Elizabeth Harrower

The woman in the watch tower

Susan Wyndham

$39.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

NewSouth Publishing
01 October 2025

Biography: literary; Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers

Australian novelist Elizabeth Harrower wrote some of the most intense, original and highly regarded psychological fiction of the twentieth century. Then she abruptly stopped writing in the 1970s and became one of the most puzzling mysteries of Australian literature. Why didn't she continue? Harrower gave elusive answers to friends and interviewers, and only since her death in 2020 has a deeper search been possible.

When Harrower's four novels were brought back into print between 2012 and 2014, followed by a novel she had withdrawn from her publisher in 1971 and a collection of her short stories, a renaissance of admiration followed. In this engrossing biography, Susan Wyndham grapples with the questions that remained unanswered, the dynamics of Harrower's circles of famous friends, and her remarkable books and their timeless dissections of the human heart.

By: Susan Wyndham
Imprint: NewSouth Publishing
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm,
ISBN: 9781761170195
ISBN 10: 1761170198
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 01 October 2025
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Susan Wyndham is a journalist and writer who interviewed and spoke with Elizabeth Harrower many times. She is the co-editor, with Brigitta Olubas, of Hazzard and Harrower: The letters, author of Life in His Hands: The true story of a neurosurgeon and a pianist, and editor of My Mother, My Father: On losing a parent.