The fantastic lives of sixteen extraordinary Australian writers.

A work of remarkable scholarship from one of the foremost literary biographers of our time, Their Brilliant Careers is an enthralling and magisterial study of the lives of sixteen neglected Australian writers.

In these impeccably researched mini-biographies, Ryan O'Neill portrays the greatest fools, geniuses, liars and lunatics of Australian letters from the last hundred and fifty years.

Among the authors whose lives are skilfully chronicled are Rand Washington, bestselling science fiction writer and fascist; Addison Tiller, master of the bush yarn; and the Antipodean Agatha Christie, Dame Claudia Gunn. Taken together, these insightful portraits of forgotten writers create nothing less than a shadow history of Australian literature.

An absurd, addictive, highly original book about books.

WINNER: Australian PM's Award for Fiction

SHORTLISTED: Miles Franklin Literary Award