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'Steven Muir, August Spiess and his daughter Gertrude, and Lang Tzu all acknowledge a restless sense of cultural displacement, an ambivalence in their relations with the culture of European Australia. Steven left England for Australia as a young man and his one attempt at returning is unsuccessful. August Spiess, although he speaks frequently of returning to his native Hamburg, fails to make the journey, as does his daughter Gertrude. Lang Tzu's very name defines his fate: 'two characters which in Mandarin signify the son who goes away.
'The 'game', however, does have winners. For despite their yearnings for the home of their ancestral dreams, a desire to belong somewhere that is truly their own, none of Miller's characters leaves Australia, and each in their own way comes to see that to be at home in exile may be a defining paradox of the European Australian condition: the paradox of belonging and estrangement that perhaps lies uneasily at the heart of all European cultures.'
Source: Bookseller's blurb.
Notes
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Dedication: For Ruth and Max Blatt.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Braille.
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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y
Reckoning with the Past : Family Historiographies in Postcolonial Australian Literature
Abingdon
:
Routledge
,
2018
17218286
2018
single work
criticism
'This is the first book to examine how Australian fiction writers draw on family histories to reckon with the nation's colonial past. Located at the intersection of literature, history, and sociology, it explores the relationships between family storytelling, memory, and postcolonial identity. With attention to the political potential of family histories, Reckoning with the Past argues that authors' often autobiographical works enable us to uncover, confront, and revise national mythologies. An important contribution to the emerging global conversation about multidirectional memory and the need to attend to the effects of colonisation, this book will appeal to an interdisciplinary field of scholarly readers. '
Source: Publisher's blurb.
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An Interpretation of Langtze's Artistic Complex in The Ancestor Game
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Oceanic Literary Studies , no. 2 2015; (p. 97-106) 'The Ancestor Game is a novel about the family history of immigrant Feng's four generation from Fujian, China to Australia with the theme of individual, land, history, thought and culture. The lifetime of the fourth generation Langtze is closely related with art. In the light of the thought of existential needs in the theory of personality by humanistic psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, readers can interpret the protagonist Langtze's artistic complex to better understand the excellent work.' (97) -
Facts Key to Fiction
Sally Pryor
(interviewer),
2013
single work
interview
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 25 April 2013; (p. 9) 'Alex Miller talks to Sally Pryor about faith, fiction - and duck dung' -
Dougald's Goat : Alex Miller and the Species Barrier
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Novels of Alex Miller : An Introduction 2012; (p. 187-200) 'I would like to open with a proposition, a theory if you like, that, in a great many narratives , there is a place, a site, where they confess, or at least pay some acknowledgement to, the stories they have not followed in order to follow the story that they have. Their roadkil, one might facetiously term it, their rejectamenta, their abject. And it is not just stories, it is concepts as well, even or perhaps especially ethical positions: places, sites, where they acknowledge all that has had to be set aside in order for those stories, concepts and ethical positions to come to be. I do not say that they in any way specify or itemise them, or that this acknowledgement is anything but the vaguest symbolisation - indeed, it is so much a matter of the subconscious that it is hard to see how it could be - although in some cases they can take a pronounced and almost indisputable form. In one of the bold philosophical projects of which I sometimes dream, I would in fact go further and attempt to demonstrate a collateral premise that much of our human ethics are based upon a separation from and rejection - abjection is a better term, since this is a matter of our identity and what we do to shore it - of the animal, and that the animal therefore always haunts, unacknowledged, our ethical reflections. Miller's texts, I suggest, are ethical reflections, and so are haunted in this way.' (Author's introduction 187) -
Continental Heartlands and Alex Miller’s Geosophical Imaginary
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Novels of Alex Miller : An Introduction 2012; (p. 125-138) This chapter examines 'how the alignment between geography and subjectivity operates in four of Miller's novels to identify his refiguration of the inherited map of modern identities.' (125)
McMahon focuses on The Ancestor Game (1992), Conditions of Faith (2000), Journey to the Stone Country (2002) and Landscape of Farewell (2007).
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The Other : Historical, Geographical
1992
single work
review
— Appears in: The CRNLE Reviews Journal , no. 2 1992; (p. 114-118)
— Review of The Ancestor Game 1992 single work novel -
About Books : China Matters
1992
single work
review
— Appears in: National Library of Australia News , September vol. 2 no. 12 1992; (p. 8-10)
— Review of Mates of Mars 1991 single work novel ; The Hole Through the Centre of the World : A Novel 1991 single work novel ; After China 1992 single work novel ; La Mort de Napoléon 1986 single work novel ; The Yellow Lady : Australian Impressions of Asia 1992 single work criticism ; The Ancestor Game 1992 single work novel -
Where Are You from Really?
1992
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 143 1992; (p. 4-5)
— Review of The Ancestor Game 1992 single work novel -
Trapped in an Ancestral Mirror
1992
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 15 August 1992; (p. 9)
— Review of The Ancestor Game 1992 single work novel -
Fruitful Mating of Cultures
1992
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 15-16 August 1992; (p. rev 4)
— Review of The Ancestor Game 1992 single work novel -
Who are the Custodians?
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 63 no. 1 2003; (p. 154-161) -
The Solitariness of Alex Miller
2004
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 21 no. 3 2004; (p. 299-311) The article presents an overview of Alex Miller's literary career and development as a writer and examines his six novels published to date. -
The Ancestor Complex : The Theme of The Ancestor Game
1995
single work
criticism
— Appears in: A Unique Literature : A Critical View of Australian Literary Works 1995; (p. 234-251) -
From European Satellite to Asian Backwater?
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Studies , Winter vol. 15 no. 2 2002; (p. 133-152) Contemporary Issues in Australian Literature 2002; (p. 133-152) Lars Jensen reads Adib Khan's Seasonal Adjustments in order to discuss 'how Australia looks from a comparative Asian perspective' (134). -
The Chinese Man in 'The Ancestor Game'
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 67 no. 3 2007; (p. 96-110)
Awards
- 1993 shortlisted NBC Banjo Awards — NBC Banjo Award for Fiction
- 1993 winner Commonwealth Writers Prize — Overall Best Book Award
- 1993 winner Miles Franklin Literary Award
- 1992 joint winner The Fellowship of Australian Writers Victoria Inc. National Literary Awards — Barbara Ramsden Award
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cChina,cEast Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
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cAustralia,c
