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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'With learning worn lightly and in his own lyrical language, David Malouf revisits Homer's Iliad. Focusing on the unbreakable bonds between men - Priam and Hector, Patroclus and Achilles, Priam and the cart-driver hired to retrieve Hector's body. Pride, grief, brutality, love and neighbourliness are explored.' (Publisher's blurb)
Notes
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A brief review by Alberto Manguel of the novel appears in the section 'Books of the Year', Times Literary Supplement, 27 November, 2009, p.13
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
- Braille.
- Large print.
Works about this Work
-
An Obsidian Mirror : David Malouf's Ransom
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Reading Like an Australian Writer 2021; -
The Limits of Devotion, or, Mortality in David Malouf's Ransom
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: I’m Listening Like the Orange Tree : In Memory of Laurie Hergenhan 2021; (p. 101-110) -
The 'Poem of Force' in Australia: David Malouf, Ransom and Chloe Hooper, The Tall Man
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Ancient Greek Myth in World Fiction Since 1989 2016; (p. 195-209) - y David Malouf's Ransom and Director Clint Eastwood's Invictus Cheltenham : Insight Publications , 2016 10102807 2016 single work criticism
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Austalgia : Our Homesickness for the Past
2015
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin , Spring vol. 74 no. 3 2015; (p. 206-209)
-
Book of the Week
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 29 March 2009; (p. 28)
— Review of Ransom 2009 single work novel -
Or Wars, Kings, Fathers and Sons
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 28-29 March 2009; (p. 30)
— Review of Ransom 2009 single work novel -
A King Simply Being a Man
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 28 March 2009; (p. 24)
— Review of Ransom 2009 single work novel -
Malouf the Master of Imaginary Lives
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: The Australian Literary Review , April vol. 4 no. 3 2009; (p. 9)
— Review of Ransom 2009 single work novel -
Celebrating an Ancient Tale for the Ages
2009
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 4 April 2009; (p. 13)
— Review of Ransom 2009 single work novel -
Is Malouf Playing Politics?
2008
single work
column
— Appears in: The Age , 13 September 2008; (p. 29) A column canvassing current literary news including a brief report on the decision by David Malouf to publish his novel Ransom through Random House Australia rather than continue his previous practice of publishing his novels through Chatto and Windus, UK. Steger also comments briefly on Kimberley Freeman's win in the 2008 Romantic Book of the Year awards. -
Remembering Troy
2009
single work
column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 21 March 2009; (p. 12) -
The Logic of Dreams
2009
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 21-22 March 2009; (p. 8-9) -
Troy Revisited : Homer's Iliad and David Malouf's Ransom
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Monthly , May no. 45 2009; (p. 48-53) The proposition is a simple as the first verse of Genesis, and marginally more believable: in the beginning, Homer invented literature. He did so - if, that is, he was a single person - dualistically, in two poems that look ahead to different literary futures. The Iliad is our primordial epic, celebrating heroic violence and the glory of combat. The Odyssey, which begins when the war in Troy is over and follows its wily, wayward protagonist on his journey home to Ithaca, begets the alternative genre of romance, a form not end-stopped by death like the epic but open to accident and adventure, free to go on exploring indefinitely. Writers ever since have added footnotes to Homer, whether cynically summarising the Trojan War as a lecherous farce, like Shakespeare in Troilus and Cressida, or cramming Odyseus's decade-long tour of the Mediterranean into a single day in Dublin, as Joyce did in Ulyssses. -
A Body of Work
Shannon Burns
(interviewer),
2009
single work
interview
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , August no. 354 2009; (p. 8)
Awards
- 2011 shortlisted International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- 2010 winner John D. Criticos Prize
- 2010 shortlisted Australian Booksellers Association Awards — BookPeople Book of the Year
- 2010 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Fiction
- 2010 shortlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian Book of the Year
Last amended 20 Jan 2023 05:58:54
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