It began in darkness. As Jeremy Chambers lay in bed, too weak to read or write, voices and images, stories from a decade earlier flooded his memory.

From the time he was 15 until his second year as a student at the University of Melbourne, Chambers spent his summers and school holidays as a vineyard labourer in Victoria's northeast. During his long illness, which began in 1997, he recalled that work, recounting to himself the stories the workers told to pass the time. Eventually he started composing a novel in his head.