David Malouf je uznávaný australský autor, jehož díla se vyznačují pronikavým vhledem do lidské psychiky a působivým jazykovým stylem. Jeho romány zkoumají témata identity, paměti a složitých vztahů mezi minulostí a přítomností. Prostřednictvím své poezie a prózy zachycuje krásu a křehkost lidské existence a často se zaměřuje na hluboké propojení mezi člověkem a krajinou. Jeho literární přínos je charakterizován intelektuální hloubkou a poetickou citlivostí, která čtenáře nutí k zamyšlení.
Ovidiovo fiktivní autobiografické líčení života ve vyhnanství v barbarském světě Gétů z pera australského básníka a romanopisce. Jeho Ovidius v románu vědomě přijímá vyhnanství, které postupně ještě sám radikalizuje: zcela opouští civilizaci a při svém sestupu do přírody za sebou zanechává nejen svoji kariéru a latinský jazyk, ale i onu mnohem méně pokročilou, z hlediska Římana barbarskou komunitu v Tomidě a podstupuje přitom jakousi iniciaci do hlubin mystické Přírody.
Všední život osady britských přistěhovalců v australském Queenslandu v polovině 19. století přeruší jednoho dne bizarní podívaná: před zraky hrajících si dětí se z buše vynoří přízračná postava Gemmyho Fairleyho, Angličana vracejícího se po šestnácti letech života mezi domorodci ke "své" civilizaci. Gemmiho vstup na nejistou půdu osady svádějící každodenní zápas s nehostinným prostředím neznámé země, jeho "divošská" minulost i snaha o znovunavázání vztahu s nejzákladnějšími prvky mateřské kultury záhy vedou k postupně se vyhrocující konfrontaci s komunitou, která se cítí přítomností člověka, který je i není její součástí, znejistěna, ne-li přímo ohrožena. Nepřehlédnutelný je Maloufův kritický pohled na nerovný střet dvou kultur během období evropské kolonizace australského kontinentu, jádro jeho románu se však dotýká obecnější otázky lidské potřeby se vymezit a potvrdit svou existenci v okolním světě.
Born on a poor dairy farm in Queensland, Frank Harland's life is centred on his great artistic gift, his passionate love for his father and four brothers and his need to repossess, through a patch of land, his family's past.
In this stunning collection, internationally acclaimed writer David Malouf gives us bookish boys and taciturn men, strong women and wayward sons, fathers and daughters, lovers and husbands, a composer and his muse. These are their stories, whole lives brought dramatically into focus and powerfully rooted in the vividly rendered landscape of the vast Australian continent. Malouf writes about men and women looking for something they seem to have missed, or missed out on, puzzling over not only their own lives but also the place they have come to occupy in the lives of others. This single volume gathers both a new collection of Malouf's short fiction, Every Move You Make, and all of his previously published stories.
Paperback edition of the first collection of short stories by the internationally award-winning poet and novelist. First published in 1985, it was awarded that year's Vance Palmer Award for Fiction, one of the Victorian Premier's literary awards. The author's other works include TJohnno' and THarland's Half Acre'.
The Great World gives a voice to the Australian experience of war; of the young men who have enlisted to fight other people's battles. Ranging over 70 years of Australian life, it is a novel of self-knowledge and lost innocence, of survival and witness.
In the fourth Quarterly Essay of 2003, David Malouf looks at Australia's bond with Britain and wonders whether it wasn't the Mother Country which did most of the giving. This is an essay which presents British civilisation, the civilisation of Shakespeare and the Enlightenment and the Westminster system, as the irreducible ground on which any Australian achievement is based. Britain has always been the tolerant parent, and an older Australia could be both intensely patriotic and see itself as what it was, a transplantation of Britain. This relationship did not exclude America but it made for a sometimes complicated threesome of nations. This is a brilliant, deeply meditated essay by one of our finest writers about the traditions that shaped Australia and which connect it to one of the mightier traditions in world history."... Made in England is ... a case of one of Australia's most eminent novelists allowing himself to imagine, and by imagining to analyse, the hopes and glories, once and future, that were part of this new Britannia." —Peter Craven, Introduction"Any argument for [the republic] based on the need to make a final break with Britain will fail." —David Malouf, Made In England
A young man going off to war tries to make sense of his place in the world he is leaving; Powerfully rooted in the heat and the dust of the vast Australian continent, this is a heartbreakingly beautiful and richly satisfying collection by a master storyteller, one of the great writers of our time.
The book explores the profound tradition of silence among men, particularly veterans of war, as a means of self-protection from emotional trauma. This silence not only shields them from reliving their experiences but also spares women and children from the harsh realities of what the men endured. As a consequence, those who survived significant battles, like Gallipoli, often refrained from documenting their experiences, leaving a gap in the historical narrative of their trauma and resilience.