Author(s): Murray Bail

Leading Edge 2010

Winner of the 1999 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book   A New York Times Notable Book of 1998   "There is such delight in Eucalyptus, such a strange and sly and swerving humour -- You will never forget what is at the heart of this novel -- one of the great and most surprising courtships in literature." --Michael Ondaatje   Amidst the spearing light and broken shadows of Australia's Outback, a man named Holland raises his daughter, Ellen. As she grows into a woman of unusual beauty, he tends an orchard that boasts every species of eucalyptus. When Ellen is nineteen, her father makes an announcement: she will marry the man who can successfully name each tree. What emerges is a story scintillating with sudden wisdom and spiky truths, a modern-day fairy tale that affirms the seductive power of storytelling itself.