In October 1943, the young and successful Australian literary editor, Max Harris, received out of the blue a package of poems by a recently deceased poet, Ern Malley, forwarded to him by his sister Ethel. Harris was conviced he had stumbled on the work of a young genius, a modernist in the T.S. Eliot tradition of whom Australia could be proud. Malley's manuscript was published and despatched world-wide, but the consequences were to haunt Harris and the Australian literary world for generations to come. This is the compelling account of this extraordinary story.