Born on a poor dairy farm in Queensland, Frank Harland's life is centred on his great artistic gift, his passionate love for his father and four brothers and his need to repossess, through a patch of land, his family's past. The story spans Frank's life; from before the First World War, through years as a swaggie in the Great Depression and Brisbane in the forties, to his retirement to a patch of Australian scrub where he at last takes possession of his dream.

Harland's Half Acretells how a man sets out to recover the land his ancestors discovered and then lost and how, in fulfilment, this vision becomes a new reality.

David Malouf is internationally recognised as one of Australia's finest writers. His novels includeJohnno, An Imaginary Life, Harland's Half Acre, The Great World, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Prix Femina Etranger in 1991, andRemembering Babylon, which was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize and won the inaugural IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996. He has also written five collections of poetry and three opera libretti. He lives in Sydney.

'David Malouf is a fine writer - his novels conjure up a whole society and its complex past' - Sunday Telegraph