David Malouf

Australian writer (1934–2026) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David George Joseph Malouf AO[1] (/məˈluːf/, mə-LOOF; 20 March 1934 – 22 April 2026) was an Australian poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright and librettist. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London in 2008, Malouf lectured at both the University of Queensland and the University of Sydney. He also delivered the 1998 Boyer Lectures.

Born
David George Joseph Malouf

(1934-03-20)20 March 1934
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Died22 April 2026(2026-04-22) (aged 92)
Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • short story writer
  • poet
  • playwright
AlmamaterUniversity of Queensland
Quick facts David Malouf AO FRSL, Born ...
David Malouf

AO FRSL
Malouf in 2019
Malouf in 2019
Born
David George Joseph Malouf

(1934-03-20)20 March 1934
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Died22 April 2026(2026-04-22) (aged 92)
Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • short story writer
  • poet
  • playwright
Alma materUniversity of Queensland
Period1962–2018
Genre
  • Novel
  • short story
  • poem
  • play
  • opera libretto
Notable works
Notable awards
Close

Malouf's 1974 collection Neighbours in a Thicket: Poems won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. His 1990 novel The Great World won numerous awards, including the 1991 Miles Franklin Award and Prix Femina Étranger. His 1993 novel Remembering Babylon was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the 1994 Prix Femina Étranger, the 1994 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, the 1995 Prix Baudelaire and the 1996 International Dublin Literary Award. Malouf was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000, the Australia-Asia Literary Award in 2008 and the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature in 2016. He was mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.[2]

Early life

Malouf was born on 20 March 1934 in Brisbane, Australia,[3] to a Lebanese Christian father and an English-born mother of Sephardi Jewish descent. His paternal family had immigrated from Lebanon in the 1880s, while his mother's family had moved to England via the Netherlands, before migrating to Australia in 1913.[4]

Malouf attended Brisbane Grammar School and graduated from the University of Queensland with a B.A. degree in 1955.[1] He lectured for a short period before moving to London, where he taught at Holland Park School, before relocating to Birkenhead in 1962.[5] He returned to Australia in 1968, taught at his old school,[6] and lectured in English at the Universities of Queensland and Sydney.[7]

Writing

Though he would later become known abroad for his prose works, Malouf initially concentrated on poetry.[8][9] His first work appeared in 1962, as part of a book he shared with three other Australian poets.[8] Malouf began writing full-time in 1977.[1]

Poetry

His collection Neighbours in a Thicket: Poems (1974) had featured childhood memories, his mother, his sister, travelling in Europe and war.[9] In 1992, he published Poems, 1959–1989.[8] Some of his poetry was also collected in Revolving Days: Selected Poems (2008), which is divided into four sections: on childhood, then Europe, then relocating to Sydney, then travelling between Europe and Australia.[9]

Novels

Malouf's first novel, Johnno (1975), is the semi-autobiographical tale of a young man growing up in Brisbane during the Second World War.[10] Johnno engages in shoplifting and goes to brothels, which contrasts with his friend Dante's middle-class conservatism.[9] La Boite Theatre adapted it for stage in 2006.[11][12] An Imaginary Life (1978) is about the final years of Ovid.[9] His 1982 novella about three acquaintances and their experience of the First World War was titled Fly Away Peter.[13] Malouf's epic novel The Great World (1990) tells the story of two Australians and their relationship amid the turmoil of two World Wars, including imprisonment by the Japanese during World War II.[10] His Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Remembering Babylon (1993) is set in northern Australia during the 1850s amid a community of English immigrant farmers (with one Scottish family) whose isolated existence is threatened by the arrival of a stranger, a young white man raised from boyhood by Indigenous Australians.[9]

Short stories

Malouf wrote several collections of short stories, and a play, Blood Relations (1988).[7] Australian critic Peter Craven described Malouf's 2006 short-story collection Every Move You Make as "as formidable and bewitching a collection of stories as you would be likely to find anywhere in the English-speaking world".[6] Craven went on to state that "No one else in this country has: the maintenance of tone, the expertness of prose, the easeful transition between lyrical and realist effects. The man is a master, a superb writer, and also (which is not the same thing) a completely sophisticated literary gent".[6] The Complete Stories appeared in 2007.[9]

Libretti

He also wrote libretti for three operas (including Voss, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Patrick White and first produced in the 1986 Adelaide Festival of Arts conducted by Stuart Challender), and Baa Baa Black Sheep (with music by Michael Berkeley), which combines a semi-autobiographical story by Rudyard Kipling with Kipling's Jungle Books.[7] Malouf published his memoir, titled 12 Edmondstone Street, in 1985.[10]

Lecturing

Malouf delivered the 1998 Boyer Lectures on ABC Radio.[7]

Subject matter

Malouf's work tends to be set in Australia, though "a European sensibility" is also present according to an eNotes study guide.[8]

His writing was characterised by a heightened sense of spatial relations, from the physical environments into which he takes his readers—whether within or outside built spaces, or in a natural landscape. He likened each of his succession of novels to the discovery and exploration of a new room in a house, rather than part of an overarching development. "At a certain point, you begin to see what the connections are between things, and you begin to know what space it is you are exploring."[14]

From his first novel Johnno onwards, his themes focused on "male identity and soul-searching".[attribution needed][6] He said that much of the male writing that preceded him "was about the world of action. I don't think that was ever an accurate description of men's lives".[6] He identified Patrick White as the writer who turned this around in Australian literature—that White's writing was the kind "that goes behind inarticulacy and or unwillingness to speak, writing that gives the language of feeling to people who don't have it themselves".[6]

Malouf also said that "I knew that the world around you is only uninteresting if you can't see what is really going on. The place you come from is always the most exotic place you'll ever encounter because it is the only place where you recognise how many secrets and mysteries there are in people's lives".[6] However, after nearly four decades of writing, he concluded that in older writers can sometimes be found "a fading of the intensity of the imagination, and ... of the interest in the tiny details of life and behaviour—you see [writers] getting a bit impatient with that."[15]

Personal life and death

Malouf was gay.[16] He lived in England and Tuscany, and for three decades spent most of his time in Sydney.[7] In his later years Malouf lived in Queensland.[17] He died in Gold Coast, Queensland, on 22 April 2026, aged 92.[18][19][20]

Awards and honours

Malouf was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the 1987 Australia Day Honours for services to literature.[21]

As well as his numerous accolades for fiction, Malouf was awarded the Pascall Prize for Critical Writing in 1988.[22] In 2008, Malouf won the Australian Publishers Association's Lloyd O'Neil Award for outstanding service to the Australian book industry.[23] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2008.[24] He was also an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.[1]

Selected bibliography

Source:[46]

Novels

Short story collections

Poetry collections

Non-fiction

  • 12 Edmondstone Street (1985)—memoir[50]
  • A Spirit of Play: The Making of Australian Consciousness (1998)—the ABC Boyer Lectures[51]
  • Made in England: Australia's British Inheritance (2003)—number 12 in Black Inc's Quarterly Essay series[52]
  • On Experience (2008)—in Melbourne University Press's Little Books on Big Themes series[9]
  • The Happy Life (2011)—number 41 in Black Inc's Quarterly Essay series[9]
  • The Writing Life: Book 2 (2014)

Plays

Libretti

References

Further reading

External links

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