Dreams Of Speaking

Gail Jones

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Paperback

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English

Vintage
01 October 2007

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Australian Fiction

"A vision of Japan as you have never imagined it. A brilliant and moving novel about displacement and belonging by the award-winning author of Sixty Lights and Five Bells.

A vision of Japan as you have never imagined it. A brilliant and moving novel about displacement and belonging by the award-winning author of Sixty Lights and Five Bells.

She wished to study the unremarked beauty of modern things, of telephones, aeroplanes, computer screens and electric lights, of television, cars and underground transportation.

There had to be in the world of mechanical efficiency some mystery of transaction, the summoning of remote meanings, an extra dimension - supernatural, sure. There had to be a lost sublimity, of something once strange, now familiar, tame.''We must talk, Alice Black, about this world of modern things.

This buzzing world.""

Alice is entranced by the aesthetics of technology and, in every aeroplane flight, every Xerox machine, every neon sign, sees the poetry of modernity.

Mr Sakamoto, a survivor of the atomic bomb, is an expert on Alexander Graham Bell.

Like Alice, he is culturally and geographically displaced.

The pair forge an unlikely friendship as Mr Sakamoto regales Alice with stories of twentieth-century invention.

His own knowledge begins to inform her writing, and these two solitary beings become a mutual support for each other a long way from home.

This novel from prize-winning author Gail Jones is distinguished in its honesty and intelligence.

From the boundlessness of space walking to the frustrating constrictions of one person's daily existence, Dreams of Speaking paints with grace and skill the experience of needing to belong despite wanting to be alone."

By: Gail Jones
Imprint: Vintage
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 199mm, Width: 131mm, Spine: 15mm
Weight: 182g
ISBN: 9781741667233
ISBN 10: 1741667232
Publication Date: 01 October 2007
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Gail Jones is the author of two short-story collections, a critical monograph, and the novels BLACK MIRROR, SIXTY LIGHTS, DREAMS OF SPEAKING and SORRY. Twice shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, her prizes include the WA Premier's Award for Fiction, the Nita B. Kibble Award, the Steele Rudd Award, the Age Book of the Year Award, the Adelaide Festival Award for Fiction and the ASAL Gold Medal. She has also been shortlisted for international awards, including the IMPAC and the Prix Femina. Her fiction has been translated into nine languages. Gail has recently taken up a Professorship at UWS.