Corfu: A novel - Hardcover

Dessaix, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 033036278X ISBN 13: 9780330362788

Publisher: Picador, 2001

Synopsis

One Easter a young actor, far from home, rents a house from a writer he's never heard of called Kester Berwick, and becomes fascinated by the absent Berwick's rootless, self-invented existence. Gradually, he finds his own life strangely echoing the absent writer's, as Corfu's eccentric expatriate community opens up to him. But is travelling a search or an escape? Is stillness stultifying or liberating? And where do love, sex and friendship fit? CORFU is also a meditation on literary landscapes, from Homer and Sappho to Chekhov and C.P. Cavafy. Dessaix is alive to Corfu's ghosts - Odysseus, washed up naked on the shore to be found by the princess Nausicca; Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, who, hopelessly adrift on dreams of Homer, built a palace called Achilleon; and Berwick himself, the absent centre where all these stories meet.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Dessaix is one of Australia's most respected writers and broadcasters. His previous books include A MOTHER'S DISGRACE, NIGHT LETTERS and CORFU. He lives in Melbourne.

Review:

‘Robert Dessaix is one of Australia’s finest writers, as this sad, funny and moving novel proves.’ John Banville

‘Robert Dessaix is some kind of national treasure because he represents with a kind of Helpmann-like elegance and virtuosity the side of our sensibilities we publicly repress.’ Australian Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 033036278X
• ISBN 13: 9780330362788
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 346