David Malouf
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David Malouf (born March 20, 1934) in Brisbane is an Australian writer whose themes encompass Australian history and the Australian landscape. His 1993 novel, Remembering Babylon. was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Malouf is a Lebanese Australian born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, the son of a Lebanese-Christian father and an English-Jewish mother of Portuguese descent. He attended Brisbane Grammar School and graduated from the University of Queensland in 1955, and has lived in England; Tuscany, Italy; and Sydney (lecturing at the University of Sydney).
His first novel, Johnno (1975), is the semi-autobiographical tale of a young man growing up in Brisbane during World War II. His epic novel The Great World (1990) tells the story of two Australians and their relationship amid the turmoil of two World Wars, including imprisonment by the Japanese during World War II; the novel won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the French Prix Femina Étranger. His Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Remembering Babylon (1993) is set in northern Australia during the 1850s amid a community of Scottish immigrant farmers whose isolated existence is threatened by the arrival of a stranger, a young white boy raised by Indigenous Australians; the novel won the first International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, as well as the Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best Book). Malouf was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000.
In addition, Malouf has written libretti for 3 operas (including Voss, an adaptation of the novel by Patrick White and first produced in Sydney in 1986), and Baa Baa Black Sheep (with music by Michael Berkeley), which combines a semi-autobiographical story by Rudyard Kipling with Kipling's Jungle Books. He has written several volumes of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a play, Blood Relations (1988). His memoirs, 12 Edmondstone Street, were published in 1985.
[edit] Books
- Johnno (1975)
- An Imaginary Life (1978)
- Fly Away Peter (1982)
- Antipodes (short story collection - 1983)
- Harland's Half Acre (1984)
- 12 Edmondstone St (memoirs - 1985)
- The Great World (1990)
- Remembering Babylon (1993)
- The Conversations At Curlow Creek (1996)
- A Spirit of Play - Boyer Lectures (1998)
- Untold Tales (1999)
- Dream Stuff (short story collection - 2000)
- Made in Britain (Quarterly Essay, Black Inc - 2003)
- Every Move You Make (Vintage - 2006)
[edit] External links
- David Malouf at www.contemporarywriters.com contains a "Critical Perspective" section
