Homesickness (novel)
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| Author | Murray Bail |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
Publication date | 1980 |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 371 pp. |
| ISBN | 0333298969 |
| Preceded by | - |
| Followed by | Holden's Performance |
Homesickness (1980) is a novel by Australian writer Murray Bail. It was originally published by Macmillan in Australia in 1980.[1]
It won both The Age Book of the Year Award and The Age Book of the Year Fiction Awards in 1980. It shared both awards with David Ireland's novel A Woman of the Future.
The novel follows a group of thirteen Australian travelling together on a package tour that takes in Africa, England, Ecuador, New York and Moscow.
Awards
- co-winner The Age Book of the Year Awards — Fiction 1980[2]
- co-winner The Age Book of the Year 1980[3]
Critical reception
Suzanne Edgar, writing in The Canberra Times noted: "The group of Australians abroad, their attitudes and tastes are satirised and sent up from the superior viewpoint of the artist-observer: blind Kaddok is always taking photographs, while socially withdrawn Shiela sends hundreds of post-cards. Each tourist is tabbed by one or two stereotyped attributes that do no more than narrowly differentiate the one from the other...Bail disdains the dun-coloured realism of much Australian writing but his own prose, while certainly unrealistic, is not so psychedelic."[4]
In a letter to the Swedish critic Ingmar Björkstén, Patrick White called Homesickness, "a most original & imaginative novel. We actually have some writers at last. Not much else can be said for Australia at the moment."[5]