Quicksilver

Winner, Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, Non-Fiction, 2017'Nicolas Rothwell is a weird and wonderful writer. In this new book, Quicksilver, he takes the form of nonfiction and turns it into an extraordinary drama of spiritual quests and cultural hauntings.'—The Australian

‘If you&;re sad that W.G. Sebald only managed to complete four “novels&; in his lifetime, and you&;ve read them all and you wish there were more, read Belomor…An excellent, excellent book.&;—Conversational Reading

‘From exquisitely shaped nuggets of art history to suggestive character studies of eccentrics and esoteric quests…[Belomor] turns on the idea there is an underlying structure and pattern that will reveal itself in only the rarest of conditions; to devote one&;s life to looking for it is both the inescapable fate and probable curse of the true thinker.&;—Times Literary Supplement

'Rothwell's writing resists easy description. He roams the borderlands between memoir and fiction and insinuates himself into gaps between time and place...His prose is lush and often beautiful.'—The Australian on Belomor

‘A remarkable work, tinged with sadness and verging on poetry, tempered now and then with humour and authentic historical insight.'—The Age on Belomor

Quicksilver begins with the contemplation of a lizard in the outback desert, but quickly moves to the Russia of Tolstoy and Gorky, and on to other lands and times, bringing into play universal questions about the essential nature of the human condition. In Quicksilver&;s six eloquent essays Rothwell&;s chief subject is always the Australian inland—its silent, timeless and utterly mysterious heart.

Nicolas Rothwell attended boarding schools in Europe, and graduated from Oxford. He was a foreign correspondent reporting from the Americas, the Pacific and Europe, latterly during the Yugoslav conflict. Since the 1990s he has worked for The Australian newspaper.