Adrian Sherd is a teenage boy in Melbourne of the 1950s, the last years before television and the family car changed suburbia forever.

Earnest and isolated, tormented by his hormones and his religious devotion, Adrian dreams of elaborate orgies with American film stars, and of marrying his sweetheart and fathering eleven children by her. He even dreams a history of the world as a chronicle of sexual frustration.

A Lifetime on Clouds is funny, honest and sweetly told: a less ribald, Catholic Australian Portnoy's Complaint.

Gerald Murnane was born in Melbourne in 1939. His first novel, Tamarisk Row, was published in 1974. It was followed by A Lifetime on Clouds, The Plains and five other works of fiction, the most recent of which is A History of Books. In 1999 he won the Patrick White Award. Ten years later he won the Melbourne Prize for Literature.

'Unquestionably one of the most original writers working in Australia today.' Australian

'A Lifetime on Clouds delighted me: I was particularly admiring of the author's unfailing ability to say just enough and no more.' Les Murray, Sydney Morning Herald

'Murnane draws out a great deal of comedy from the distance between what his hero does and what he dreams.' Guardian

'If you only ever read one Gerald Murnane novel in your life, I urge you to make it this one.' Andy Griffiths, in his introduction