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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Notes
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This book was listed in Publishers' Weekly 'Best 50 Books of 1992' and 'Best 16 Novels of l992'; New York Times' 'Most Notable Books of 1992' list; and was a finalist in the Trillium Award in Canada.
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Dedication: For my daughter Cressida.
Affiliation Notes
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Associated with the AustLit subset Australian Literary Responses to 'Asia' as the work contains a Chinese-Australian character.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Braille.
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Untitled
single work
review
— Review of The Ivory Swing 1982 single work novel ; The Last Magician 1992 single work novel -
Urban Imaginaries, Homelessness, and the Literary City : Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book and Janette Turner Hospital’s The Last Magician
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 1 no. 18 2018;'With urban imaginaries and city-making in mind, and cognisant of the complicity of cities in socio-ecological crises, this paper responds to recent events in Melbourne and Sydney involving the expansion of certain powers to penalise the disadvantaged and homeless, and to clean up city streets. I discern in these events the material and discursive articulations of capitalist-colonial urban imaginaries. I go on to explore fiction’s capacities to resist these articulations and to affect the real, and the capacities in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book, and Janette Turner Hospital’s The Last Magician to cultivate readers’ sense of cities as constantly varying, permeable assemblages, rather than as constantly improving, coherent, stable, secure organisms. These novels expand readers’ abilities to transform urban imaginaries and make cities differently.' (Publication abstract)
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Olfactory Imagery in the Australian Lives in Selected Short Stories of Janette Turner Hospital
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , vol. 2 no. 2010; 'The sensuality of the prose of Janette Turner Hospital is to my mind informed by the importance of olfaction and olfactory imagery underpinning her work, particularly in relation to the links between olfaction and memory, and place, as well as to the recurring themes of dislocation that inhabit the 'Australian' lives of characters in several of her short stories. Place and memory, and their associated links to olfaction, would suggest that an inquiry into Janette Turner Hospital's use of olfactory imagery might well offer deeper insights into how she effects her grapplings with the concepts of 'home' and 'belonging'.' (Author's abstract) -
Australian Infernos : Janette Turner Hospital's Translation of Dante's Hell into Contemporary Australia
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Cultural Transformations : Perspectives on Translocations in a Global Age 2010; (p. 51-72) -
We Call Upon the Author to Explain : Theorising Writers' Festivals as Sites of Contemporary Public Culture
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , Special Issue 2010; 'This paper outlines a new vantage point for theorising today’s writers’ festivals as significant sites of contemporary public culture. Increasingly writers’ festivals claim to be both popular and important sites of public discussion and debate, and this paper’s empirical analysis of the 2007 Brisbane Writers Festival bears out these qualities. Yet, this Festival also positions itself as a thinking person’s alternative to the ‘unstoppable urge in TV and newspapers towards providing infotainment’, and claims ‘people are looking to our writers for the tools with which to think, not to be told what to think’ (Campbell, Making Sense of Our World). Addressing the mix of claims made for the 2007 Brisbane Writers Festival, as well as analysing the the topics discussed at the Festival, this paper examines the Festival’s multiple public culture roles and functions. Included in the topics discussed at the Festival are those typically produced and ciruclated in the media such as celebrity culture, and rather than viewing this content as trivialising and manipulative─as many critics of writers’ festivals have done─this paper illustrates how the media extended the 2007 Brisbane Writers Festival’s public culture function.' (Author's abstract)
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Fiction
1993
single work
review
— Appears in: University of Toronto Quarterly , Fall vol. 63 no. 1 1993; (p. 26-48)
— Review of The Last Magician 1992 single work novel -
Untitled
1992
single work
review
— Appears in: Span , [Double Issue] November -May no. 34-35 1992-1993; (p. 392-395)
— Review of The Ivory Swing 1982 single work novel ; The Last Magician 1992 single work novel -
Untitled
single work
review
— Review of The Ivory Swing 1982 single work novel ; The Last Magician 1992 single work novel -
Recent Australian Fiction
1992
single work
review
— Appears in: Quadrant , November vol. 36 no. 11 1992; (p. 86-88)
— Review of Raising the Shadow 1992 single work novel ; The Last Magician 1992 single work novel ; Good Night, Mr Moon 1992 single work novel ; The Blosseville File 1992 single work novel ; Breaking Glass : A Novel in Two Parts 1992 single work novel ; Things Could Be Worse 1999 selected work short story ; What God Wants 1991 selected work short story ; Magpie : A Novel 1992 single work novel -
Repeating the Cataclysm
1992
single work
review
— Appears in: Modern Times , July 1992; (p. 32)
— Review of Springfield 1992 single work novel ; The Last Magician 1992 single work novel -
Janette Turner Hospital's The Last Magician: 'A Feminist Nightmare'?
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Hecate , vol. 28 no. 2 2002; (p. 46-63) - y Janette Turner Hospital : Gender Issues, Landscape, Memory and Dislocation in The Ivory Swing, The Tiger in the Tiger Pit, Borderline, Charades and The Last Magician 1996 Z1038382 1996 single work thesis
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Notes from the Underground : The Last Magician and Janette Turner Hospital's Underworlds
1998
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Janette Turner Hospital 1998; (p. 17-30) -
Triangulating the Self : Turner Hospital, Hoffman and Sante
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Transcultural Graffiti : Diasporic Writing and the Teaching of Literary Studies 2005; (p. 115-136) -
Janette Turner Hospital's The Last Magician in 'an Expanded Field'
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Aumla , November no. 104 2005; (p. 121-149)'The first half of this paper gives a short orientation to the novel then prodeeds to analyse the way in which Hospital enables her readers to become more aware of how the identities of individual subjects and "global" Australians are constructed. I argue that she encourages her readers to critique the process of identity acquisition by moving the (tired though nevertheless effective) dichotomy of inclusion/exclusion to examine the suffering that it constitutes' (121-122).
Awards
- 1993 shortlisted Miles Franklin Literary Award
- Sydney, New South Wales,
- Brisbane, Queensland,
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cIndia,cSouth Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,