13.3.1 Fiction
Description
This article is from the soc.culture.australian FAQ, by Stephen Wales with numerous contributions by others.
13.3.1 Fiction
(If authors also write poetry, non-fiction, I include that here with
the fiction entry)
* Thomas Keneally began writing in 1964. Born in northern New South
Wales in 1935, he now lives in Sydney with his wife and two daughters.
Novels:
- "Schindler's Ark" (published in the US as Schindler's List, now a major
film by Steven Spielberg. Based on the true story of German
businessman Oscar Schindler who save over 1000 Jews from the Nazi
extermination camps)
- "A Family Madness"
- "Victim of the Aurora"
- "The Playmaker" (set in first convict settlement)
- "Thomas Keneally Flying Hero Class" (interesting Koorie perspective)
- "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith"(*), (made into a film)
- "Confederates"(*),
- "Gossip from the Forest"(*)
* shortlisted for the booker prize
Nonfiction: Outback, an account of life in Central Australia
* Patrick White (winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for literature) was
born in England in 1912, when his parents were in Europe for 2 years;
at 6 months he was taken back to Australia where his father owned a
sheep station. When he was thirteen he was sent to school in England,
to Cheltenham, 'where, it was understood, the climate would be
temperate and a colonial acceptable'. Neither proved true, and after
four rather miserable years there he went to King's College,
Cambridge, where he specialised in languages. After leaving the
university he settled in London, determined to become a writer.
During the war he was an R.A.F. Intelligence Officer in the Middle
East and Greece. After the war he returned to Australia. [Did he
die recently? AN]
Novels: "Happy Valley" (1939), "The Living and the Dead" (1941), "The
Aunt's Story" (1946), "The Tree of Man" (1956), "Voss" (1957), "Riders
in the Chariot" (1961), "The Solid Mandala" (1966), "The Vivisector"
(1970), "The Eye of the Storm" (1973), "A Fringe of Leaves" ("1976),
"The Twyborn Affair" (1979),
Collections of short stories: The Burnt Ones (1964), The Cockatoo
(1974) including several short novels (interesting collection of short
stories dealing with modern Australian life [MJ])
Autobiography: Flaws in the Glass (1981)
* Elizabeth Jolley
* Tim Winton is the author of several novels, short story collections
and children's books, for which he has received every major literary
award in Australia, including the Australian/Vogel Award and the
prestigious Miles Franklin Award. He currently lives on the Western
Australia coast with his wife and children.
"Cloudstreet": When two large working-class families, the Lambs and the
Pickles, are forced to share a massive house and inevitably their
lives, their past misfortunes and conflicting personalities merge in a
breathtaking explosion of joy, tragedy, and the occasional miracle.
[I loved it! AN]
Other works: "An Open Swimmer", "Shallows", "Scission", "That Eye",
"The Sky", "Minimum of Two", "In the Winter Dark", "Jesse", "Lockie
Leonard", "Human "Torpedo", "The Bugalugs Bum Thief.
* Peter Carey grew up in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, and was educated at
Geelong Grammar School and Monash University, where he read science.
Novels:
- "Bliss" (1981) (made into a film, I found the book a bit strange,
and rather boring - must admit I didn't finish it. AN),
- "Illywhacker" (1985) (short-listed for Booker prize)
- "Oscar and Lucinda" (1988) (winner of the Booker prize, great, AN).
Short Stories: "The Fat Man in History" (I enjoyed most of these,
though they tend to be a little bizarre, AN)
* David Malouf
Fiction: "Johnno", "An Imaginary Life", "Fly Away Peter", "Child's
Play", "Harland's Half acre", "Antipodes", "The Great World" (winner
of the Commonwealth Prize and the Prix Femina Etranger), "Remembering
Babylon".
Autobiography: "12 Edmonstone Street"
Poetry: "Bicycle and Other Poems", "Neighbours in a Thicket", "the
Year of the Foxes and Other Poems", "First Things Last", "Wild Lemons"
Libretto: Baa Baa Black Sheep
In "Remembering Babylon" David Malouf gives us a rich and compelling
novel, in language of astonishing poise and resonance, about the
settling of the continent down under, Australia, and the vicissitudes
of first contact with the unknown. In the mid-1840s a 13-year-old
cabin boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore from a British shipwreck onto
the Queensland coast, and is taken in by aborigines. Sixteen years
later, three children from a white settlement come upon this
apparition: "...."... Possessed of lyrical intensity and always
respectful of human complexity , Remembering Babylon tells the story
of Gemmy, and of his relation to the whites. Given shelter by the
McIvors, the family of the three children, he seems at first to have a
secure role in the settlement, but currents of fear and distrust
intensify. At once white and black, a man with a voice but unable to
speak the language, he confounds all categories that might explain
him. To everyone he meets .... Gemmy is a force of nature that both
fascinates and repels. He finds his own whiteness as unsettling in his
new world as the knowledge he brings with him of the savage, the
aboriginal. In his most accomplished novel to date,David Malouf has
written a powerful fiction, informed by a vision of eternal human
differences. Remembering Babylon is a brilliant mythopoeia of our
unending encounter with the Other.
* Martin Boyd: "A Difficult Young Man" (I studied this in High
School. AN], "Lucinda Brayford", "The Cardboard Crown", "Outbreak
of Love", "When Blackbirds Sing", "Day of My Delight".
* Frank Hardy: "Power without Glory". Frank Hardy's compelling story
of corruption and political manipulation created violent controversy
on its first release and has excited and intrigued Australians ever
since. Power Without Glory traces the rise of the ruthless John West
from his impoverished working-class beginnings in a Melbourne slum to
a position of great wealth and political influence. His rising public
dominance contrasts with the growing emptiness of his personal life,
where even family turn from him, estranged by his implacable and
pitiless pursuit of power. A startling expose of bribery, fear and
corruption in high places, Hardy's tale revealed the sordid world of
gambling, political intrigue and underworld depravity. Upon the book's
first publication he was accused of overstepping the fine line between
fiction and the depiction of real Australian people and events, and
was sued for libel. The sensational legal battle which followed
created debate and outrage across the nation and, despite Hardy's
acquittal, the questions it raised remain unanswered today. [Made into
a television series]
* David Williamson Collected Plays Vol 1 (including "The Coming of
stork", "Don's Party" and "The removalists" [MJ])
* Justin D'Ath, "The Initiate" (aboriginal protagonist; coming-of-age
sorta)
* Peter Corris writes light detectives set in and around Sydney and
there's another (female) author of similar stuff setting them all over
the place (Murder on the Ballarat Train was one). [MJ]
* Miles Franklin, "My Brilliant Career". Made into a film by Gillian
Armstrong, starring Judy David.
* Henry Handel Richardson, "The Getting of Wisdom": Country girl's
experiences of going to boarding school late last century. Made into
a film.
Joan Lindsay, "Picnic at Hanging Rock". Girls from a boarding school
in country Victoria, early this century, go on a picnic to Hanging Rock
on Valentine's day, and 3 of them and a school mistress disappear. Made
into a film by Peter Weir.
Neville Shute: "A Town Like Alice" (film and also tv mini-series), "A
Far Country", "On the Beach".
* Early colonial life: "The Fatal Shore", Robert Hughes, Eleanor
Dark's trilogy "'The Timeless Land".
* Robert Drewe "The Savage Crows" (a fictional dive into Australian
history) and "The Bodysurfers" (celebrating the great Australian beach
culture). [MVN]
Continue to:
My Books
