The Fighter

Henry Nissen was a champion boxer, the boy from Amess Street in working-class Carlton who fought his way up to beat some of the world’s best in the 1970s. Now, he works on the Melbourne docks, loading and unloading, taking shifts as they come up. But his real work is on the streets. He’s in and out of police stations and courts giving character statements and providing support, working to give the disaffected another chance. 


And all the while, in the background is the memory of another fighter, his mother—and her devastating decline into madness. 


The Fighter is a moving and poetic portrait of a compassionate man, but also a window onto the unnoticed recesses of Melbourne.


Arnold Zable is a highly acclaimed novelist, storyteller, educator and human rights advocate. His books include Jewels and Ashes, The Fig Tree, Café Scheherazade, Scraps of Heaven, Sea of Many Returns and Violin Lessons. He lives in Melbourne.


‘A master storyteller.’ Australian Book Review


‘His ability to see the beauty in the ordinary in a world obsessed with the extraordinary informs every aspect of Zable’s writing.’ Australian


‘Arnold Zable is a writer who turns the unnoticed and the overlooked into something fine and lustrous.’ Courier-Mail


‘Arnold Zable is a long-distance athlete among novelists, and his command of his material is superb…Years of reflection and his own life experiences have contributed to the mastery with which Zable explores the themes of displacement, loss, nostalgia and homecoming in all of his books.’ Canberra Times