Fever of Animals - Paperback

by Miles Allinson (Author)

A multi-award winning Australian novel.

WINNER OF THE 2014 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AWARD

WINNER OF THE 2016 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS PEOPLE'S CHOICE

WINNER OF THE 2016 WESTERN AUSTRALIA PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARDS PEOPLE'S CHOICE

For nearly five years I have wanted to write something about the surrealist painter Emil Bafdescu: about his paintings, one of which hangs in a little restaurant in Melbourne, and about his disappearance, which is still a mystery. But this is probably not going to be the book I imagined. Nothing has quite worked out the way I planned.

With the small inheritance he received upon his father's death, Miles has come to Europe on the trail of the Romanian surrealist, who disappeared into a forest in 1967. But in trying to unravel the mystery of Bafdescu's secret life, Miles must also reckon with his own.

Faced with a language and a landscape that remain stubbornly out of reach, and condemned to wait for someone who may never arrive, Miles is haunted by thoughts of his ex-girlfriend, Alice, and the trip they took to Venice that ended their relationship.

Uncanny, occasionally absurd, and utterly original, Fever of Animals is a beautifully written meditation on art and grief.

PRAISE FOR MILES ALLINSON

"Allinson is unashamedly a serious writer, in the mould of dark luminaries like Roberto Bola o, Thomas Bernhard, Robert Walser, and perhaps W.G. Sebald...Fever of Animals takes itself seriously, like good art should do...and it takes you seriously. All it asks is that you take it seriously back, and to do so is pleasurable and challenging and nourishingly sad."
--Readings Monthly

"The play between truth and fiction, between the writing self and the self written, is one of the great pleasures of Fever of Animals...audacious, clever, and original"
--Australian Book Review

Front Jacket

Until very recently, people believed that certain paintings contained a remnant of a magic force. Bafdescu stood at the crest of this faith, just before the wave broke, when it seemed that the magic force was not only real, but could actually be applied to life, to politics, to reality itself ...

In a hut on the edge of a frozen German forest, Miles, a failed artist, sits down to write a book about Emil Bafdescu, the elusive Surrealist painter who walked into the woods in January 1967 and was never seen again.

Instead Miles finds himself besieged by questions about his own disintegrating life. Unable to paint, he is haunted by memories of a disturbing incident that took place in Venice years earlier - the city where Bafdescu's own life was also changed forever.

From London to Romania via Italy, Berlin and South America, Miles contends with a history that remains tantalisingly out of reach. In order to uncover Bafdescu's secret life, he realises he must first reckon with his own.