THE SPARE ROOM

In this short and powerful novel - her first work of fiction for fifteen years - one of Australia's bestselling and most loved writers tells an extraordinary story about two women, Helen and Nicola.

Helen prepares her spare room for her friend Nicola, who is flying down from Sydney for a three-week visit. But this is no ordinary visit - Nicola has advanced cancer. She is coming to Melbourne to receive treatment she believes will cure her.

From the moment Nicola steps off the plane, Helen becomes her nurse, her protector, her guardian angel and her stony judge.

The Spare Room tells a story of compassion and rage as the two women - one sceptical, one stubbornly serene - negotiate their way through Nicola's gruelling treatments. Garner's dialogue is pitch perfect, her sense of pacing flawless as this novel draws to its terrible and transcendent finale.

"Helen Garner writes the best sentences in Australia." (Bulletin)
"Garner is a storyteller, an observer ... Her style is beautifully simple... People who are on a fixed diet of fiction or who graze on airport shelves could cleanse their palates with Garner as they might once have done with Jane Austen." (Sydney Morning Herald)

Helen Garner was born in Victoria in 1942, and lives in Melbourne. Her best-selling and award-winning books include novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction, including The First Stone (1995) and Joe Cinque's Consolation (2004).

Australia: Text Publishing (April 2008); UK: Canongate; I: Mondadori; NL: De Bezige Bij; US: Henry Holt; Canada: House of Anansi Press; E: Salamandra;

DAS ZIMMER
Deutsch von Nora Matocza und Gerhard Falkner
[HC: Berlin, 01/2009]