Gerald Murnane is widely regarded as one of the most unusual and original Australian writers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The view of many of those who have taken up the challenge of interpreting his work is that, in its treatment of certain subjects, including interpretation itself, his themes closely parallel the continental philosophy of the mid and late twentieth century--a body of writing in which Murnane appears to have no interest. While he certainly sits outside the Australian prose tradition that Patrick White characterized as "dreary, dun-coloured" realism, neither does he fit comfortably alongside colorful "fabulist" contemporaries such as Peter Carey and Murray Bail. Indeed, the term that Murnane himself has repeatedly used to characterize his mature work--true fiction--seems to gesture beyond realism, perhaps even in the direction of naturalism. That suggestion would astonish most of his readers, at least upon initial...