What is true for one relationship, for one painting, is not true for another... each possesses its own strange inevitability that resists us and we can never finally know what it is we are doing until the work is finished... It is as if the picture paints itself through us, the story tells itself through us, has a larger existence of which we know nothing...

Toni Powlett is an artist in the grip of a crisis. Since the death of his father, Moniek Prochownik, four years earlier, Toni has been at a creative standstill - until Marina Golding, the wife of his former teacher and mentor, Robert Schwartz, contacts him, and everything changes. Toni finds in Marina the perfect companion for his life in art and his creative energies are re-awakened.

But Toni's newfound inspiration and artistic energy come at the direct expense of his relationship with his wife and daughter. The more dependent for his art he becomes on Marina, the more potentially destructive become the tensions between himself and his wife, Teresa. Toni's dilemma is how to reconcile the transgressive nature of his imaginative life with the daily life of his family, who he loves. Robert Schwartz's dying father, Theo, warns him not to confuse art with life. But by what means is he to achieve such clear-sightedness?

Immensely satisfying, Prochownik's Dream is a work of great subtlety, strength and intellect. Its examination of the artist at work is complex and completely absorbing. But at its heart, very simply, it is a book about love.

Prochownik's Dream reveals the inner life of an artist, torn between his obsession with his art and his love of his wife and daughter.

About the Author
Alex Miller has twice won the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia's premier literary prize; the first occasion in 1993 for The Ancestor Game, and again in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He is also an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, for The Ancestor Game, in 1993. British by birth, he now lives in Victoria.

Reviews
Having stripped oth art and love of sentimentality, and having removed from them every self-deluding panacea, [Miller] holds to their possibility with a faith that is rare in this cynical world. * The Monthly *
A beautiful novel of ideas which never eclipse the characters. * The Age *
Prochownik's Dream is an absorbing and satisfying novel, distinguished by Miller's enviable ability to evoke the appearance and texture of paintings in the often unyielding medium of words. * Sydney Morning Herald *



Book Information
ISBN 9781741750133
Author Alex Miller
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Allen & Unwin
Publisher Allen & Unwin
Weight(grams) 295g
Dimensions(mm) 195mm * 130mm * 24mm