David Malouf | |
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.jpg) Malouf at the 2019 Perth Festival Writers Week | |
| Born | (1934-03-20)20 March 1934 (age 91) Brisbane,Queensland, Australia |
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| Alma mater | University of Queensland |
| Period | 1962– |
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| Notable works | |
| Notable awards | Grace Leven Prize for Poetry 1974 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal 1974 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction 1979 Pascall Prize 1988 Miles Franklin Award 1991 Prix Femina Étranger 1991 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction 1993 Prix Femina Étranger 1994 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction 1994 International Dublin Literary Award 1996 Neustadt International Prize for Literature 2000 Australia-Asia Literary Award 2008 Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature 2016 |
David George Joseph MaloufAO[1] (mah-LOOF;[2] born 20 March 1934) is an Australian poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, andlibrettist. Elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature in London in 2008, Malouf has lectured at both theUniversity of Queensland and theUniversity of Sydney. He also delivered the 1998Boyer Lectures.
Malouf's 1974 collectionNeighbours in a Thicket: Poems won theGrace Leven Prize for Poetry and theAustralian Literature Society Gold Medal. His 1990 novelThe Great World won numerous awards, including the 1991Miles Franklin Award andPrix Femina Étranger His 1993 novelRemembering Babylon was shortlisted for theBooker Prize and won the 1994Prix Femina Étranger, the 1994Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, the 1995 Prix Baudelaire and the 1996International Dublin Literary Award. Malouf was awarded theNeustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000, theAustralia-Asia Literary Award in 2008 and theAustralia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature in 2016. He has been mentioned as a candidate for theNobel Prize in Literature.[3]
Malouf was born inBrisbane, Australia, to a ChristianLebanese father and an English-born mother ofSephardi Jewish descent. His paternal family had immigrated from Lebanon in the 1880s, while his mother's family had moved to England via the Netherlands, before migrating to Australia in 1913.[4]
He attendedBrisbane Grammar School and graduated from theUniversity of Queensland with aB.A. degree in 1955.[1] He lectured for a short period before moving to London, where he taught atHolland Park School, before relocating toBirkenhead in 1962.[5] He returned to Australia in 1968, taught at his old school,[6] and lectured in English at the Universities of Queensland andSydney.[7]
Malouf isgay.[8] He has lived in England andTuscany, and for three decades spent most of his time in Sydney.[7] Malouf now lives in Queensland.[9]
Though he would later become known abroad for his prose works, Malouf initially concentrated on poetry.[2][10] His first work appeared in 1962, as part of a book he shared with three more Australian poets.[2]
His collectionNeighbours in a Thicket: Poems (1974) features childhood memories, his mother, his sister, travelling in Europe and war.[10]
1992 brought the publication ofPoems, 1959–1989.[2] Some of his poetry was also collected inRevolving Days: Selected Poems (2008), which is divided into four sections: on childhood, then Europe, then relocating to Sydney, then travelling between Europe and Australia.[10]
Malouf's first novel,Johnno (1975), is the semi-autobiographical tale of a young man growing up in Brisbane during theSecond World War.[11] Johnno engages in shoplifting and goes tobrothels, which contrasts with his friend Dante's middle-class conservatism.[10]La Boite Theatre adapted it for stage in 2006.[12][13]
Malouf began writing full-time in 1977.[1]
An Imaginary Life (1978) is about the final years ofOvid.[10]
Malouf's 1982 novella about three acquaintances and their experience of theFirst World War was titledFly Away Peter.[14]
His epic novelThe 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.[11]
HisBooker Prize-shortlisted novelRemembering Babylon (1993) is set in northern Australia during the 1850s amid a community of English immigrant farmers (with one Scottish family) whose isolated existence is threatened by the arrival of a stranger, a young white man raised from boyhood byIndigenous Australians.[10]
Malouf has written several collections of short stories, and a play,Blood Relations (1988).[7] Australian criticPeter Craven described Malouf's 2006 short-story collectionEvery Move You Make as "as formidable and bewitching a collection of stories as you would be likely to find anywhere in the English-speaking world".[6] Craven went on to state that "No one else in this country has: the maintenance of tone, the expertness of prose, the easeful transition between lyrical and realist effects. The man is a master, a superb writer, and also (which is not the same thing) a completely sophisticated literary gent".[6]The Complete Stories appeared in 2007.[10]
Malouf has also writtenlibretti for three operas (includingVoss, an adaptation ofthe novel of the same name byPatrick White and first produced in the 1986Adelaide Festival of Arts conducted byStuart Challender), andBaa Baa Black Sheep (with music byMichael Berkeley), which combinesa semi-autobiographical story byRudyard Kipling with Kipling'sJungle Books.[7]
Malouf published hismemoir, titled12 Edmondstone Street, in 1985.[11]
Malouf delivered the 1998Boyer Lectures onABC Radio.[7]
Malouf's work tends to be set in Australia, though "a European sensibility" is also present.[2]
His writing is characterised by a heightened sense of spatial relations, from the physical environments into which he takes his readers—whether within or outside built spaces, or in a natural landscape. He has likened each of his succession of novels to the discovery and exploration of a new room in a house, rather than part of an overarching development. "At a certain point, you begin to see what the connections are between things, and you begin to know what space it is you are exploring."[15] From his first novelJohnno onwards, his themes focused on "male identity and soul-searching".[6] He said that much of the male writing that preceded him "was about the world of action. I don't think that was ever an accurate description of men's lives".[6] He identifiedPatrick White as the writer who turned this around in Australian literature—that White's writing was the kind "that goes behind inarticulacy and or unwillingness to speak, writing that gives the language of feeling to people who don't have it themselves".[6]
Malouf also said that "I knew that the world around you is only uninteresting if you can't see what is really going on. The place you come from is always the most exotic place you'll ever encounter because it is the only place where you recognise how many secrets and mysteries there are in people's lives".[6] However, after nearly four decades of writing, he concluded that in older writers can sometimes be found "a fading of the intensity of the imagination, and ... of the interest in the tiny details of life and behaviour—you see [writers] getting a bit impatient with that."[16]
As well as his numerous accolades for fiction, Malouf was awarded thePascall Prize for Critical Writing in 1988.[17] In 2008, Malouf won the Australian Publishers Association'sLloyd O'Neil Award for outstanding service to the Australian book industry.[18] He was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature in 2008.[19] He is also an Honorary Fellow of theAustralian Academy of the Humanities.[1]
And the list goes on and on, including such contemporary literary greats as Kazuo Ishiguro, Ursula Le Guin, David Malouf, Salman Rushdie, A. S. Byatt, Milan Kundera, Julian Barnes, and John Ashbery...
This is not new for the theatre—Rosamond Siemon'sThe Mayne Inheritance was adapted by Errol O'Neill for the 2004 season, and several Nick Earls novels have been dramatised—but 2006 marks the first time that adaptations have dominated a season, with three of five plays based on novels of the same name. These vary significantly: David Malouf's 1975Johnno, a classic of growing up in war-time Brisbane; Andrew McGahan'sLast Drinks (2000), a recollection of the pre-Fitzgerald Inquiry era; andPerfect Skin (2000), another of Earls's comic novels.
David Malouf's novel Remembering Babylon was shortlisted for the Booker Price in 1993...
Media related toDavid Malouf at Wikimedia Commons
