Pagan is one of the more unusual Australian novels of its period: intellectually restless, psychologically dense, and deeply concerned with questions of exile, identity and artistic life.

Born in Hungary and raised in Australia after fleeing the 1956 uprising, Inez Baranay brings to the novel an acute awareness of migration, fractured memory and the work involved in remaking a self in another language and culture.

The novel follows a music critic moving through Sydney's cultural world while becoming entangled with artists, musicians and the lingering force of European history. Rather than offering a conventional plot, Pagan unfolds through observation, criticism, recollection and conversation, exploring how art, reputation and private lives intersect. Running beneath it is a meditation on displacement: memories inherited from others, the instability of identity, and the way criticism itself becomes a creative act. It occupies an interesting place in Australian literary fiction, sitting somewhere between Helen Garner's psychological precision, Gerald Murnane's concern with memory, and the cosmopolitan sensibility of writers such as Brian Castro. An ambitious and now largely overlooked novel that rewards readers drawn to literary fiction where ideas matter as much as narrative.

1990 Imprint paperback. Light shelf wear with faint creasing to the covers and a clean, tightly bound interior.