In 1966 Elizabeth Harrower was on the brink of literary fame. Critics hailed her fourth book, The Watch Tower, as one of the year’s most important Australian novels, alongside The Solid Mandala by her friend Patrick White. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Harry Kippax wrote that “one can be grateful to have had in twelve months two such additions to the small body of distinguished Australian novels”. An ABC reviewer said Harrower’s “brilliant” book was “one of the best Australian novels I have read for a long while”.
Seven years later White won the Nobel prize for literature. By then Harrower had written another novel but withdrawn it from her English publisher, disappointed by his reaction. After some false starts she stopped writing and all but disappeared for the next 40 years – before being rediscovered, unexpectedly, when she was in her 80s.
