The maker of an Australian Genesis

Published in 1981, some nine years before his death, this effortless memoir conveys much of the relaxed intensity of White the man and well as the writer who established contemporary Australian writing an as international force. Born in England in 1912, he spent much of his early childhood in Australia, before returning to England for his education. In life he was caught between an Englishness he acquired but fought against, and the Australian he most emphatically was. This is also true of his fiction. At his best, in works such as The Vivisector and The Eye of the Storm, he matches the most sophisticated of European fiction-writing, while The Tree of Man and Voss could represent the Australian Book of Genesis. Considered a cranky, abrasive character in life, White was well served by David Marr's brilliant biography published in 1991, a year after White's death. White's worst enemy was himself. He writes with the artist's eye and usually at its least self-conscious. There are wonderful moments of sharp observation, rueful self-realisation, humour, and honesty. His childhood and his adult life are presented as belonging to two contrasting existences. Love, travel and, above all, a writer's curiosity sustained by a relentless search for self, provide the central themes in a book which becomes a ourney that is as candid as it is elusive.