Rage of Angels

Rage of Angels juxtaposes weirdly comic scenes from the several lives of Rick Richards, expatriate Yank, and other maimed menfolk and wounded women who have become lost in space, unzipped in time. Sometimes real life - with its cornshuckings, rusted Mustangs, haunted Rhineland castles, surfing sergeants, violated villas, Asian Chicken shops, piping shrikes, IVF clinics and water babies - can dissolve into a cartoon Western or a road movie. And almost always does.

Barry Westburg was born in Iowa, but as a boy migrated to California, where in later years he worked as a salesman, postman, car park attendant, security patrolman, steeplejack, and removalist, until his appointment as a statistician on the Apollo moonrocket project, under Wernher von Braun. He attended California and Ivy League universities, before eventually moving to New York to teach literature and writing. He arrived in Australia, once again a migrant, on the last day of the Whitlam government, and since then has taught contemporary American fiction and film at the University of Adelaide. He lives beside a gloomy woodland tarn in the Adelaide Hills – with assorted pets, ambient wildlife, a C# didjeridu and a veterinarian.