'Is it history that tells us who we are? Or is it the story we tell ourselves ... that defines who we are?' (The Australian) A profound and moving story about the land, the past, exile and acceptance from the award-winning author of Journey to the Stone Country.
A hauntingly beautiful meditation on the land, the past, exile and friendship, Landscape of Farewell is the powerful new novel from acclaimed Australian author, Alex Miller.
It is the story of Max Otto, an elderly German academic. After the death of his much-loved wife and his recognition that he will never write the great study of history that was to be his life's crowning work, Max believes his life is all but over. Everything changes, though, when his valedictory lecture is challenged by Professor Vita McLelland, a feisty young Australian Aboriginal academic visiting Germany. Their meeting and growing friendship sets Max on a journey that would have seemed unthinkable just a few short weeks earlier.
When, at Vita's invitation, Max travels to Australia, he forms a deep friendship with her uncle, Aboriginal elder Dougald Gnapun. It is a friendship that not only gives new meaning and purpose to Max, but which teaches him the profound importance of truth-telling in reconciliation with his own and his country's past.
Following Alex Miller's Miles Franklin-winning Journey to the Stone Country, Landscape of Farewell is a wise and grave novel of power, beauty and truth.
Praise for Alex Miller
'[The Ancestor Game] is a wonderful novel of stunning intricacy and great beauty.' - Michael Ondaatje
'Miller is a master storyteller.' - Drusilla Modjeska
Awards
Winner of the Manning Clark House National Cultural Award 2008
Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award 2008
Shortlisted for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction (NSW Premier's Literary Awards) 2008
Shortlisted for the 2008 ALS Gold Medal
Shortlisted for the 2008 Commonwealth Writer's Prize (Asia-Pacific Region, Best Book)
Longlisted for the WA Premier's Australia-Asia Literary Award 2008
About the Author
Alex Miller is twice winner of Australia's premier literary prize, The Miles Franklin Literary Award, first in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and again in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He is also an overall winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, in 1993 for The Ancestor Game. His fifth novel, Conditions of Faith, won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the 2001 New South Wales Premier's Awards. In 2011 he won this award a second time with his most recent novel Lovesong. Lovesong also won the People's Choice Award in the NSW Premier's Awards, the Age Book of the Year Award and the Age Fiction Prize for 2011. In 2007 Landscape of Farewell was published to wide critical acclaim and in 2008 won the Chinese Annual Foreign Novels 21st Century Award for Best Novel and the Manning Clark Medal for an outstanding contribution to Australian cultural life. It was also short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award, the Christi
Industry Reviews
Alex Miller is a wonderful writer, one that Australia has been keeping secret from the rest of us for too long. Landscape of Farewell is at once elegiac and bracing and, as always, limpidly written. -- John Banville
Landscape of Farewell provides a compelling account of interactions between past and present... with luminous descriptions of place, dryly matter-of-fact evocations of character and incident, and humorous affectation for human foibles and perverseness... By the end of the novel we are glad to have known its numerous characters. * Times Literary Supplement *
