Elliot Perlman - Maybe the Horse Will Talk

We're thrilled to host Elliot Perlman, acclaimed author of The Street Sweeper and Three Dollars, and one of Australia's most socially conscious writers, to celebrate his new novel Maybe the Horse Will Talk. 

This fabulous read is an unflinching examination of workplace sexual harassment and an exposé of corporate corruption that taps directly into the pulse of our times. It's a modern love story that reflects on marriage and friendship. It's also warm, dramatic, and very very funny.  

Elliot is in-conversation with (fellow ex-lawyer) Nicole Abadee, resident books writer at The Australian Financial Review Magazine. These two are going to have a lot to talk about in what promises to be one of the events of the year!   

Doors open at 6pm. 

Secure your tickets now!

About The Book

What if the only way to keep your job was to antagonise your boss?

‘I am absolutely terrified of losing a job I absolutely hate.’

Stephen Maserov has problems. A onetime teacher, married to fellow teacher Eleanor, he has retrained and is now a second-year lawyer working at mega-firm Freely Savage Carter Blanche. Despite toiling around the clock to make budget, he’s in imminent danger of being downsized. And to make things worse, Eleanor, sick of single-parenting their two young children thanks to Stephen’s relentless work schedule, has asked him to move out.

To keep the job he hates, pay the mortgage and salvage his marriage, he will have to do something strikingly daring, something he never thought himself capable of. But if he’s not careful, it might be the last job he ever has…

Praise for Elliot Perlman

‘Australia’s outstanding social novelist’ - Times Literary Supplement. 

Elliot Perlman ‘...has many things working in his favor as a novelist: curiosity, erudition, daring and a gift for seducing readers into going along with him for the ride. He’ll get you where you want to go…’ - Washington Post

About the Author

Elliot Perlman’s Three Dollars won The Age Book of the Year Award, the Betty Trask Award (UK), the Fellowship of Australian Writers' Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn-Rhys/Mail On Sunday Book of the Year Award (UK) as well as for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. 

The Reasons I Won't Be Coming, a collection of stories, was a bestseller in the US where it was named a New York Times Book Review 'Editors' Choice' and received the Steele Rudd Award for the best Australian short story collection in its year of publication.

Perlman's second novel, Seven Types of Ambiguity, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award as well as for the Queensland Premier's Award for Fiction, and was a global bestsller, receiving rave reviews in France, Germancy. It was a bestseller in the United States where it was described as having 'traces of Dickens's range and of George Eliot's generous humanist spirit' (New York Times) and named a New York Times Book Review 'Editors' Choice', a New York Times Book Review 'Notable Book of the Year' and a Washington Post 'Editors' Choice' as well as one of its all-time dozen favourites 'on the pain of love'. In the UK it was described as 'a colossal achievement….a tour de force…(in which) at the end, in a comprehensive, an almost Shakespearian way, Perlman picks up every loose thread and knots it' (The Observer) and named a Sunday Telegraph 'Book of the Year'. 

About Nicole Abadee

Nicole Abadee is the books writer for The Australian Financial Review Magazine. She also writes about books for Good Weekend and reviews for Australian Book Review, and appears regularly as a facilitator at writers’ festivals and other literary events.  

A Note on the Venue: 

The Vanguard is a strictly adults only venue.