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image of person or book cover 5958929672894351079.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon The Last Magician single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1992... 1992 The Last Magician
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Set largely in Sydney, the 'last magician' is Charlie the photographer, who records everything as he seeks the Cat. Charlie, Cat, Robbie and Catherine shared a childhood summer in a Queensland rainforest till death intruded in their circle. Decades later, memories seep into the present.

Notes

  • This book was listed in Publishers' Weekly 'Best 50 Books of 1992' and 'Best 16 Novels of l992'; New York Times' 'Most Notable Books of 1992' list; and was a finalist in the Trillium Award in Canada.
  • Dedication: For my daughter Cressida.

Affiliation Notes

  • Associated with the AustLit subset Australian Literary Responses to 'Asia' as the work contains a Chinese-Australian character.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,      :       Henry Holt ,       1992 .
      image of person or book cover 8780713312332062246.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Alternative title: The Last Magician : A Novel
      Extent: 309p.
      Edition info: 1st American ed.
      ISBN: 0805020977, 9780805020977
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       Virago ,       1992 .
      image of person or book cover 6147105462549803702.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 352p.
      ISBN: 1853813257 (hbk), 9781853816055
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,      :       Ivy Books ,       1993 .
      image of person or book cover 3282183162429369919.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 323p.
      Edition info: First Ballantine Books Edition: September 1993.
      ISBN: 0804111693 (pbk.), 9780804111690
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,      :       Virago ,       1993 .
      image of person or book cover 2855410867876257805.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 352p.
      ISBN: 1853816051 (pbk), 9781853816055
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,      :       W. W. Norton ,       2003 .
      image of person or book cover 222022147391267894.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 309p.
      ISBN: 039332527X
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Other Formats

  • Braille.
  • Sound recording.
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Works about this Work

Untitled Cynthia Baker , single work review
— Review of The Ivory Swing Janette Turner Hospital , 1982 single work novel ; The Last Magician Janette Turner Hospital , 1992 single work novel
Urban Imaginaries, Homelessness, and the Literary City : Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book and Janette Turner Hospital’s The Last Magician David Harris , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 1 no. 18 2018;

