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This clip is from an interview Dinny O’Hearn conducted with David Malouf that ranges widely across his writing. He talks about writing two books concurrently and discusses his earliest novels, Johnno (1975) and An Imaginary Life (1978).
Curator’s notes
David Malouf lived for many years in Brisbane. He’s fascinated by the difference between the major cities in Australia, finding that the landscape and the setting of each is enormously important to the character of its people.
Born in Brisbane on 20 March 1934, his father’s family came to Australia from Lebanon in the 1880s and his mother’s family arrived from London after the First World War. David Malouf left Australia at the age of 24 to live in Britain from 1959 until 1968, when he returned to Australia to begin teaching at Sydney University where he stayed until 1977. He now writes full-time and lives part of his year in Australia and the rest in Tuscany, Italy. He has won numerous awards for his work, including the Miles Franklin award in 1991, and was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1994.
His works include Johnno (1975), An Imaginary Life (1978), Fly Away Peter (1981), Remembering Babylon (1993), a stage play called Blood Relations (1988) and an opera of Patrick White’s Voss (1986), which he co-wrote with Richard Meale. He also delivered the ABC’s Boyer Lectures in 1998.
This interview, despite its windblown appearance, is a delight. Dinny O’Hearn obviously loves the writer’s work and encourages David Malouf to discuss a range of topics, from the different styles of his various books to the discipline of writing.
