Praise for Remembering Babylon
‘Fascinating … Malouf’s prose shimmers with
the sights and sounds of the continent.’
Daily Mail
‘A really impressive achievement.’
Doris Lessing
‘Breathtaking … To read this remarkable book
is to remember Babylon well, whether you think
you’ve been there or not.’
The New York Times Book Review
‘There are books we like so much we don’t want to finish them.
In this case the same applies to paragraphs and even sentences …
David Malouf has written a profound and poignant book.’
Boston Review
‘A deft and economical evocation of an entire nascent
society, punctuated by moments of dazzling, revelatory
language and unforgettable images.’
Independent on Sunday
‘A profound and elliptical history, thrilling in its
style and its adventurousness.’
Michael Ondaatje
‘A quietly masterful tale … Delicate but relentless in its
focus on the manifestations of racial intolerance, this is
enhanced by a naturalist’s keen eye for detail, bringing
landscape and states of mind together in a probing,
resonant vision of discovery and despair.’
Kirkus Reviews
‘A dazzling novel … The story has moments of such high intensity
that they remain scorched in memory. As the story moves forward
to its conclusion, we go unwillingly with it, not wanting this book,
with the wisdom it contains, to stop speaking to us.’
The Toronto Star
‘Remembering Babylon is another rare chance to read a work
by one of the few contemporary novelists who examines
our constantly battered humanity and again and again
brings out its lingering beauty.’
The Globe and Mail
‘There are passages of aching beauty in Remembering Babylon,
and passages of shocking degradation. Mr. Malouf has
written a wonderfully wise and moving novel,
a novel that turns the history and mythic past of Australia
into a dazzling fable of human hope and imperfection.’
The New York Times
ALSO BY DAVID MALOUF
Fiction
Ransom
The Complete Stories
Dream Stuff
The Conversations at Curlow Creek
The Great World
Antipodes
Harland’s Half Acre
Child’s Play
An Imaginary Life
Johnno
Every Move You Make
Autobiography
12 Edmondstone Street
Poetry
Selected Poems
Wild Lemons
First Things Last
The Year of the Foxes and Other Poems
Neighbours in a Thicket
Bicycle and Other Peoms
Typewriter Music
Libretti
Jane Eyre
Baa Baa Black Sheep
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Remembering Babylon
9781742749617
Copyright © David Malouf 1993
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Vintage book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060
www.randomhouse.com.au
Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at http://www.randomhouse.com.au/about/contacts.aspx
First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus Ltd. 1993
This edition published by Vintage in 2009
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Malouf, David, 1934–.
Remembering Babylon.
ISBN 978 1 74166 768 4 (pbk).
Aboriginal Australians – Fiction.
A823.3
Cover image adapted from a Worcester plate from the collection of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.
Cover design by Jenny Grigg
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