Winners of the Proverse Prize Series

THE VILLAGE IN THE MOUNTAINS is set in a fictional, southern European country in the middle of the twentieth century. After a brief period of democratic reform, the nation has once again become a totalitarian state under the rule of the Colonel, whose overriding creed is "Loyalty to the State, the Church, the Family". The narrator of the book is a left-wing poet from a prominent family, whose personal story is intertwined with the political events of his birthplace. During the days of the old dictatorship he lived abroad as a fêted émigré. During the interim period of democratic reform he returned to the country. Now that the New Régime has become established, he is sent to live as an exile to the mountains in the northeast. The village he is exiled to, Cagot—an isolated, primitive place high up in the border country—has a tragic history. Eight years earlier, four hundred pilgrims, paying homage to the statue of the Dark Virgin, were buried alive when the cave, housing the statue, collapsed. It is against this mountainous backdrop that a psychological drama is played out between the poet and the people with whom he comes into contact. There is Bernard, the manipulative, chess-playing Police Chief, to whom the poet must report every day; Isabella, the religiose brooding widow, who provides his meals in the ramshackle hotel where he is the only guest; Angela, the wife of the innkeeper; Henry, the schoolteacher; and Hubert Duval, the local aristocrat. It is Hubert who organises a fresh expedition to the cave of the Dark Virgin to see if, with the modern equipment now available, he can find a way to retrieve the bodies and provide them with a proper burial.  The journey to the cave and the ensuing events compel the poet to make a decision which will change his life forever. THE AUTHOR was born and brought up in the English Midlands and spent most of his working life in Asia. As well as writing, he is interested in natural history and photography.

The settings of the stories in The Snow Bridge and Other Stories are drawn from a life spent in many countries. Several focus intently on a particular relationship: that between a husband and wife, mother and daughter, brothers, friends, partners, climbing-buddies, employer and employee; the relationship with an inner self; putative relationships that never quite begin, and relationships with a location, or the inhabitants of a small town. Other stories explore the long-term expatriate’s dilemma of engaging with a place not his or her own at the price of diminishing intimacy with the country of his or her birth. Described in Philip Chatting’s, ‘Author’s Introduction’, as, “entertainment”, the impact of the collection may prompt readers to reflect on the nature of their own relationships and the place we each occupy in our own worlds.“Philip Chatting is a master stylist…. He invests himself in the traumatic conflict, character identification, and ethical complication that sit at the heart of the heart of necessary and affecting social fiction.”--Jason S Polley (from his 'Advance Response' to 'The Snow Bridge and Other Stories')“The range of locations and…variety of characters…rarely come together in a single volume…. A unique collection reflecting the author’s varied history and his interests in the countries and cultures of the people among whom he has lived and travelled. It will appeal to those who share or would like to share similar experiences, as well as those who are curious to know about them.”--Mike Rowse (from his 'Preface' to 'The Snow Bridge and Other Stories')

In the land of Daoistan, freedom has arrived at last. The revolution liberated all, then enslaved everyone, and now it was liberating them again by allowing people to own credit cards. And a man with credit is a man who has the world at his fingertips, or at least a trip into town where the temptations are pretty much as they have always been, only more people can afford them.                 ADAM’S FRANCHISE is a story about Adam and his Franchise. He is not quite sure what that means, but he is a modern man, embracing the economic miracle and taking up a gift shop franchise at a new hotel. There he will sell much the same things that he always sold: baskets, pots, cultural artefacts of various kinds, except at a modern price to foreigners, should they ever care to come to the hotel. The desert that he lives in is not the most beautiful of places, policed by Omar who has to learn how to get out of his hammock, fuelled by Castrol who just loves the smell of petrol and the visions it gives him, and terrorised by nomads and Adam’s volatile brothers-in-law. But if it ever rids itself of the last vestiges of barbarism, both pre-revolutionary and revolutionary, as epitomised by Adam’s indolent, lustful, embittered, rapacious, cynical, superstitious father, Saleem, then harmony – both spiritual and economic –might assert itself. Or maybe, just air-conditioning.                Daoistan exists everywhere, or has done at some time or other. And there have been many Adams.

Wilderness inspired poems composed on the trail by an American doctor/poet, sharing his love of the backcountry, trail-walking, camping, and the “wilderness effect,” a unique sensation of aliveness and deep connection. Mayer’s poetry explores our human experience of the natural world, our intimate and mysterious connections to flora and fauna. It proclaims the opportunity that walking mindfully in the wilderness offers to experience the divine. The uniqueness and intensity of these musings lead his poems to attempt reconciliation of our lived experience with physics, spirit, and music, the latter manifested in his experience of singing to the dying; the wisdom of nature rendered in music and consolation. A few poems are inspired by Mayer’s medical practice. Some spring from his ordinary life and reflections on his childhood and family, which have followed him into the woods. “Ever since Emerson sent American poets into the woods to discover their souls, the connections between language and spirit have been steadily forged on this continent. Jack Mayer is a writer I've long admired, and in these bright, sensuous, deeply reflective poems we encounter a wilderness that exists on many levels: the Vermont trails that he loves, walks and dreams, and the contours of his own expansive spirit. I read these poems with increasing pleasure, and plan to return to them again and again. Mayer is a fine, fresh voice in American poetry.” —Jay Parini, author of New and Collected Poems, 1975-2015 “These poems...recall such earlier wilderness poets as Han Shan and Gary Snyder. Like those ancestors’ dispatches from the heights, they combine reflections on time and reality with the glow of physical exertion in the open air. Mayer’s humor also bubbles up in ways that make his voice a distinctive and delightful addition to this lineage.”—John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home

In 2010 two septuagenarians reminisce on a balcony overlooking a former town and river valley inundated fifty years before by the damned waters of the massive Snowy Mountain Scheme. One of them, Ralph McDonald, feels compelled to retell dramatic events from his youth, ones related to things hidden in the depths of his conscience and in the waters themselves. An unlikely trio of late teenagers—the scion of Australian landed gentry, the brilliant son of middle-class Canberra academics, and the humble son of the local garage owner—together spend uncomplicated school holidays until the catalytic arrival of two individuals: an intense half Aboriginal boy who inhabits his deceased grandmother’s shack, and a singer from a distant world of glamour appearing for the winter season at the only major ski lodge in the surrounding national park. As the confession reveals, little by little, the trio—seemingly the embodiment of the Australian egalitarian myth of mateship—is poisoned by snobbery, vindictiveness, complex sexualities, deception and, above all, interpersonal exploitation. Working through an amalgam of literary genres (bildungsroman, mystery tale, and the historic novel) THE FINLEY CONFESSION is a critical account of race, class and gender in contemporary Australia, but it also brings into question who owns any story and why.