Germaine Greer’s mad, passionate quest to heal Australia

Like an old woman in a fairy story, Germaine Greer, now in her late seventies, has taken to lurking in a forest. Always inclined to reinterpret the world through her own changing needs and perceptions, and to instruct the rest of us accordingly, she has now written a book of passionate didactic energy about her quest for regeneration, personal, national and global. She explores in exquisite, sometimes  overwhelming detail the story of how in 2001 she bought a patch of subtropical rainforest in southern New South Wales, what she found there and what it has taught her and could teach the rest of us if we would only pay attention.

In its slightly mad way, this is a rather marvellous book. But then the whole venture was more than a little mad. Greer recounts how some 15 years ago she decided to sink her savings in a piece of land in her native Australia, despite having previously declared that she would never call it home until aboriginal sovereignty was recognised.