Ransom

The first novel from David Malouf in more than ten years. A true publishing event.

With learning worn lightly and in his own lyrical language, David Malouf revisits Homer's ILIAD. Focusing on the unbreakable bonds between men - Priam and Hector, Patroclus and Achilles, Priam and the cart-driver hired to retrieve Hector's body. Pride, grief, brutality, love and neighbourliness are explored.

The minute you finish this novel you will want to return to the beginning and start all over again.

COMMENTS FROM TONI WHITMONT, BOOKTOPIA'S MANAGING EDITOR:

I don't know how to convey the strength and worth of this exceptional book. For a start, Malouf has put his mark on a story that was first told nearly three thousand years ago, and that has been re-told in many versions by countless storytellers and word smiths ever since. Clearly it is a story with enormous, universal appeal that transcends ages and cultures. Malouf however approaches his subject with grace and ease of prose that leaves the reader gasping at the shimmering beauty of the words on the page.

The focus of Malouf's welcome return to the novel is on a small section of Homer's Iliad, itself the epic poem that tracks the ten year war between the city of Troy (or Ilios) and the combined Greek city states. In this version, we are presented with Troy's King Priam travelling to the enemy Greek encampment to beg the warrior Achilles to release the body of Hector, Priam's son, whom Achilles has killed out of revenge for the death of his own friend Patroclus. Malouf shifts the view point backwards and forwards between Priam (whose name comes from "priatos" or "he who is ransomed)" and Achilles. Achilles is the warrior son of a water nymph and a human. Priam, himself partly descendant from the gods, although ruling Troy through having been ransomed or rescued by his sister, decides to cast off his majesty and approach his implacable enemy simply as a man wanting to ransom the body of his son in order to give him an honourable burial. Ransom is a novel whose focus is almost the briefest 24 hours, and yet in it there are timeless themes - love, war, chance, destiny, fate. It is a pleasure and a privelege to read. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

David Malouf of course has had a long fascination with the classics, with An Imaginary Life being the fictional retelling of the life of the Roman poet Ovid. In the meantime, this Queensland born writer, who has won many, many awards in many, many countries, has written on subjects as diverse as post -war Brisbane (Johnno and 12 Edmondstone Street), the contrast between a Queensland bird sanctuary and the horrors of the WWI (Fly Away Peter), Australians imprisoned by the Japanese in WWII (The Great World), a community of Scottish immigrant farmers in the northern Australian bush in the 1850s (Remembering Babylon) and the relationship between an illiterate Irish convict and the police officer sent to hang him (Conversations at Curlow Creek).

He has also written librettos, plays, short stories and poetry.