''Homesickness'' (1980) is a novel by Australian writer
Murray Bail
Murray Bail (born 22 September 1941) is an Australian writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. In 1980 he shared the Age Book of the Year award for his novel ''Homesickness.''
He was born in Adelaide, South Australia. He has lived most ...
. It was originally published by
Macmillan
MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to:
People
* McMillan (surname)
* Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan
* Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician
* James MacMillan, Scottish composer
* William Duncan MacMillan ...
in Australia in 1980.
It won both The Age Book of the Year Award and The Age Book of the Year Fiction Awards in 1980. It shared both awards with
David Ireland's novel ''
A Woman of the Future
''A Woman of the Future'' (1979) is a novel by Australian author David Ireland (author), David Ireland. It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1979 and was joint winner of the Age Book of the Year award in 1980.
As a result of this novel, Ireland ...
''.
Synopsis
The novel follows a group of thirteen Australian travelling together on a package tour that takes in Africa, England, Ecuador, New York and Moscow.
Awards
* co-winner
The Age Book of the Year Awards — Fiction 1980
* co-winner
The Age Book of the Year
''The Age'' Book of the Year Awards were annual literary awards presented by Melbourne's ''The Age'' newspaper. The awards were first presented in 1974. After 1998, they were presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival. Initially, two awar ...
1980
Critical reception
Suzanne Edgar
Suzanne Edgar (born 13 October 1939) is an Australian poet, short story writer and historian.
Life
Suzanne Edgar was born Glenelg, South Australia on 13 October 1939. She was educated at Adelaide Teachers' College and the University of Adel ...
, writing in ''The Canberra Times'' noted: "The group of Australians abroad, their attitudes and tastes are satirised and sent up from the superior viewpoint of the artist-observer: blind Kaddok is always taking photographs, while socially withdrawn Shiela sends hundreds of post-cards. Each tourist is tabbed by one or two stereotyped attributes that do no more than narrowly differentiate the one from the other...Bail disdains the dun-coloured realism of much Australian writing but his own prose, while certainly unrealistic, is not so psychedelic."
Publication history
After its original publication in 1980 in Australia by publisher Macmillan,
the novel was later published as follows:
*
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.[Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...]
, UK 1986
*
Text Publishing
Text Publishing is an independent Australian publisher of fiction and non-fiction, based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria.
Company background
Text Media was founded in Melbourne in 1990 by Diana Gribble and Eric Beecher, along wit ...
, Australia, 1998 and 2012
*
Farrar Straus & Giroux
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitze ...
, USA, 1999
See also
*
1980 in Australian literature
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Homesickness
1980 Australian novels