On Patrick White

Patrick White is the unAustralian writer who did more than any other writer in the twentieth century to create an imaginative language that we can call “Australian”, who unshackled us from the demand that we write as the English do, who recognised, through his own alienation and also through his profound love for his partner, that we were a migrant and mongrel nation forging our own culture and our own language.

In this passionate and electrifying short book, Christos Tsiolkas writes about his year spent reading Patrick White, of his ‘discovery and rediscovery of White as a writer.’ The result is a vivid introduction to and celebration of the Nobel prize-winning writer's work that asks: what does it mean to us now?

In the Writers on Writers series, leading writers reflect on another Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative, crisp and written from a practitioner's perspective, the series starts a fresh conversation between past and present, and writer and reader. It sheds light on the craft of writing, and introduces some intriguing and talented authors and their work.

Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and the State Library of Victoria.

About the Author

Christos Tsiolkas is the author of four novels: Loaded (filmed as Head-On) The Jesus Man and Dead Europe, which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award. The Slap won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize 2009 and was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award and the ALS Gold Medal. He is also a playwright, essayist and screen writer. He lives in Melbourne.