When Wolfi, a brilliant young philosophy student, begins recounting his life - from his inquisitorial father and passionate mother, to his eccentric grandmother who paid for his sexual initiation with the beautiful Andrea - we are lured into a mysterious and erotic maze. But what in fact is fact, and what in fiction is fiction? Brilliantly seductive, Out of the Line of Fire was the literary sensation of the year when it was first published, in 1988.
Mark Henshaw has lived in France, Germany, Yugoslavia and the USA. He currently lives in Canberra. His first novel, Out of the Line of Fire (1988), won the FAW Barbara Ramsden Award and the NBC New Writers Award. It was one of the biggest selling Australian literary novels of the decade. For many years Mark was a curator at the National Gallery of Australia. His most recent novel is The Snow Kimono.
'A dazzling debut. A tour de force. This book is imaginative, virtuosic, and awesomely assured. It is compulsive reading.' Don Anderson
'Experimental, extraordinary…Out of the Line of Fire, published in 1988, remains one of my favourite Australian novels.' Stephen Romei, Australian