The Cockatoos, Paperback

These six short novels and stories achieve the majesty and power of the best of Patrick White's great novels. They probe beneath the surface of events - a sexual lapse, the unaccustomed climate of a foreign country, interruptions in a cherished routine, a death, a toothache - to expose a deeper, truer reality. Includes "A Woman's Hand", "The Full Belly", "The Night, the Prowler", "Five-Twenty", "Sicilian Vespers" and "The Cockatoos."

Patrick White was born in England in 1912 and taken to Australia, where his father owned a sheep farm. He was educated in England and served in the RAF, before returning to Australia after World War II. White published thirteen novels (one posthumously), three short-story collections and eight plays. His novels include The Aunt's Story and Voss, which won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award, The Eye of the Storm and The Twyborn Affair. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1973. White died in 1990, aged seventy-eight.