The Thorn in the Flesh - Paul Wenz
Foreword by Helen Garner
Imprint Classics ISBN 1 875892 61 3
186pp AU$16.95

The first English translation of a classic French novel, L'echarde translated by Maurice Blackman (Department of French, University of New South Wales).
"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 from 1898, where he wrote four popular novels and many short stories of Australian bush life. These were published in Paris. His only work published in English was Diary of a New Chum (ETT Imprint 1990), which also contains his correspondence with Andrew Gide and Miles Franklin.

Helen Garner (born Melbourne 1942) lived in Paris in the late 70s, and has published extensively around the world. Her Collected Stories were published in 1998, and The First Stone published in a French language edition.