The Twyborn Affair
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| The Twyborn Affair | |
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| Author | Patrick White |
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| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Vintage Press |
| Publication date | 1979 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 432 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-09-945821-7 |
| Preceded by | A Fringe of Leaves |
| Followed by | Memoirs of Many in One |
The Twyborn Affair is a novel by Patrick White, first published in 1979. It is set in a villa on the French Riviera, a sheep station in Australia's Snowy Mountains, and a London brothel. The timeframe moves from the eve of the First World War to the early months of the Second World War. White charts the transmigration of a soul through three different identities, two of them in female guise: Eudoxia, Eddie, and Eadith.
Although its concerns are kaleidoscopic, the novel's main obsession is with identity; White views his subject from masculine/feminine, colonial/metropolitan, and bourgeois/bohemian angles. The writing has been described as vivid and painterly in its attention to landscape, and remorseless in the dissection of social conventions. The novel is a virtuosic display of White's characteristic humour.
The Twyborn Affair was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1979, but was removed at the request of the author, that it make way for the work of younger and more deserving writers. This reflects White's refusal, later in life, of all literary awards bestowed upon him. He made an exception for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but sent a surrogate to Sweden to accept the award on his behalf.
