Every book is snared in the time and place in which it is written. Few authors create work that remains eternally relevant, not only because books that appear groundbreaking when published can easily date or pale with the passage of time, but for more prosaic reasons as well. Given that approximately 23,000 books are published annually in Australia alone, few survive on the shelf beyond a year or two, and even fewer become embedded in the nation’s literary imagination. Still, most authors dream of writing a ‘classic’ – even a minor classic will do.