After thirty-five years of marriage, Henry's wife, Alice, has forgotten his name. Suddenly, the reality of his wife's illness and the limitations of his naïve vision of paradise in the mountains of Queensland's D'aguilar Range confront him.
But when he awakens next morning to find a magnificent bird floating outside his bedroom window and police investigating the disappearance of his enigmatic Polish neighbour, Kazimierz, Henry's decline into grief, denial, and fantasy is halted by a series of signs he can neither decipher nor ignore.
Guided by a sacred plant medicine, Ayahuasca, the 'Vine of the Souls', and an obscure Sufi legend, Henry is led on a visionary journey into a hidden landscape of illness and healing, memory and myth to discover the delicate balance between magic and reality and the true power of the spirits of the land.
Bold, lyrical, and utterly original, The Naked Vine is a stunning debut.
