-knowledge is both the wound and the cure. His prose carries the measured cadence of a writer acutely conscious of language's power to both conceal and reveal. Framed by a striking epigraph from Michael Faul's The Anatomy of Failure — a reminder that all created things are by their nature false — the novel invites readers to question the very act of confession itself. Is the refuge a sanctuary, or merely another beautifully constructed lie?