AustLit logo

AustLit

Melanie Walz Melanie Walz i(A66945 works by)
Gender: Female
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
2 2 y separately published work icon Only in New York Lily Brett , ( trans. Melanie Walz with title Immer Noch New York ) Berlin : Suhrkamp , 2014 8144427 2014 selected work prose

'New York is a walker's city. You can walk for hours. The streets slip by. There is so much to look at, so much to take in. I walk a lot. Especially when I am not writing . . .

'Lily Brett's love affair with New York began as an outsider in her late teens when she was posted on assignment there as a young Australian rock journalist. In her early forties she returned, together with her soul mate and three children, to start a new life, and for the last twenty-five years she has called New York home.

'This witty, candid and moving collection of short pieces celebrates the city that's now part of her heartbeat. A compulsive walker, Brett takes us to her favourite places and introduces us to the characters of the city that has nurtured, perplexed and inspired her. She brings to life the delights of Chinatown, the majesty of Grand Central Station, the lure of spandex and sequins in the Garment District, and the peculiarity of canine couture. And she muses on the miracle of love in the Lodz ghetto, the possibility of loneliness amidst skyscrapers, and the joy and redemption in a child's curiosity.

'Full of wisdom, humour and grace, Only in New York is a human portrait of a city much loved – and of a woman in step with herself.' (Publication summary)
2 11 y separately published work icon You Gotta Have Balls Lily Brett , ( trans. Melanie Walz with title Chuzpe : Roman ) Frankfurt am Main : Suhrkamp , 2006 Z1217844 2005 single work novel humour "Ruth Rothwax, the heroine of Lily Brett's Too Many Men, is back. The proprietor of a successful letter-writing business, Ruth has just branched out into a new greeting-card line. But it's not easy. Her father, Edek, is driving her crazy at the office. And the very people she thought would be most supportive - other women - are not. Instead of acting in one another's best interests, the women are catty and competitive, behaviors Ruth swears that she will never imitate. Until she meets the one woman who turns her aspirations of sisterly solidarity - and her life - upside down." "Fresh off the plane from Poland, Zofia is a buxom, sixty-something femme fatale with a talent for making balls. Meatballs, that is. When Edek asks his savvy daughter to fund his friend Zofia's restaurant, how can Ruth say no? But Ruth knows that gleam in Zofia's eye, and it means trouble is on the way for all of them." (Publisher's blurb).
2 21 y separately published work icon What God Wants Lily Brett , ( trans. Melanie Walz et. al.agent with title Ein unmögliches Angebot : Roman ) Vienna : Deuticke Verlag , 2004 Z77283 1991 selected work short story humour satire A series of interlocking stories in vignette style, set in Melbourne's Jewish community and tracing the lives of a group of people. (Source: UQP)
2 8 y separately published work icon Between Mexico and Poland Lily Brett , ( trans. Melanie Walz with title Von Mexiko nach Polen ) Vienna Frankfurt am Main : Deuticke Verlag , 2003 Z991194 2002 selected work autobiography
3 23 y separately published work icon Things Could Be Worse Lily Brett , ( trans. Melanie Walz with title Alles halb so schlimm! ) Frankfurt am Main : Deuticke Verlag , 2002 1999 selected work short story
— Appears in: Collected Stories 1999; 'This work tells of a Jewish family in Melbourne and its company of friends, and explores issues of conflict and reconciliation, and of memory and forgetting in relation to her protagonists' experiences of the Holocaust.' (The Bibliography of Australasian Judaica 1788-2008, p. 10)
3 20 y separately published work icon Too Many Men Lily Brett , ( trans. Melanie Walz with title Zu Viele Manner ) Vienna : Deuticke Verlag , 2001 Z330394 1999 single work novel 'Ruth Rothwax, a successful, independent, New York woman with her own business, Rothwax Correspondence, can find order and meaning in the words she writes for other people - condolence letters, thank-you letters, even you-were-great-in-bed letters. But as the devoted daughter of Edek Rothwax, an Auschwitz survivor with a somewhat idiosyncratic approach to the English language, Ruth can find no words to help her understand the loss her family experienced during World War II. Ruth is obsessed with the idea of returning to Poland with her father, Edek, but she doesn't quite understand why she feels this so intensely. To make sense of her family's past - and the way her parents' lives were suddenly torn apart by the Nazis - yes. To visit the places where her beloved mother and father lived and almost died, certainly. But there's more to this trip than Ruth's extraordinary perceptiveness can identify. By facing Poland and the past, she can confront her own future.' (Publisher's blurb)
2 5 y separately published work icon New York Lily Brett , ( trans. Melanie Walz )expression Munich : Deuticke Verlag , 2000 Z1091103 2000 selected work autobiography prose
3 11 y separately published work icon The House of Balthus David Brooks , ( trans. Melanie Walz with title Das Haus von Balthus ) Munich : Kindler , 1999 Z85032 1995 single work novel

' Shortlisted, National Book Council 'Banjo' Award 1996 Shortlisted, Fantasy Division and Horror Division, Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction 1995 a vivid and engrossing novel. Patricia Rolfe, Bulletin Brooks's first novel is haunting, a work of precision and delicacy, enigma and exactness. Philippa Hawker, Marie Claire brings to mind the house in Tim Winton's Cloudstreet...Resonating with lost emotional energy, sighing and sobbing to itself in the echoing silences of the night. Ian McFarlane, Canberra Times The House Of Balthus is a magical novel which has the intensity of a dream. Characters from the artist Balthus' paintings walk out of the canvas and take on a life of their own, sharing the spaces of an ancient chateau now turned apartment block in a large French provincial town. The concierge Mme Lecault watches closely her tenants, among them the Countess, the Professor, the Painter, Therese and her young lover Michael - but knows only the surface of their lives. She spends her sleepless nights talking to Mme Berry, who lives, it would appear, in another century. There is a sound of sobbing, which echoes between rooms and across.' (Publication summary)
X