<i>A Season on Earth</i> with animals: Gerald Murnane’s mundane afterlife

Abstract This article presents a new reading of Gerald Murnane's novel, A Season on Earth, as an eschatological journey that the protagonist Adrian Sherd experiences with nonhuman animals. Taking seriously Murnane’s statement that he was “thoroughly taught in [Catholic] eschatology,” I analyse Sherd’s journey as a descent into sin followed by redemption in an earthly, embodied paradise with the help of his theological animal neighbors. The eschatological landscapes that Sherd explores with animals correlate to real places where Murnane grew up, such as Bendigo, which he envisions as a mundane afterlife in “paradise.”