The international importance of David Malouf’s writing has been acknowledged by several prestigious international awards, including the inaugural Dublin IMPAC literary award, in 1996, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, in 2000. Don Randall’s comprehensive study situates Malouf within the field of contemporary international and postcolonial writing, but without losing sight of the author’s affiliation with Australian contexts. The book presents an original reading of Malouf, finding the unity of his work in the continuity of his ethical concerns: for Malouf, human lives find their value in transformations, specifically in instances of self-overcoming that encounters with difference or otherness provoke. However, the book is fully aware of, and informed by, the quite ample body of criticism on Malouf, and thus provides readers with a broad-based understanding of how Malouf’s works have been received and assessed. It is an effective companion volume for studies in postcolonial or Australian literature, for any study project in which Malouf figures prominently. Malouf’s poetry receives chapter-length attention; however, the greater part of Randall’s criticism examines, in chronological order, the prose fictions that are the basis of Malouf’s current international reputation. Randall measures each work’s specific concerns and achievements, but also situates each in the process of Malouf’s writerly development, which is shown to be quite remarkably continuous and cumulative. The criticism reveals Malouf’s distinctive contribution to key topics that have given shape to contemporary literary studies. Malouf explores the making of subjectivity, focusing on the role of the other, of place, of language, of memory and history. Randall’s study discovers Malouf as a particularly engaging case of postcolonial authorship.
