{"product_id":"2026200014283-secondhand-such-is-life","title":"Such Is Life","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: N\/A\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew novels have captured the sprawling, sun-baked spirit of colonial Australia with as much wit and irreverence as Such Is Life. Written under the pseudonym Tom Collins — the pen name of Joseph Furphy — the novel chronicles a series of loosely connected episodes in the life of Tom Collins, a government official wandering the Riverina district of New South Wales in the 1880s, navigating a richly populated world of bullockies, squatters, and swagmen with sardonic charm and philosophical digression.\n\nFurphy's masterwork is widely regarded as one of the great achievements of Australian literature, celebrated for its uniquely democratic voice, its celebration of the working-class bushman, and its sly, labyrinthine narrative structure that rewards patient and attentive readers. The prose is dense, digressive, and shot through with dry humour, presenting a narrator whose self-professed reliability is delightfully unreliable — a literary device that feels startlingly modern. Equal parts social satire, philosophical treatise, and bush yarn, Such Is Life remains an essential lens through which to understand the mythology and identity of a nation still finding its voice. What secrets lie buried beneath Collins' cheerful contradictions?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49161020178651,"sku":"2026200014283-SECONDHAND","price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/e9179f30-9338-49b1-b2d4-9d38438cb842.png?v=1787189198","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200014283-secondhand-such-is-life","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}