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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'In prose that is both elegant and lyrical, David Malouf departs from the little-known facts of Ovid's exile beyond the pale of civilization to create a deeply moving novel of extraordinary beauty. An outcast in a vast wasteland at the edge of the Black Sea, Ovid discovers a feral child. As he teaches the boy to speak the language of the civilized world, the child tutors him in his own tongue, the language of nature, and the once barren landscape begins to resonate with meaning.' (Publisher's blurb)
Adaptations
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An Imaginary Life
1986
single work
drama
A stage adaptation of David Malouf's novel about the friendship between the exiled Ovid and a feral child.
Notes
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Dedication: To Christopher.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Braille.
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Exile’s Return : Change Was in the Air
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 19 no. 1 2019; 'In September 1963 I boarded the ship, the Fairsky, in Port Melbourne, and waved goodbye to my parents and my girlfriend. I was 23 years old and leaving Australia for the first time. The Fairsky was one of many ships that had served in the Second World War and then been repurposed in the immediate post-war years. In this case, she had served for both the USA and Royal navies, firstly as USS Barnes and then as HMS Attacker, before being converted initially for use as a cargo carrier (the Castel Forte), and eventually undergoing another major refit for passenger use in 1957, from which she re-emerged as Fairsky.' (Introduction) -
y
Dislocation, Writing, and Identity in Australian and Persian Literature
Cham
:
Palgrave Macmillan
,
2018
21354398
2018
multi chapter work
criticism
'This study aims to foreground key literary works in Persian and Australian culture that deal with the representation of exile and dislocation. Through cultural and literary analysis, Dislocation, Writing, and Identity in Australian and Persian Literature investigates the influence of dislocation on self-perception and the remaking of connections both through the act of writing and the attempt to transcend social conventions. Examining writing and identity in David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life (1978), Iranian Diaspora Literature, and Shahrnush Parsipur’s Women Without Men (1989/ Eng.1998), Hasti Abbasi provides a literary analysis of dislocation, with its social and psychological manifestations. Abbasi reveals how the exploration of exile/dislocation, as a narrative that needs to be investigated through imagination and meditation, provides a mechanism for creative writing practice.'
Source : publisher's blurb
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A Unique and Necessary Form
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 63 no. 2 2018; (p. 10-15)'Story-telling, the pleasure of sitting in close company and listening to a story, allowing oneself to float free in the moment and enter, both in the senses and in imagination, into the story's events so that the story becomes our own, must be one of the oldest and earliest of our pleasures - a function of that uniquely human faculty in us, the capacity to step beyond the actual into the possible.' (Introduction)
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The Ideology of Exile in an Imaginary Life
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 31 no. 1 2017; (p. 16-25)'According to Said, exile is a condition of terminal loss, "an unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home," which involves "the crippling sorrow of estrangement" (173). According to Homi Bhabha, "colonial mimicry is, among other things, the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite" (86). [...]Ovid needs to integrate himself with the other to experience a meaningful life and sense of belonging. According to Robert Massey and Khawla Abu-Baker, "The I of each person actively coordinates the me into a self-image based on past and present experiences and future anticipations of self with others" (14).' (Publication abstract)
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Writing and Romantic Exile
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 41 2017;'This paper will investigate creative dislocation and the idea of the writer as exiled self through reflections on the traction and slippages between ideas of place, dislocation and writing. For a writer, producing creative work through the experience of dislocation, whether voluntary or enforced, can be isolating and difficult, but it can also bring new perspectives and opportunities for creative capacity and expression. The creative resonances of writing in exile will be explored here with reference to David Malouf’s celebrated novella An Imaginary Life (1978) in which he depicts exile as a necessary journey of becoming, a ‘dynamic marginality’ as Braidotti observes (2002: 129), which offers creative possibility rather than closure and loss. For the writer Ovid, dislocation is phenomenological prerequisite for selftransformation. His discovery is that the writer must always be at the edge of things, noticing differently, available to possibility, able to embody and to channel being as metamorphoses through creative expression.' (Publication abstract)
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[Review] An Imaginary Life
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: New Republic , 13 May no. 178 1978; (p. 36)
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel -
[Review] An Imaginary Life
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: New Statesman , 15 September no. 96 1978; (p. 338)
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel -
[Review] An Imaginary Life
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: Library Journal , 1 March no. 103 1978; (p. 587)
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel -
The Parable of the Child and the Nose
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 17 October vol. 99 no. 5131 1978; (p. 75-76)
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel -
Printout
1978
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 20 May 1978; (p. 17)
— Review of An Imaginary Life : A Novel 1978 single work novel -
Culture and Identity : Politics and Writing in Some Recent Post-Colonial Texts
1992
single work
criticism
— Appears in: From Commonwealth to Post-Colonial 1992; (p. 436-443) -
Problems of Historicity in David Malouf's An Imaginary Life
2000
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Classical & Modern Literature , vol. 20 no. 1 2000; (p. 1-17) -
David Malouf's An Imaginary Life : A Return to the Very Edge of Memory, History and the Multicultural Self
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Narrativa i Historia 2002; (p. 37-59) Explores the relationship between history, autobiography and fiction in Malouf's novel. -
Constructing the Post-Colonial Male Body
1998
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Body in the Library 1998; (p. 207-223)Discusses the representations of the male body and identity in Australian art and literature.
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David Malouf's Language of Reconciliation : Stylistic Patterns in An Imaginary Life
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Literature and Aesthetics , June vol. 14 no. 1 2004; (p. 49-66) Uses a linguistic model to analyse the lexico-grammar of two excerpts from Malouf's novel and to show 'Malouf's brilliance in crafting language to convey the theme of the novel' (65).
Awards
- 1979 winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Fiction