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y separately published work icon The Conversations at Curlow Creek single work   novel  
  • Author:agent David Malouf http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/malouf-david
Issue Details: First known date: 1996... 1996 The Conversations at Curlow Creek
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'The year is 1827, and in a remote hut on the high plains of New South Wales, two strangers spend the night in talk. One, Carney, an illiterate Irishman, ex-convict and bushranger, is to be hanged at dawn. The other, Adair, also Irish, is an officer of the police who has been sent to supervise the hanging. As the night wears on, the two discover unexpected connections between their lives, and learn new truths. Outside the hut, Adair's troopers sit uneasily, reflecting on their own pasts and futures, waiting for the morning to come. With ironic humour and in prose of starkly evocative power, the novel moves between Australia and Ireland to explore questions of nature and justice, reason and un-reason. , the workings of fate, and the small measure of freedom a man may claim in the face of death.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage reprint).

Notes

  • Dedication: To Peter Straus.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Chatto and Windus ,
      1996 .
      image of person or book cover 5891856194505041815.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online
      Extent: 214p.
      ISBN: 0701165715
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Pantheon Books ,
      ca. 1996 .
      image of person or book cover 7962342400590546759.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 233p.
      ISBN: 0679442669
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Vintage UK ,
      1997 .
      image of person or book cover 5183258972459508487.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 214p.
      ISBN: 0099744015
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Vintage ,
      1998 .
      image of person or book cover 4939936755444897764.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 1v.p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 12 January 1998.
      ISBN: 9780679779056
      Series: y separately published work icon Vintage International New York (City) : Vintage , 1993- 19532994 1993 series - publisher novel

      'William Faulkner, Philip Roth, Alice Munro, Thomas Mann, Doris Lessing, Albert Camus, V.S. Naipaul, Gabriel García Márquez, Salman Rushdie, Joan Didion, and Cormac McCarthy, among many others: Vintage International is devoted to publishing the best writing of the past century from the world over. Offering both classic and modern fiction and literary nonfiction in elegant editions, Vintage International aims to provide readers with world-class writing that has stood the test of time and essential works by the preeminent authors of today.'

      Source: Vintage.

Alternative title: Die Nachtwache am Curlow Creek
Language: German
    • Vienna,
      c
      Austria,
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Zsolnay ,
      1997 .
      image of person or book cover 7563641725162891893.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online
      Extent: 263p.
      ISBN: 3552048545

Other Formats

  • Braille
  • Sound recording.
  • Large print.

Works about this Work

Crime, Punishment, and Death : Reading Finitude and the Self in David Malouf’s ‘The Conversations at Curlow Creek’ Chinmaya Lal Thakur , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Coolabah , no. 29 2021; (p. 32-42)
'The present paper reads David Malouf’s 1996 novel The Conversations at Curlow Creek as portraying a vivid and realistic picture of events relating to crime and punishment in colonial Australia in the early nineteenth century. The depiction of death penalty accorded to the bushranger Daniel Carney under the supervision of the Irish sheriff Michael Adair in New South Wales thus resonates with numerous historical accounts of incidents that actually happened. The novel, however, does more than only provide accurate historical representation as it also presents Adair as having undergone a rather dramatic transformation in the process of conversing with Carney before the latter’s execution. The paper, drawing on the views of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, argues that a realization of inevitable mortality, of facing certain death characterizes this change in Adair’s nature and worldview. It concludes by suggesting that Adair’s acceptance of his finitude intimates of a way of being in the world that not only subverts procedures of administering punishment to convicts in colonial Australia but also indicates the limits of polarized identity politics that shapes the country in the present times.' (Publication abstract)
Closure, Completion and Memory in Harland's Half Acre : Phil's Story Carolyn Masel , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 2 2014;
'Most of the excellent critical work on this novel deals with the topic that Malouf has identified as its central issue. Frank Harland’s original plan is to buy back his family’s land, lost through gambling and general carelessness, using the proceeds of the sale of his paintings. His thinking has to be radically altered after the death of his nephew and heir. Possession, he comes to realise, is an imaginative thing rather than a physical thing. This essay does not repeat or summarise previous critical contributions, which trace conceptions of non-Indigenous ownership all the way from terra nullius to the ethical ambitions of whiteness studies. Instead, focusing solely on Phil’s story, it deals with the construction and function of memory in the work and on the building of an emotional climax close to its end. It includes discussion of characters’ particular memories, the creation of verbal memories for the reader, and the use of memory to intensify emotion at strategic points of the novel, especially the climax.' (Publication abstract)
'The Restless Energies of Freedom' : Revisiting the Celebration of Queensland History Kay Saunders , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Queensland History Journal , November vol. 21 no. 7 2011; (p. 447-455)
Professor Kay Saunders pursues 'an analysis of those Queensland individuals who helped shape our collective consciousness...Analyzing those whose careers are long finished, or indeed those who reside in the grave or the urn, allow for a more skeptical and balanced approach.' (p. 448)
David Malouf's Haunted Writing Colette Selles , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Ghosts 2010; (p. 269-285)
'The two novels this paper focuses on, Remembering Babylon and The Conversations at Curlow Creek, testify to David Malouf's ongoing 'dialogue with Australia'. Published in 1993 and 1996, two centuries after the arrival of the First Fleet of convicts, they engage with crucial issues in a postcolonial Australia which still has to negotiate its existential uncertainty. By returning to the first half of the nineteenth century, the narratives face the ghosts of the past which have haunted Australia, notably the stain of its origins as a penal colony: a sense of exile to the edge of the world is combined with the legacy of historical wrongs, the atrocities of the convict system and the devastating impact of colonization on the Aboriginal peoples - from dispossession to massacre or assimilationist policies which have engendered social alienation and spiritual dislocation.' (p. 270)
y separately published work icon Witnessing Australian Stories : History, Testimony and Memory in Contemporary Culture Kelly Jean Butler , Melbourne : 2010 6037495 2010 single work thesis

