This is only the second biography of a remarkable Australian. The first biography of Germaine Greer, Untamed Shrew by Christine Wallace, was unauthorised. Greer labelled the author a ‘flesh-eating bacterium’ and the book ‘a piece of excrement’.

Germaine Greer is an important Australian identity and author who, after graduating from the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney, spent most of her life in England continuing her studies at the University of Cambridge. She burst onto the world scene with her first book, The Female Eunuch, in 1970. It would become an important and polarising book for the feminist movement.

Greer was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Warwick in the UK, then became a working journalist for a number of reputable newspapers.

In 2013, she sold her archives to the University of Melbourne. Elizabeth Kleinhenz was one of the first researchers permitted to trawl through the 500 boxes of letters, manuscripts and other documents in the archive to write this biography.

In the later years of her life, Greer has invested to protect an environmentally threatened area near the Gold Coast. She will turn 80 shortly and now spends more time in Australia.

This is a powerful and interesting biography about an Australian writer who has contributed much to our understanding of the world.

Reviewed by Jean Ferguson