Private Language: Robyn Ferrell Book Launch

Can you have a mystery that no one is solving?

Jack, an up-and-coming philosopher, has been offered a large sum by a publisher to find out who wrote a mystery manuscript. He receives as many opinions as there are readers. But who is opposed to the author being revealed, and what lengths are they prepared to go to in order to prevent it? 

A well-known philosopher has been run down in a hit-and-run accident, and is lying between life and death in a coma. Not everyone thinks it was an accident. The Dean of the Faculty is missing, but no one yet has noticed his absence. 

Hannah, who is leading a tribute session on the work of her friend in a coma, finds a damaging secret in her friend's life. Russell, an expert on Wittgenstein's private language argument, doesn't get why what he calls an amorous interlude the new lecturer, Julia, is calling rape. Meanwhile, only Iris seems curious about what Stan is hiding.

When Iris is found brutally murdered, it isn't clear which of the storylines brought this about. What if the only person who can see the connections is the reader, behind the one-way glass of the novel?

Robyn Ferrell is currently an Honorary Professor in Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. She also works with a feminist research group in sociology at the Australian National University, and is a member of the Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at Adelaide University. She has written several books of philosophy. The most recent, Philosophical Essays on Free Stuff, appeared with Lexington Books in 2021. This book explores the ‘culture industry’ and the problem of free stuff through several different lenses. Ferrell also writes creative nonfiction. The Real Desire (2004, Indra Press) was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Award.