'With urban imaginaries and city-making in mind, and cognisant of the complicity of cities in socio-ecological crises, this paper responds to recent events in Melbourne and Sydney involving the expansion of certain powers to penalise the disadvantaged and homeless, and to clean up city streets. I discern in these events the material and discursive articulations of capitalist-colonial urban imaginaries. I go on to explore fiction’s capacities to resist these articulations and to affect the real, and the capacities in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book, and Janette Turner Hospital’s The Last Magician to cultivate readers’ sense of cities as constantly varying, permeable assemblages, rather than as constantly improving, coherent, stable, secure organisms. These novels expand readers’ abilities to transform urban imaginaries and make cities differently.'  (Publication abstract)
Olfactory Imagery in the Australian Lives in Selected Short Stories of Janette Turner Hospital Sylvia Petter , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , vol. 2 no. 2010; 'The sensuality of the prose of Janette Turner Hospital is to my mind informed by the importance of olfaction and olfactory imagery underpinning her work, particularly in relation to the links between olfaction and memory, and place, as well as to the recurring themes of dislocation that inhabit the 'Australian' lives of characters in several of her short stories. Place and memory, and their associated links to olfaction, would suggest that an inquiry into Janette Turner Hospital's use of olfactory imagery might well offer deeper insights into how she effects her grapplings with the concepts of 'home' and 'belonging'.' (Author's abstract)
Australian Infernos : Janette Turner Hospital's Translation of Dante's Hell into Contemporary Australia Mary McLaughlin , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Cultural Transformations : Perspectives on Translocations in a Global Age 2010; (p. 51-72)
We Call Upon the Author to Explain : Theorising Writers' Festivals as Sites of Contemporary Public Culture Cori Stewart , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , Special Issue 2010; 'This paper outlines a new vantage point for theorising today’s writers’ festivals as significant sites of contemporary public culture. Increasingly writers’ festivals claim to be both popular and important sites of public discussion and debate, and this paper’s empirical analysis of the 2007 Brisbane Writers Festival bears out these qualities. Yet, this Festival also positions itself as a thinking person’s alternative to the ‘unstoppable urge in TV and newspapers towards providing infotainment’, and claims ‘people are looking to our writers for the tools with which to think, not to be told what to think’ (Campbell, Making Sense of Our World). Addressing the mix of claims made for the 2007 Brisbane Writers Festival, as well as analysing the the topics discussed at the Festival, this paper examines the Festival’s multiple public culture roles and functions. Included in the topics discussed at the Festival are those typically produced and ciruclated in the media such as celebrity culture, and rather than viewing this content as trivialising and manipulative─as many critics of writers’ festivals have done─this paper illustrates how the media extended the 2007 Brisbane Writers Festival’s public culture function.' (Author's abstract)
Fiction Aritha van Herk , 1993 single work review
— Appears in: University of Toronto Quarterly , Fall vol. 63 no. 1 1993; (p. 26-48)
— Review of The Last Magician Janette Turner Hospital , 1992 single work novel
Untitled Cynthia Baker , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Span , [Double Issue] November -May no. 34-35 1992-1993; (p. 392-395)
— Review of The Ivory Swing Janette Turner Hospital , 1982 single work novel ; The Last Magician Janette Turner Hospital , 1992 single work novel
Untitled Cynthia Baker , single work review
— Review of The Ivory Swing Janette Turner Hospital , 1982 single work novel ; The Last Magician Janette Turner Hospital , 1992 single work novel
Recent Australian Fiction Cynthia Blanche , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Quadrant , November vol. 36 no. 11 1992; (p. 86-88)
— Review of Raising the Shadow Tom Petsinis , 1992 single work novel ; The Last Magician Janette Turner Hospital , 1992 single work novel ; Good Night, Mr Moon Barbara Hanrahan , 1992 single work novel ; The Blosseville File Nicholas Hasluck , 1992 single work novel ; Breaking Glass : A Novel in Two Parts John Clanchy , 1992 single work novel ; Things Could Be Worse Lily Brett , 1999 selected work short story ; What God Wants Lily Brett , 1991 selected work short story ; Magpie : A Novel Brian Matthews , Peter Goldsworthy , 1992 single work novel
Repeating the Cataclysm Eden Liddelow , 1992 single work review
— Appears in: Modern Times , July 1992; (p. 32)
— Review of Springfield Marian Favel Clair Eldridge , 1992 single work novel ; The Last Magician Janette Turner Hospital , 1992 single work novel
Janette Turner Hospital's The Last Magician: 'A Feminist Nightmare'? Sue Lovell , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Hecate , vol. 28 no. 2 2002; (p. 46-63)
y separately published work icon Janette Turner Hospital : Gender Issues, Landscape, Memory and Dislocation in The Ivory Swing, The Tiger in the Tiger Pit, Borderline, Charades and The Last Magician Glenda Parker , 1996 Z1038382 1996 single work thesis
Notes from the Underground : The Last Magician and Janette Turner Hospital's Underworlds Alistair Stead , 1998 single work criticism
— Appears in: Janette Turner Hospital 1998; (p. 17-30)
Triangulating the Self : Turner Hospital, Hoffman and Sante Russell West-Pavlov , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Transcultural Graffiti : Diasporic Writing and the Teaching of Literary Studies 2005; (p. 115-136)
Janette Turner Hospital's The Last Magician in 'an Expanded Field' Sue Lovell , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Aumla , November no. 104 2005; (p. 121-149)

'The first half of this paper gives a short orientation to the novel then prodeeds to analyse the way in which Hospital enables her readers to become more aware of how the identities of individual subjects and "global" Australians are constructed. I argue that she encourages her readers to critique the process of identity acquisition by moving the (tired though nevertheless effective) dichotomy of inclusion/exclusion to examine the suffering that it constitutes' (121-122).
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Awards

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Last amended 5 Sep 2022 13:32:27
Subjects:
Settings:
  • Sydney, New South Wales,
  • Brisbane, Queensland,
  • c
    India,
    c
    South Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
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