Simpson Returns: A Novella

Author(s): Wayne Macauley

Australian Fiction

Ninety years after they were thought to have died heroically in the Great War, the stretcher-bearer Simpson and his donkey journey through country Victoria, performing minor miracles and surviving on offerings left at war memorials. They are making their twenty-ninth, and perhaps final, attempt to find the country's famed Inland Sea.


On the road north from Melbourne, Simpson and his weary donkey encounter a broke single mother, a suicidal Vietnam veteran, a refugee who has lost everything, an abused teenager and a deranged ex-teacher. These are society's downtrodden, whom Simpson believes can be renewed by the healing waters of the sea.


In Simpson Returns, Wayne Macauley sticks a pin in the balloon of our national myth. A concise satire of Australian platitudes about fairness and egalitarianism, it is timely, devastating and witheringly funny.


Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9781925773507
  • : Text Publishing Company
  • : Text Publishing Company
  • : April 2019
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Wayne Macauley
  • : Paperback