Remembering Babylon is a book by David Malouf written in 1993. It won the inaugural IMPAC Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Award.
The novel covers themes of isolation, language, relationships (particularly those between men), community and living on the edge (of society, consciousness, culture).
Its themes evolve into a greater narrative of an English boy, Gemmy Fairley, who is marooned on a foreign land a...
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Remembering Babylon is a book by David Malouf written in 1993. It won the inaugural IMPAC Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Award.
The novel covers themes of isolation, language, relationships (particularly those between men), community and living on the edge (of society, consciousness, culture).
Its themes evolve into a greater narrative of an English boy, Gemmy Fairley, who is marooned on a foreign land and is raised by a group of aborigines, natives to the land. When white settlers reach the area, he attempts to move back in the world of Europeans. As Gemmy wrestles with his own identity, the community of settlers struggle to deal with their fear of the unknown.
Malouf's narrative voice is at once scattered and singular, skipping between perspectives on the same events, and forcing the reader to pay close attention to each character's rendering in order to arrive at the wholest truth possible. The magical-realism theme is cultivated in the...
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