AustLit

'Choosing a perspective from which to study David Malouf's very successful novel Fly Away Peter (1982) is certainly a challenging task, since the plot is a rich texture of many multifaceted themes and sub-themes. Europe and Australia, which provide the setting of the book are linked indifferent sways with almost all aspects of the novel. Whether it is considered a blidungsroman which presents the main characters' difficult journey towards adulthood or as a painful description of the horrors of World War I, the novel offers interesting and unusual perspectives from which to interpret the relationship between Australia and Europe. Indeed these two geographical and cultural dimensions are linked with one of the main motifs in the text, that is, with the characters' sense of dislocation and with their search for a sense of belonging. This article aims at exploring the ways in which , through this search, the borders between places slowly fade away n the story and a new notion of 'home' is built against the irremediable losses and divisions of the present...'(p. 239)