Elizabeth Harrower's never-before-published novel, In Certain Circles

From Text Publishing

In Certain Circles is the long-lost final novel by Elizabeth Harrower, the internationally acclaimed author of The Watch Tower. Completed in 1971 but never before published, In Certain Circles will be available to readers for the first time in May 2014.


Here's some of the wonderful praise for The Watch Tower:

'The Watch Tower is a triumph of art over virtuosity...a dense, profoundly moral novel of our time.' H. G. Kippax, Sydney Morning Herald (19 November 1966)

'This is a harrowing novel, relentless in its depiction of marital enslavement, spiritual self-destruction and the exploited condition of women in a masculinist society...It is a brilliant achievement.' Michael Dirda, Washington Post

'A superb psychological novel that will creep into your bones.' Monthly

‘Elizabeth Harrower’s thrilling 1966 novel The Watch Tower comes rampaging back from decades of disgraceful neglect: a wartime Sydney story of two abandoned sisters and the arrival in their lives of Felix, one of literature’s most ferociously realised nasty pieces of work.’ Helen Garner, Australian

'Elizabeth Harrower’s The Watch Tower truly feels like a neglected classic…I think it’s one of the most moving books I’ve read in a very long time.' Mariella Frostrup

'First published in 1966, this book has traces of Patrick White mixed with the darkness of the brothers Grimm. It is a great novel due a rediscovery in the way that Stoner was championed by John McGahern.' Irish Times

'I read this book twice. Once for sheer pleasure—if pleasure can be the correct term for an experience that is so distressing—and once for the purposes of this review…It left me with the strongest sense I have had for a very long time of the infinite preciousness of consciousness, at whatever cost, and of our terrifying human vulnerability.' Salley Vickers, Sydney Morning Herald

'I couldn’t put down The Watch Tower...Harrower’s insight into the nuances of a pathological personality is forensic, and surely one of the most acute in our literature since Henry Handel Richardson’s The Fortunes of Richard Mahony.' Delia Falconer, Australian

'I read The Watch Tower with a mixture of fascination and horror. It was impossible to put down. I then read all Harrower’s novels: The Long Prospect (a prescient study of a relationship between a man and a clever but unrecognised young girl), Down in the City and The Catherine Wheel. Her acute psychological assessments are made from gestures, language and glances and she is brilliant on power, isolation and class.' Ramona Koval, Australian

'Haunting…Harrower captures brilliantly the struggle to retain a self.' Guardian
'What a discovery!' Paris Review Daily

‘[A] fantastically incisive portrait of domestic cruelty…For all the psychological torment Harrower subjects her protagonists to, Clare’s defiance brings a delectably feminist streak to The Watch Tower.' Daily Beast

Set amid the lush gardens and grand stone houses that line the north side of Sydney Harbour, In Certain Circles is an intense psychological drama about family and love, tyranny and freedom. Its publication for the first time in 2014 is a major event.