From reimagined Greek and Roman classics to the exploration of identity and morality in the suburbs and landscapes of Australia, David Malouf successfully merged his passion for literature, language and imagination with his connection to home to become one of Australia\u2019s most celebrated writers.<\/p>\n
Malouf, who has died<\/a> <\/a>aged 92<\/a>, wrote of characters who transcended time and place. His novels explored ideas of identity and post-colonialism, but also broader themes \u2013 life and death, liberty and conflict, virtue and vice \u2013 and the interaction of these opposing forces in creating tension and temptation.<\/p>\n \u201cIn most of my books and stories, the central character suffers some sort of disruption \u2013 loss of innocence if you like, or of the self \u2013 and has to work through to wholeness, or healing,\u201d he told Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn in 2007<\/a>.<\/p>\n His home town of Brisbane and the challenging and vast landscapes of Australia were significant influences in his creative output, which included poetry, fiction, short stories, essays, drama and libretti \u2013 all written by hand.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never moved with the technology,\u201d he said in 2018<\/a>. \u201cI still write by hand and then type up in my own terrible, two-fingered way.\u201d<\/p>\n Initially a poet, Malouf\u2019s debut collection, Bicycle and Other Poems, was published in 1970. His subsequent collection, Neighbours in a Thicket (1974), was awarded the Australian Literature Society gold medal.<\/p>\n His work was described by Poetry International<\/a> as \u201cblending erudition and music with masterful ease and acuity, allowing the worlds of thought, the body and dream to be integrated, and to flow forth with a sensual and transformative grace\u201d.<\/p>\n Malouf\u2019s first novel, Johnno (1975), which many believe to be partly autobiographical, tells the story of two boyhood friends living in steamy, sultry wartime Brisbane.<\/p>\n \u201cBrisbane is so slatternly, so sleepy, so sprawlingly unlovely \u2026 a place where poetry could never occur,\u201d Malouf wrote, a contention that did not go unchallenged<\/a>.<\/p>\n He maintained that his goal had been to provide readers a historical glimpse of the city and its social and cultural structures at that period. Although it initially received poor reviews, Patrick White called it \u201cthe only way to write about the love of one man for another<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Inspired by Homer\u2019s The Iliad, which Malouf declared to be \u201cthe greatest piece of writing ever offered<\/a>\u201d, he retold a part of the tale in his 2009 novel Ransom, which novelist Christos Tsiolkas described as \u201cripping apart the veil between the ancient and the contemporary<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Likewise, his 1978 novella An Imaginary Life is Malouf\u2019s fictionalised reimagining of the exiled Roman poet Ovid.<\/p>\n In 1990 Malouf\u2019s novel The Great World was awarded the Commonwealth prize and Miles Franklin literary award for its evocative telling of war and lost innocence across time and distance.<\/p>\n \u201cFor someone who writes so acutely of men in war \u2026 Malouf has an astonishing, almost Lawrentian grasp of the subtle currents of feeling between the sexes,\u201d Publishers Weekly wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n Remembering Babylon (1993) tells the story of a shipwrecked cabin boy, who comes to represent the tension between two worlds \u2013 that of the local Indigenous people with whom he has lived for 16 years, and the Scottish settlers whom he joins. It was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1993.<\/p>\n David George Joseph Malouf was born on 20 March 1934 in Brisbane. His father, George, was Lebanese Christian, his English mother, Welcome Wilhelmina (n\u00e9e Mendoza), was descended from Sephardic Jews. He and his younger sister Jill grew up in the family home at 12 Edmonstone Street, the title of his 1985 memoir.<\/p>\n Before any writing, Malouf was a voracious reader<\/a>. Encouraged by his parents, by age four he was reading classic English children\u2019s books. He first read Shakespeare aged eight, and at 12 was reading Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Vanity Fair and Moby Dick, his favourite novel.<\/p>\n \u201c[These books] kept telling me the most extraordinary things about the world, and I couldn\u2019t wait to grow up and get into it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Malouf began writing for the neighbourhood newspaper as a child, and at 16, after reading Kenneth Slessor<\/a>, he began to write poetry. He also learned to play the violin and piano and retained a lifelong interest in music, eventually writing libretti for three operas.<\/p>\n He spent the first 24 years of his life in Brisbane, attending Brisbane grammar school and then the University of Queensland<\/a>, graduating with a bachelor of arts with honours in 1955.<\/p>\n He briefly lectured at the university before heading to London to teach, returning to Australia in 1968. Malouf taught English at the University of Sydney, and in 1978 became a full-time writer, living between Australia and Italy.<\/p>\n None of his books were made into films because, as Malouf said, \u201cthey\u2019re all interior; you can\u2019t translate that to the screen. Almost nothing happens.\u201d<\/p>\n A prolific writer across multiple genres, Malouf received many international awards.<\/p>\n