Winner of the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award Every night for twenty nights in a hotel room in Venice, an Australian man recently diagnosed with an incurable disease writes a letter home to a friend. In these letters, against a rich background of earlier journeys in literature, with Dante as his imagined guide, he reflects on what it means to live a good life in the face of death. ‘Dessaix writes with great elegance, with passion, compassion and sly wit. Literally, a wonderful book.’ John Banville ‘An absolutely unique book: intelligent, funny, rich, tender at the right moments, a plum pudding of stories, observations and discoveries.’ Alberto Manguel ‘Night Letters is exhilarating. The goads, the teasing, the question marks fired up into the atmosphere make any passive reading of it quite impossible.’ The Sydney Morning Herald