{"product_id":"2026100010348-secondhand-the-permit","title":"The Permit","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003cbr\u003eMarkings: Previous owner\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSomewhere in the labyrinthine corridors of a modern bureaucracy, a man needs a permit — and nothing will ever be the same again. Donald Horne's The Permit is a sharp, satirical novel that chronicles the absurd odyssey of an ordinary citizen ensnared in the relentless machinery of officialdom, where every stamp of approval demands another form, and every answer spawns a dozen new questions. With a tone that is at once darkly comic and incisively intelligent, Horne presents a world in which the system itself has become the antagonist, faceless and implacable, reducing human dignity to a series of bureaucratic transactions.\n\nBest known for his landmark work The Lucky Country, Horne brings the same piercing cultural insight to this fiction, using the permit as a razor-sharp lens through which he dissects conformity, institutional power, and the quiet desperation of the individual caught beneath the weight of collective indifference. His prose is lean and purposeful, each scene building an almost Kafkaesque dread that is punctuated by moments of wry, knowing wit. The Permit stands as a timeless parable about the cost of compliance — and leaves the reader wondering just how many permits of their own they have been silently collecting all along.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50813037805787,"sku":"2026100010348-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/3c679d65-2a9e-440f-8312-b2b9e17a3f79.png?v=1792372123","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100010348-secondhand-the-permit","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}