Fredy Neptune

A riveting beautiful novel in verse by Australia''s greatest contemporary poet winner of the 1996 T. S. Eliot Prize.I never learned the old top ropesI was always in steam. Less capstan less climbingmore re-stowing cargo. Which could be hard and slowas farming- but to say Why this is Valparaiso!Or: I''m in Singapore and know my way abouttakes a long time to get stale.-from Book I The Middle SeaWhen German-Australian sailor Friedrich Fredy Boettcher is shanghaied aboard a German Navy battleship at the outbreak of World War I the sight of frenzied mobs burning Armenian women to death in Turkey causes him through moral shock to lose his sense of touch. This mysterious disability which he knows he must hide is both protection and curse as he orbits the high horror and low humor of a catastrophic age.Told in a blue-collar English that regains freshness by eschewing the mind-set of literary language Fredy''s picaresque life-as perhaps the only Nordic Superman ever-is deep-dyed in layers of irony and attains a mind-inverting resolution.