And the book "The Dead Heart", on which it is based. It’s a bit like the bastard love child of Kenneth Cook’s "Wake in Fright". It's narrated in the first person by a middle-aged American journalist who's caught in a rut and tries to escape life by coming to the Australian outback.
The blurb reads, "'That dumbshit map. I'd been seduced by it. Seduced by its possibilities. That map had brought me here ... That map had been a serious mistake.' The map in question is of Australia, stumbled across in a second-hand bookshop by American journalist Nick Hawthorne, en route to another dead-end hack job in Akron, Ohio. Seduced by all that wilderness, all that NOTHING, Nick decides to put his midlife crisis on hold and light out to the ultimate nowheresville - where a chance encounter throws him into a sun-baked orgy of surf, sex and swill, and a nightmare from which there is no escape."
Don’t be fooled by the cheesy, romantic-looking cover on Douglas Kennedy’s book: this is a tale that is as shocking as it is terrifying, so if you're planning an outback adventure soon, then stay well steer of it.
I'm reading it from the safety of my warm fireside. All I can offer you is this available preview, unless you want to knock yourself out and read it in French. Still, there's always the movie. Welcome to Woop Woop!
