Landscape of Farewell

Landscape of Farewell

by Alex Miller (Author)

Synopsis

A hauntingly beautiful meditation on the land, the past, exile and friendship, Landscape of Farewell is the powerful new novel from acclaimed Australian author, Alex Miller...It is the story of Max Otto, an elderly German academic. After the death of his much-loved wife and his recognition that he will never write the great study of history that was to be his life's crowning work, Max believes his life is all but over. Everything changes, though, when his valedictory lecture is challenged by Professor Vita McLelland, a feisty young Australian Aboriginal academic visiting Germany. Their meeting and growing friendship sets Max on a journey that would have seemed unthinkable just a few short weeks earlier...When, at Vita's invitation, Max travels to Australia, he forms a deep friendship with her uncle, Aboriginal elder Dougald Gnapun. It is a friendship that not only gives new meaning and purpose to Max, but which teaches him the profound importance of truth-telling in reconciliation with his own and his country's past...Following Alex Miller's Miles Franklin-winning Journey to the Stone Country, Landscape of Farewell is a wise and grave novel of power, beauty and truth...Praise for Alex Miller. .'[The Ancestor Game] is a wonderful novel of stunning intricacy and great beauty.' - Michael Ondaatje..'Miller is a master storyteller.' - Drusilla Modjeska

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 01 Nov 2008

ISBN 10: 1741754917
ISBN 13: 9781741754919
Book Overview: A profound and moving story about the land, the past, exile and acceptance.
Prizes: Shortlisted for Miles Franklin Literary Award 2008.

Media Reviews
Alex Miller is a wonderful writer, one that Australia has been keeping secret from the rest of us for too long. Landscape of Farewell is at once elegiac and bracing and, as always, limpidly written. -- John Banville
Landscape of Farewell provides a compelling account of interactions between past and present... with luminous descriptions of place, dryly matter-of-fact evocations of character and incident, and humorous affectation for human foibles and perverseness... By the end of the novel we are glad to have known its numerous characters. * Times Literary Supplement *
Author Bio
Alex Miller has twice won the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia's premier literary prize; the first occasion in 1993 for The Ancestor Game, and again in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He is also an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, for The Ancestor Game, in 1993. British by birth, he now lives in Victoria.