Questions of Travel
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2013 Miles Franklin Literary Award.
A mesmerising literary novel, Questions of Travel charts two very different lives. Laura travels the world before returning to Sydney, where she works for a publisher of travel guides. Ravi dreams of being a tourist until he is driven from Sri Lanka by devastating events.
Around these two superbly drawn characters, a double narrative assembles an enthralling array of people, places and stories - from Theo, whose life plays out in the long shadow of the past, to Hana, an Ethiopian woman determined to reinvent herself in Australia.
Award-winning author Michelle de Kretser illuminates travel, work and modern dreams in this brilliant evocation of the way we live now. Wonderfully written, Questions of Travel is an extraordinary work of imagination - a transformative, very funny and intensely moving novel.
Praise for The Lost Dog:
'This is the best novel I have read in a long time.' - AS Byatt
'a beautiful piece of writing - place your bets now for the Booker.' - Kate Saunders, The Times
Praise for The Hamilton Case:
'One of the most remarkable books I've read in a long while - subtle and mysterious, both comic and eerie, and brilliantly evocative of time and place. I've never been to Sri Lanka but I feel it's become part of my interior landscape, and I so much admire Michelle de Kretser's formidable technique - her characters feel alive, and she can create a sweeping narrative which encompasses years, and yet still retain the sharp, almost hallucinatory detail. It's brilliant. (Booker judges, where were you?)' - Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While her earlier books The Lost Dog and The Hamilton Case were meditations on the nature of art and mystery, de Kretser's brilliantly observed new novel explores the meaning of travel. Borrowing a title from the poet Elizabeth Bishop, de Kretser evokes and subverts the tradition of the literary travelogue the chronicle of the leisured, intercontinental quest for self-improvement. The book moves back and forth between the lives of two very different characters, Australian Laura and Sri Lankan Ravi. Laura's early travels, like Bishop's, are funded by a surprise inheritance; she trades art school for guidebooks as she sets out to see the world. The death of one of her twin brothers when Laura is a teenager creates a vague menace that later follows her from continent to continent, reinforced by a silent caller with an unknown agenda who wakes her in the middle of the night a few times each year. For Ravi, childhood is filled with the anxiety of limited opportunity, while the violence of the Sri Lankan civil war rages in the background. In his early life, he travels in his mind, whether to Japan or Silicon Valley; later, travel becomes necessary, a way to find safety in a brutal world. De Kretser creates the anticipation that Laura and Ravi's paths will eventually cross, but an epigraph from E.M. Forster signals not to expect an epiphany when they do meet. While "Only connect!" is the message at the heart of Forster's Howards End, de Kretser's book severs strong ties and dissolves weaker ones, making the broken more broken. Coming together, Ravi and Laura plan a new journey that begins in guidebook banality and ends in disaster. While de Kretser doesn't provide the expected satisfactions, she offers deadly darts of observation that puncture clich s and deflate false enthusiasm. In the end she leaves you flat on the ground, possessed of harder truths.
