La història d'una amistat forjada al caliu d'un captiveri durant la Segona Guerra Mundial. Dos soldats atrapats pels japonesos i amb problemes per a reincorporar-se a la vida civil al temps que no han sigut capaços de véncer els fantasmes de la infantesa. Trobe que no és una història alegre, però és una història al cap i a la fi i ens mostra que sense voler, la vida acaba fent-nos arrossegar com a esperits errants. Té alguns tocs que també recorden molt a la manera de narrar de García Márquez.

Another beautiful work. Fell in love with the characters in this book, flaws and all. And the relationship between Digger and Vic is exquisite and written masterfully. Lyrical language, Malouf at his finest.

Good writing style is wasted on characters that stumble through the scenes.

Most of the problem lies in the familiar trope of the characters. They’re unique in some ways, but the core of their lives seems pulled from any Steinbeck or Faulkner story. I push through to page 60, but can’t continue.

What a fantastic book. Truly marvelous. Whilst there is not a strong narrative focus, the book does follow the lives of predominantly two main people. So, through that there is a solid and easy to follow narrative.



However, the book is more concerned with each discrete moment. and what moments they are. Ranging from the fall of Singapore during WWII, delirious times spent with fevers or the awkwardness of a society wedding. Through out all of this epic of family, nation and belonging Malourf manages to get inside the motivations of his characters lives and actions in a way that is constantly surprising and really quite remarkable. There is not a false note, no matter what the moment is, or where it is, the writing is convincing.



This is the sort of writing that I really find impressive and hard to conceive how it is accomplished. A full on work of art that manages to genuinely broaden your world when reading it. Utterly amazing.

Required reading !

Malouf has to be one of my favorite finds...his writing is lovely...even grim subjects are treated with a quiet dignity, grace. I didn't dog-ear much, I thought I had, but there are several gems that I want to share so you can have a taste...just a taste of what I love about his work:

People are not always kind, but the kind thing to say of Jenny was that she was simple. first line, page 3

The figures doubled and trebled, you could grasp that. It was worth boasting about. It pointed to a personal agency you could identify, to foresight, boldness, imagination. But when the momentum increased, as if subject to some law of its own that was purely mathematical, the personal side of it disappeared. There was a scale to it now that was beyond the capacity of the mind to grasp. Keep adding noughts, and although the thing is still there, and in fact occupies more and more space, there develops in it a kind of vacuum, as if the noughts, the nothings, had predominance. The mind loses all trace of it. from page 270

He had spent so many hours in the consideration of it because the law she had lived by was so like his own. What he was left wonder was how, when the time came, he might let go of things without believing, as she had, that he was not only losing them but had never in any real sense had them. from page 282

'What does it mean to be,' he thought, 'except to be known?' from page 287

The story revolves around the complex relationships that develop around a certain set of circumstances. Not an easy read.

David Malouf, on his birthday March 20
A poetry of language and identity, exile and dislocation, and of the effects of colonial imperialism and war; David Malouf wrestles with the origins of violence, nationalism, and racism as great themes throughout his novels.
A reimagination of Tolstoy's War and Peace set in WWII, The Great World can be numbered with On Remembering Babylon as universally acclaimed works; David Malouf together with Patrick White and Peter Carey forming the triumvirate of Australian literature.
Ransom retells the story of the Iliad from books 22 to 24, focusing on the wrath of Achilles and his refusal to ransom the corpse of Hector, in Malouf's hands becoming an antiwar and anticolonial narrative.
Fly Away Peter, a beautifully written story taking place in WWI, handles similar themes with originality and charm.
An Imaginary Life describes the exile of the Roman poet Ovid as a universal type of the immigrant experience, and explores the relationship between person and place, and the idea of the Outsider as a double minority of both colonial exiles and natives.
On Dream Stuff: Stories and Every Move You Make collect his lyrical short fiction. Of his poetry collections Earth Hour is my favorite, and the essays in On A First Place are also worth reading.
In The Conversations at Curlow Creek he has given us a portrait of Australia as a nation in the campfire tales of a soldier and the outlaw he must hang.

An incredibly rich and subtle read. Each chapter reads like a separate book. Very dense and thoughtful. Strong recommendation. Not a fast read! Excellent prose.

I’ve been fortunate to read some really great books this year, and this is certainly one of them. My best of the year picks this year are closer to all-decade type books. Any other year this book, The Great World, would probably be the best book of the year. Whether it will be among the best I read this year I don’t know, but I do know this is a special book. There is so much life in this novel, and it’s intricacies such a pleasure to read. This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I’m so grateful because otherwise I would have never found my way to it.

This is a very fine novel. To my shame I had never heard of famous Australian author David Malouf before I picked this up in a charity shop, but I will now look out for more of his work.
The Great World is a sweeping historical epic describing the fortunes of two Australian families between two great economic crises, the Great Depression and the stock market crash of 1987.
Vic and Digger (Albert), the two central figures, are both born into poverty in the 1920s in smalltown Australia. Like all the male characters in this novel they have a yearning for "the great world" outside the narrow confines of their (literally and metaphorically) insular nation and the limited opportunities they are born into. They are thrown together (of course) by WW2, and are part of that tragic contingent of reinforcements for the 8th Australian Infantry Division which arrived in Singapore just in time to be captured by the Japanese - in a nice ironic touch, "The Great World" is the name of a derelict amusement park where they are interned and begin their ordeal as slave labourers, ultimately ending up on the Thai-Burma "Death Railway". Very different personalities and initially inimical to one another, they become comrades (though possibly never friends) and help one another to survive their captivity. After their return home they never fully recover from their experiences but also, you sense, never live as fully again.
It's a very rich novel, about, amongst other things, male friendship, male inarticulacy, trust and trustworthiness, "character", and much more, but one theme in particular struck a chord with me: how accidents and chance, rather than anything we will or is innate to us, shape our lives. The author evokes this with some very sharp use of pathos:
Vic, as a new POW: "He had spent his youth studying to be noble. But the world he was in now was a mystery to him. You do not prepare yourself for shame."
"Nobody deserves what they get........Oh, it's unfair all right, but who ever said it would be fair ? And who can you complain to, anyhow ?"
".......like how little a man can live on and still drag himself from one day to the next. The history of empires, that lesson was, and what it costs to build them."
{Vic carries a loop of thread through his time as a POW. Newly-liberated, he is poleaxed by the sight of a street pedlar with a pyramid of whole reels of cotton on a tray.} "He had a vision suddenly of how small it was, all that had happened to him."
Back in Australia, Digger sees bewildered newly-demobbed soldiers "with a half-expectant, half-lost look of men who were waiting for life to declare a direction to them, now that they were free to go wherever they pleased."
Later he muses on the death of his mother, who had treasured and held on tenaciously to the family's few possessions: "He wondered how, when the time came, he might let go of things without believing, as she had, that he was not only losing them but had never in any real sense had them."
There are many more, but those particularly left an impression on me.
Highly-recommended. My one slight cavil is the author tries to fit too much into a relatively short book (330 pages), leaving a lot tantalisingly unexplored. But maybe you're supposed to imagine the rest for yourself.

poignant and accessible -- about the trauma of war and (being) removed from it as Australians.