David Malouf

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Malouf

David Malouf (born March 20, 1934 in Brisbane , Australia ) is one of the most famous living Australian authors.

His works include Johnno , An Imaginary Life , Harland's Half Acre , The Great World, and Remembering Babylon .

In 1991 he received the Commonwealth Writers' Prize , the Miles Franklin Award and the Prix ​​Femina Étranger for The Great World . Remembering Babylon received the first International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, which has been presented annually since then. In 2000 he was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature .

His other works include five volumes of poetry and three opera libretti .

He currently lives in Sydney .

Youth and education

Malouf was born in Brisbane , Australia, to a Christian Lebanese father and an English-born mother of Portuguese Sephardic origin.

Even as a child he read a lot. At the age of twelve he read Wuthering Heights , Bleak House and The Hunchback of Notre Dame . These books, he later said, taught him something about sex: "They (the books) said that there was an amazing, passionate life that I knew nothing about". He attended Brisbane Grammar School and graduated from the University of Queensland in 1955. At first he worked as a teacher at his old school. he then taught English language and literature at the University of Queensland and the University of Sydney .

Life and achievements as a writer

He lived in England and Tuscany, but spent most of the past three decades in Sydney . Like many writers, he loves privacy and that is why he particularly liked Tuscany, “where he could think and write anonymously”. His first novel, Johnno (1975), is the semi-autobiographical story of a young man who grew up in Brisbane during World War II . This book was edited for the stage by the “La Boite Theater” in 2004. In 1982 he was awarded “The Age Book of the Year” for his novel about three friends and their experiences from the First World War Fly Away Peter . His epic novel The Great World (1990) tells the story of two Australians and their relationship to one another in the tumult of two world wars up to their captivity in Japanese hands. The novel won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the French Prix ​​Femina Étranger . The novel Remembering Babylon (1993) takes place in northern Australia around 1850. A group of immigrant Scottish farmers feel unsettled by the arrival of a young man raised by Aborigines.

In 2007 he again received The Age Book of the Year and the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards , Australian Short Story Collection - Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Award for the short story collection Every move you make . Australian critic Peter Craven called the stories "wonderful and enchanting as you seldom find them in the English-speaking world." He added: "Nobody in this country has the tone of speech, the dexterity in prose, and the ease of transition between lyrical and realistic effects. The man is a master of his subject, an excellent writer and (and it is not the same) : A refined literary grand master.

Malouf has written several volumes of poetry, three collections of short stories and the play Blood Relations (1988). He has written three librettos for operas, including Voss , an adaptation of a novel by the Australian Nobel Prize winner Patrick White of the same name . This opera premiered in Adelaide in 1986 at the Adelaide Festival of Arts . The premiere was musically directed by Stuart Challender . Another libretto was written for Baa Baa Black Sheep (based on music by Michael Berkeley ). It combines semi-autobiographical scenes from Rudyard Kipling's short story Baa Baa, Black Sheep with scenes from Kipling's The Jungle Book . His autobiography, 12 Edmondstone Street , was published in 1985.

Topics and their literary processing

Malouf said of the essence of his authorship: “I completely reject the idea of ​​being a representative for anything. This whole idea of ​​being a role model: a terrible idea. I find it strange to be a kind of representative of the conscience of this country. You do what you do in the form that you find right out of a kind of necessity. I can't see why that might be important to anyone else ”.

Malouf compared the appearance of his novels more to the discovery or exploration of previously unknown rooms in a house than to a purposeful development: "At a certain point in time you begin to recognize connections between things and then you begin to recognize what you are exploring." Johnno's first book on he dealt with the topic of the search for “male identity and self-analysis”. In his opinion, much of the literature of male writers before his time was fixated on pure action; it “dealt with the world of action. I don't think that was ever a proper description of men's life. ”He says it was Patrick White who gave Australian literature a new direction in that regard: White's ability to write was of the kind“ the one behind Sluggishness in expression and the lack of words that gives expression to those people who do not have it themselves "

“I knew that the world around us only seems uninteresting as long as you can't see what's really going on. The place you come from is always the most exotic one you will ever experience. Because it is the only place where you can find out for yourself how many secrets and mysteries are to be found in people's lives. ”However: after almost four decades as an author, he states that older writers are“ losing the intensity of their imagination and their interest in them minute details of life and behavior - you see (authors) are a little dissatisfied with that. "

Works

Novels

  • 1975 Johnno
  • 1978 An Imaginary Life
  • 1979 Fly Away Peter
  • 1982 Child's Play
  • 1984 Harland's Half Acre
  • 1990 The Great World
  • 1993 Remembering Babylon
  • 1996 The Conversations At Curlow Creek
    • The Night Watch at Curlow Creek, German by Adelheid Dormagen; Zsolnay, Vienna 1997. ISBN 3-552-04854-5
  • 2009 ransomware
    • The bravest of the sons, German by Susann Urban; Edition Büchergilde / Büchergilde Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 2012. ISBN 978-3-940111-94-4 .

stories

  • 1983 Antipodes
  • 1999 Untold Tales
  • 2000 Dream Stuff
  • 2006 Every Move You Make
  • 2007 The Complete Stories

Poetry

  • 1970 Bicycle and Other Poems
  • 1974 Neighbors in a Thicket
  • 1976 Poems 1975-76
  • 1980 Wild Lemons
  • 1994 Selected Poems 1959-1989
  • 2007 Guide to the Perplexed and Other Poems
  • 2007 Typewriter Music
  • 2008 Revolving Days

Non-fiction

  • 1985 12 Edmondstone St (autobiography)
  • 1998 A Spirit of Play - Boyer Lectures (Essays)
  • 2003 Made in England (essay)
  • 2008 On Experience (essay)

Plays

  • 1988 Blood Relations

Opera libretti

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

Web links

Commons : David Malouf  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Tom Gilling: David Malouf: Writer . In: The Weekend Australian Magazine , August 2-3, 2008, p. 28
  2. ↑ a b c Australian Authors - David Malouf .
  3. ↑ a b c d David Malouf Overview . ( Memento of the original from December 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.usp.nus.edu.sg
  4. ↑ The Wordshed - David Malouf, in the House of Writing , Part 1 , YouTube video, accessed August 30, 2009
  5. ↑ The Wordshed - David Malouf, in the House of Writing , Part 4 , YouTube video, Accessed 30 August 2009
personal data
SURNAME Malouf, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian author
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Brisbane , Australia