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U Want It Darker

By Murray Middleton
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Brief Description
SHORTLISTED 2026 QUEENSLAND LITERARY AWARDS - STEELE RUDD AWARD FOR A SHORT STORY COLLECTION A true artist transforms suffering into beauty. But sometimes, all you've got is the suffering... U Want It Darker is a bold and darkly humorous short story collection about artists struggling with... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$3799
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SHORTLISTED 2026 QUEENSLAND LITERARY AWARDS - STEELE RUDD AWARD FOR A SHORT STORY COLLECTION

A true artist transforms suffering into beauty. But sometimes, all you've got is the suffering...

U Want It Darker is a bold and darkly humorous short story collection about artists struggling with their egos, facing their failures, and redeeming their bad behaviour.

With each exhilarating tale, Murray Middleton draws us deeper into the absurdities of creative life, inhabiting dingy painters' studios, anarchic movie sets, depraved pizza restaurants, and grimy comedy clubs, as he tries not to plunge into the abyss himself.

Daring, original and shot through with pathos, these stories are a gulp of fresh air from a Vogel Award-winning literary talent.

Praise for U Want It Darker

'Beautifully observed through an idiosyncratic and witty lens, these stories are beguilingly strange and deeply human adventures into the getting of wisdom.' - JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH

'The odds are so stacked against any creative work that it's a wonder this book exists at all. Middleton's portraits of struggling artists are uncomfortably familiar, bitterly funny, and cut with honest truth.' - JENNIFER MILLS

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781761263163

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 29 July 2025

Country: Australia

Imprint: Picador Australia

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 28.0mm

Width: 157.0mm

Height: 234.0mm

Weight: 378g

Pages: 304

Collections

Fiction General Fiction Literary Fiction Murray Middleton

About the Author

Murray Middleton considers himself uniquely qualified to write about the struggles of artists. He is a failed drummer. He has made short films that have been roundly rejected at festivals at home and abroad. He painted theatre sets for a decade, on and off, without exhibiting a bristle of aesthetic flair. Stand-up comedy has even been attempted. Miraculously, Murray has enjoyed some success as a writer, including winning a major Australian literary award. But he later passed a fellow winner of the award, several years his senior, in the confectionary aisle of a supermarket and noticed that they were wearing the same pair of purple Kmart shorts. In the moment, Murray understood that creative despair would always be his.

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