Description

‘A masterpiece. A novel of high seriousness and higher playfulness’ Michael Hulse, Spectator

On a property in New South Wales, a man named Holland lives with his daughter, Ellen. As years pass and Ellen grows into a beautiful young woman, her father announces his decision: she will marry the first man who can name all the eucalypts, down to the last tree.

As suitors clamber to meet Holland’s challenge, Ellen encounters a strange young man among her father’s trees – a storyteller, with enchanting tales of faraway lands.

‘Murray Bail is the warmest and quick-witted of storytellers. You will never forget what is at the heart of this book: one of the great and most surprising courtships in literature’ Michael Ondaatje

Publisher Review

It's a masterpiece. A novel of high seriousness and higher playfulness that will scarcely be matched this year for the dexterity of its wit -- Michael Hulse * Spectator * Eucalyptus is that rare thing: a book whose author has succeeded in harnessing the seductive format of the fairy story and transforming it into something quite distinctive - neither fantastical nor realistic, but an elegant, humane, funny and wise journey to the interior of the human heart -- Jane Shilling * Sunday Telegraph * Beautiful in its persistent interconnectedness, Bali's third novel is something like a guide to the marvellous preoccupations of ordinary folk as they pick their way through life with a mixture of ingenuity and originality...an astonishing achievement -- Alison Huntly * Independent *