'This book is about how Australians have responded to stories about suffering and injustice in Australia, presented in a range of public media, including literature, history, films, and television. Those who have responded are both ordinary and prominent Australians–politicians, writers, and scholars. All have sought to come to terms with Australia's history by responding empathetically to stories of its marginalized citizens.

'Drawing upon international scholarship on collective memory, public history, testimony, and witnessing, this book represents a cultural history of contemporary Australia. It examines the forms of witnessing that dominated Australian public culture at the turn of the millennium. Since the late 1980s, witnessing has developed in Australia in response to the increasingly audible voices of indigenous peoples, migrants, and more recently, asylum seekers. As these voices became public, they posed a challenge not only to scholars and politicians, but also, most importantly, to ordinary citizens.

'When former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered his historic apology to Australia's indigenous peoples in February 2008, he performed an act of collective witnessing that affirmed the testimony and experiences of Aboriginal Australians. The phenomenon of witnessing became crucial, not only to the recognition and reparation of past injustices, but to efforts to create a more cosmopolitan Australia in the present. This is a vital addition to Transactions critically acclaimed Memory and Narrative series.' (Publisher's blurb)

[Review] The Conversations at Curlow Creek Nikki Barrowclough , 1996 single work review
— Appears in: Good Weekend , 24 August 1996; (p. 14)

— Review of The Conversations at Curlow Creek David Malouf , 1996 single work novel
Hanging Between Two Worlds A. P. Riemer , 1996 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 31 August 1996; (p. 11s)

— Review of The Conversations at Curlow Creek David Malouf , 1996 single work novel
Existence : Clothed in Hope Katharine England , 1996 single work review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 7 September 1996; (p. 11)

— Review of The Conversations at Curlow Creek David Malouf , 1996 single work novel
Journey into the Light Rosemary Sorensen , 1996 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 7 September 1996; (p. 7)

— Review of The Conversations at Curlow Creek David Malouf , 1996 single work novel
At the Edge of Settlement Chris Wallace-Crabbe , 1996 single work review
— Appears in: The Age , 7 September p,8 1996;

— Review of The Conversations at Curlow Creek David Malouf , 1996 single work novel
Australia and the Wholeness of Meaning : Reasoning and Art at Curlow Creek Dennis Haskell , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: 'Unemployed at Last!' : Essays on Australian Literature to 2002 for Julian Croft 2002; (p. 133-146)
Explores the notion of wholeness - in individual and national terms - in Malouf's novel.
Resistance and Reconcilation in David Malouf's The Conversations at Curlow Creek Stella Borgk Barthet , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Resistance and Reconciliation : Writing in the Commonwealth 2003; (p. 265-277)
The Paradoxes of Marginalisation : David Malouf and the 'Great World' Marc Delrez , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Global and the Particular in the English Speaking World 2002; (p. 97-105)
Alchemical Tropes of Irish Diaspora in David Malouf's Conversations at Curlow Creek and Remembering Babylon James Bulman-May , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Nordic-Irish Studies , no. 1 2002; (p. 63-76)
'Wrong Side of the Mirror' : Exile in David Malouf's The Conversations at Curlow Creek Xavier Pons , 2001 single work criticism
— Appears in: Flight from Certainty : The Dilemma of Identity and Exile 2001; (p. 140-152)
Last amended 24 Aug 2021 15:21:34
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