David Malouf

David George Joseph Malouf (born 20 March 1934) is an acclaimed Australian writer. He was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000, and his 1993 novel, Remembering Babylon won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (1996), and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize .

Personal life

Malouf is an 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) .

Career

His first novel, Johnno (1975), is the semi-autobiographical tale of a young man growing up in Brisbane during World War II . In 1982, his novella about three acquaintances and their experience of World War 1, Fly Away Peter, won The Age Book of the Year fiction prize. 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 man raised from boyhood by Indigenous Australians. It also won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best Book). In 2007, his short story collection Every move you make won The Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction and the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, Australian Short Story Collection - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award .

In addition, Malouf has written libretti for 3 operas (including Voss, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Patrick White and first produced in the 1986 Adelaide Festival of Arts conducted by Stuart Challender), 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 .

Malouf was awarded the Pascall Prize for Critical Writing in 1988.

In 2008, Malouf won the Australian Publishers Association's Lloyd O'Neil Award for outstanding service to the Australian book industry

Books

Novels

• Johnno (1975)
• An Imaginary Life (1978)
• Fly Away Peter (1982)
• Harland's Half Acre (1984)
• The Great World (1990)
• Remembering Babylon (1993)
• The Conversations At Curlow Creek (1996)
• Untold Tales (1999)

Short Story Collections

• Antipodes (1983)
• Dream Stuff (2000)
• Every Move You Make (2006)
• The Complete Stories (2007)

Poetry Collections

• Bicycle and Other Poems (1970)
• Neighbours in a Thicket: Poems (1974)
• Poems 1975-76 (1976)
• Wild Lemons: Poems (1980)
• Selected Poems 1959-1989 (1994)
• Typewriter Music (2007)

Non-fiction

• 12 Edmondstone St (memoirs - 1985)
• A Spirit of Play - Boyer Lectures (1998)
• Made in England (Quarterly Essay, Black Inc - 2003)

Plays

• Blood Relations (1988)

Libretto

• Voss (1986)
• Mer de Glace (1991)
• Baa Baa Black Sheep (1993)

References

External Links

• David Malouf at Random House Australia
• Video clip of Malouf in interview from The book show (1988), SBS Television – 1'49"
• Transcript of interview with Ramona Koval, on The Book Show on ABC Radio National, December 2007
• Video of David Malouf speech about Australian culture and writing on SlowTV