The Voyage

Frank Delage, piano manufacturer from Sydney, travels to Vienna, a city immersed in music, to present the Delage concert grand. He hopes to impress with its technical precision, its improvement on the old pianos of Europe.

How could he not know his piano is all wrong for Vienna? Perhaps he should have tried Berlin. But a chance meeting with Amalia von Schalla brings new possibilities for Delage—connections, a meeting with her daughter Elisabeth, and dinner with an avant garde composer.

Now travelling home, on a container ship, with Elisabeth, Frank Delage can begin to tell the real story.

‘Murray Bail is one of the most remarkable of the generation of Australian fiction writers that includes Peter Carey and came to first maturity 25 or so years ago.’ Age

‘There's a lightness to Bail's writing—a gentle stealth in its revelations—that slowly but surely brings the reader alive…One of Australia's most original and imaginative writers.’ Canberra Times

‘A lustrous piece of fiction, consistently surprising and illuminating, full of mirrors and illusions, but with the abiding face of real feeling and deep truth. We won't see a finer piece of fiction in the longest while.’ Age