Robert Dessaix MODJESKA — Night letters
Macmillan 1996 Hardback, 275pp. A novel in the form of twenty edited letters written from a hotel room in Venice. The letters are written to a friend at home by an Australian man recently diagnosed with an incurable disease. The writer describes a journey from Switzerland to Venice and reflects on questions of morality, seduction and the search for paradise. He interweaves incidents from a journey with stories of passion and enchantment set in a variety of lands and centuries. The author is an essayist, translator and political commentator and has written 'A Mother's Disgrace', an autobiographical account of his life as an adopted child. (ISBN: 9780732908515). Fair.