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A-Z CLASSIC LITERATURE

Remembering Babylon by David Malouf
In the mid-1840s a thirteen-year-old British cabin boy, Gemmy Fairley, is cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by aborigines. Sixteen years later he moves back into the world of Europeans, among hopeful yet terrified settlers who are staking out their small patch of home in an alien place. To them, Gemmy stands as a different kind of challenge: he is a force that at once fascinates and repels. His own identity in this new world is as unsettling to him as the knowledge he brings to others of the savage, the aboriginal.
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About the Author

David Malouf is the author of eleven novels, as well as bountiful collections of stories, poetry, and opera libretti. He has won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Prix Femina Étranger, and the Australia-Asia Literary Award; he has also been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. He lives in Australia.

From: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/18825/david-malouf/

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Analysis & Literary Criticism

Videos

In celebration of his 80th birthday, and a lifetime of exquisite writing, David Malouf sits down with writer and critic Tegan Bennett Daylight to talk about his life and his work, including his new full volume of poetry, Earth Hour, which charts the resilience of beauty amidst stubborn human grace, and a collection of personal essays, A First Place, which explores the idea of home in Australia.

Sydney Writer's Festival. (2014, June 4). David Malouf interviewed by Tegan Bennett Daylight | Sydney Writers' Festival [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/1MgFgpMpEBM

This film is an exploration of Malouf's life and work, using interviews, archival footage and dramatization of his writings.

Featherstone, D. (Director). (1997, September 8). An Imaginary Life - David Malouf [Video]. ABC. Clickview.

Facing writers, an ABC TV series for secondary school student of English, presents interviews with ten of Australia's leading writers.

Strauss, D. (Producer). (1990, November 17). David Malouf [TV series episode]. In Facing Writers. ABC. Clickview.

LitCharts: Remembering Babylon [Scroll to view]