The covers' edges are chipped, else a clean and solid copy. "Catholic Writing in Australia is fresh, vivid, novel and often surprising. It has also become intensely personal. Once it spoke it an institutional voice with an official accent. In recent decades it has grown out of the experience of writers as they search for meaning and identity in a changing church and society. They tell their own stories in their own voices. Catholic voices captures the best of this writing. Here is the Australian Vatican II generation working out its answers to the challenges of being Christian at the end of the twentieth century. These writers explore modern responses to sex, race, art, politics, church and lifestyles in individual voices which, however different, remain authentically Catholic. Drawn from a wide variety of magazines, some well known some not, Catholic Voices is an exciting discovery of an important part of Australian writing. Some of the best work in the country is here. The anthology shows that Catholic community still produces many of our sharpest writers" (back cover)