'Butchers Parade' adopts a perspective sometimes described as nostalgic realism. It unfolds like a series of black and white photographs depicting a patchwork past. The reader enters a world long gone and encounters a time of simple pleasures marred by a disastrous military conflict.
Set in the third quarter of the twentieth century, the stories of 'Butchers Parade' feature the quintessentially Australian location of Redgate - a meatworks town on the western fringe of Sydney - as well as the blighted circumstances of wartime Indo-China. The narratives are united by the presence of the hulking figure of Horrie, a young meatworker who spends his spare time playing rugby league and drinking at the Railway Hotel. Horrie loves his home town and its people but he is conscripted and sent to fight in Vietnam. On his return to Redgate, Horrie is a troubled man, haunted by distorted recollections of brutal battles and caught up in a romance that seems hopeless.
David Morisset is an Australian writer, who has published novels, poetry and short stories. His poem 'Persian Princess' was commended in the John Shaw Neilson Poetry Award (Fellowship of Australian Writers National Literary Awards 2009). He is a former diplomat and economist.