An elusive, elliptical, often beautiful thread of recollections and observations, He. is not autobiography, or even memoir, but an almost anonymous portrait of a figure passing through time and circumstances.

It begins with boyhood, in suburban Adelaide after the war. As the narrator remembers the years the focus shifts forward to the recent past and back again, often within the same paragraph, mirroring the randomness of memory. Through these vignettes and fragments we glimpse moments and lives—of parents, teachers, wives, and others; in Bombay of the 1960s, London of the 1970s, Melbourne and Sydney.

He. is by Murray Bail, the acclaimed author of such classic novels as Homesickness and Eucalyptus.

Murray Bail lives in Sydney. His first book, The Drover's Wife and Other Stories, was published in 1975. He has won numerous awards, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award for Eucalyptus. His most recent novel, The Voyage, was shortlisted for multiple literary awards. Bail's most recent work of non-fiction, He., was published in 2021.

'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

'One of Australia's most original and imaginative writers.' Canberra Times

'Murray Bail ranks as one of three indisputably world-class Australian novelists now practicing.' The New York Times Book Review