City of Women

Ditmar Award nominee 1982.

The city of women is love, Billie Shockley says.

But in the city of women that is her world, love takes strange forms.

The city is Sydney, from its familiar streets and gardens men have been banished. Their existence still threatens its precincts and Old Man Death moves rapaciously and relentlessly among its citizens.

Billie observes them – their hedonism, rivalry, passions, cruelty, power, fragility. Reflecting her own anguish at the loss of love and youth, they suffer brutality and decay.

But, she tells her gentle leopard, she will never admit it's all over.

City of Women is David Ireland's most recent novel. It follows his highly acclaimed A Woman of the Future, which in 1979 won for him, for the third time, Australia's most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, shared the Age Book of the Year Award for 1980, and has become a best-seller.

Like A Woman of the Future, City of Women is a daring and challenging work. Once again his bizarre symbolism and uncompromising realism compel the imagination. Arresting, provocative, shocking, droll, yet pierced with a sublime tenderness, it defies simple interpretation and offers rich rewards.