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DAVID MALOUF (B. 1934) Born in Brisbane, Australia, to a Lebanese-descended father and English-Jewish mother of Portuguese ancestry, David Malouf was educated at the University of Queensland. He lived and worked in the UK during most of the 1960s and returned to Australia to settle in Sydney in 1968. He has written poetry, memoirs and short stories, and is best-known for his penetrating and finely-written novels. His writing takes the fortunes of Australia and its conflicts as its major themes, and often looks back across Australia’s history. His first novel, Johnno (1975), is set in Brisbane during the 1940s against the backdrop of the Second World War, while The Great World (1990) tells of the imprisonment of two Australians by the Japanese during the Second World War. Remembering Babylon (1993) is set in the 1850s and explores a number of issues surrounding European settlement in its depiction of Gemmy Fairley, a thirteen-year-old English boy cast ashore in the far north of Australia and taken in by Aborigines, with whom he lives for sixteen years before attempting to re-enter colonial society. The novel won the inaugural International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996. His other works include The Conversations at Curlow Creek (1996) and Fly Away Peter (1999).