The Thorn in the Flesh

Its theme is simple: a tale of Miss Susan Brady, a woman with ideas above her station, who is spurned, and whose jealousy corrodes her life and drives her to try and sabotage the happiness of John Iredale, the prosperous South Australian grazier who has broken her heart... Classy stuff, this - the fruit of delighted observation, of a sensuous and irrepressible joie de vivre. You cannot fake this quality, it is remarkable... there lingers in one's mind the rare and special pleasure of the sense-texture which Wenz has created a poignant gift from a Frenchman to Australia, his adopted country. - Helen Garner, from her Foreword.

Paul Wenz (1869-1939) arrived in Australia in 1892 and worked as a grazier in the Forbes district at 'Nanima' from 1898, where he wrote several popular novels and many short stories of Australian bush life that were published in Paris. Close friends with Miles Franklin, Andre Gide and Jack London, this first English translation of a classic French novel was translated by Maurice Blackman.