Alex Miller is one of Australia's eminent novelists, twice a winner of the Miles Franklin prize. He's been telling us stories for more than three decades.

And it turns out that we owe a lot of that to his friend, Max, who gave Alex the courage to write.

Max was a Jewish exile who had suffered torture at the hands of the Gestapo, but there was far more than that to this complicated man.

In his first non-fiction book, Alex set out on a quest to find out the full story of his best friend.