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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'The expatriate Europeans, Australians, New Zealanders and Americans who lived on the Greek island of Hydra in the 1950s and ’60s were a mix of fiction writers, poets, musicians, painters, journalists and photographers. Politically, many of them would have described themselves as internationalists. George Johnston wrote his novel My Brother Jack (1964) while he and Charmian Clift lived on Hydra, and with it he said he rediscovered Australia.
'The contemporary Australian writers Susan Johnson and Meaghan Delahunt have each been inspired in their own work by the fiction and memoir of Johnston and Clift. Both Johnson and Delahunt have spent long periods of their lives as expatriates themselves, living in the UK and other parts of Europe. In spite of the achievements of Johnson and Delahunt as novelists, their writing has been largely overlooked by critics. This article examines their work in relation to expatriatism, internationalism and the politics of contemporary Europe.
'The article examines Susan Johnson’s reimagining of the lives of George Johnston and Charmian Clift in The Broken Book (2004) in 2019, 50 years after Clift’s death. It also explores Delahunt’s To the Island (2011), which is set on Naxos. The essay articulates the ways in which Johnson and Delahunt have internationalised Australian literature as a direct result of their expatriate experiences.' (Publication abstract)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- To the Island 2011 single work novel
- The Red Book 2008 single work novel
- In the Blue House 2001 single work novel
- The Broken Book 2004 single work novel
- Hungry Ghosts 1996 single work novel
- Greta Garbo’s Feet and Other Stories 2015 selected work short story
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cGreece,cWestern Europe, Europe,