New edition. 'Know thyself' is a Greek aphorism. But how can she? Something is missing. She can't think what it is. A mysterious amnesiac art dealer, Ruby, is jailed in Australia for the traumatic murder she cannot recall. In her high society life in London, acting the part and role-playing replaced authenticity; she kept up appearances. Then she and her husband Sir Hugo visit Australia, to collect art, and nothing goes to plan. She collides with what she has been running from. Narrated through voices of the main characters, the distinctive, uproarious fragments reveal stories of a performance artist, a musician, and a writer in Australia; a triangular relationship; shattered family life; and the mysteries of amnesia; the gulf between how one appears to oneself and to others. What can't Ruby remember? Has she been wrongfully convicted? Interwoven through the fiction narrative are a series of colour photographic images by Ruth Skilbeck.

"Skilbeck's prose is as measured as poetry, and the way the narration shifts between different characters provides an almost cubist view of people and events...Skilbeck creates some memorable characters." –Kirkus Reviews

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ruth-skilbeck/australian-fugue/

Cover art: Blue Fugue by Ruth Skilbeck.

The Antipode Room

ISBN: 9780645842203

No. of pages: 258 (total page count)

No. of colour images: 14

Date of publication: 25 January 2024. Originally published in first edition ebook-pdf 2014.

Book orders and delivery costs

Australia-wide deliveries only via this website. $16.99 shipping (premium tracked delivery) will be added to your order.

Alternatively ask your local bookshop if they stock it or will order it into their shop for you. It is also available for sale in major online bookshops around the world (with distribution by Ingram), including in the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe, and Australia.

This is a new edition of the first novel in Ruth Skilbeck’s Australian Fugue series. It is published with fourteen colour photographic works by the author and without the nonfiction medical, literary cultural history segments in the first edition of Australian Fugue. This edition is available in hardback, paperback and ebook.