David Malouf has produced a wide range of work including ten novels, four volumes of short stories and eight of poetry, as well as essays and memoirs, a play, and three libretti (most notably for the opera based on Patrick White’s Voss). An Australian born in Brisbane in 1934, he lived in Italy and England before settling in Sydney. Sometimes hailed as the quintessential chronicler of Australia, its geographical spaces, stories and voices, he does not like the idea “of being some kind of representative consciousness of the country.”
“I write out of a strong sense of time and space, a past that is continuously present, and of continuities within change. Wholeness is what I see myself as being concerned with—which means, of course, disruption.”